MDC mulls relocation package for 4 million exiles

MDC mulls relocation package for 4 million exiles

By Morgan Tsvangirai

ZIMBABWEANS live with the crude fact that the past five years have turned our entire national resource base into dead capital. Land no longer has any economic value. Labour, despite its high quality, impressive literacy levels and agility, lies untapped, dead.

With 85 percent unemployment, labour has indeed become a dead economic resource.

Highly mechanised farms, expensive farm machinery, first class hotels, lodges and holiday facilities, developed conservancies and wildlife sanctuaries, well-equipped hospitals and a glossy mining, manufacturing and service infrastructure stands idle. We all know that our base is wasting away; plenty of dead capital in our midst.

That this should have been allowed to happen in a country once generally described as the jewel of Africa beggars belief, the more so since the wounds have been self-inflicted.

We have witnessed our country slide into a subsistence economy in short space of five years. Nobody disputes the fact that we have joined the ranks of failed states. And, indications are that unless we stop the rot through a national resistance project, we risk slipping further into disparate hunter-gatherer communities, led by senile warlords using an outdated nationalistic ideology as a survival tool.

The reality reads like high-grade fiction: our gross domestic product is down by half from US$8,4 billion to US$4,1 billion; our productive population lost an estimated four million active, young adults to the Diaspora; food availability is down 60 percent; exports down to a third of the 1999 levels; life expectancy down from 59 to 33 years; tourism dropped 80 percent of its traditional market share; industry is tottering at 30 percent capacity; the list is endless.

Let me point out that in the five-year political chaos, close to two million people were displaced by the regime’s land reform exercise. Compare that to a mere 130 000 who were officially resettled.

Among the so-called farmers, who were misled and used in driving out white farmers and pave the way for fake Zanu PF victories in two previous elections, insecurity reigns supreme as their mud huts and measly possessions are being torched and destroyed daily to make way for the ruling elite.

A major casualty of Zanu PF’s emotional behaviour and political greed has been the job-creation sectors of our economy.

Opportunities were shut out overnight as terrified investors scurried for cover; as tourists felt so frightened to sample out world-class products; and as established businesses, especially in agriculture and agro-industry were hounded out, all in the name of correcting historical backlogs and imbalances.

Overnight 15 000 people who benefited from agro-industrial units like Kondozi were pushed back to their villages in Marange (Manicaland) -- hungry, hopeless and confused – all for a worthless political victory.

The main productive sectors have been on a downward trend since 1999, this has had a serious effect on the general welfare of the majority of Zimbabweans.

The primary economic barometer of the country’s standard of living (per capita income) has declined substantially since then. The extent of the decay can best be illustrated by the fact that in 1999, workers campaigned for a minimum wage of Z$5 000. Today, they need $1 500 000 to scrap through a normal month.

"We shall mount an immigration and resettlement campaign for the prime minds of our estimated four million nationals plying their trade in foreign lands. That campaign has among its elements a relocation package, assured employment and associated benefits"

MORGAN TSVANGIRAI

Given the above undisputed facts, our calls for a new start, a new beginning and a new Zimbabwe show us the only way forward. At the centre of our economic and reconstruction plans is the need to knock-down and restructure government, to institutionalise participatory decision-making and to devolve of power in order to ring fence our nation against costly political mistakes such as what we witnessed in the past five years.

Our objective is to see a secure society with full employment, a society that enjoys universal benefits and rights. Our objective is to place solid safeguards for job security as a first step towards total empowerment.

What Robert Mugabe and Zanu PF sought to do was to drive everybody away from the current international industrialisation thrust to a subsistence way of life. No nation has ever progressed through that route. The global trend supports the movement of people from the land to industry, towards exports and to international competition.

Agriculture, which has been the mainstay of the economy in terms of foreign currency generation (34 percent attributed to tobacco), 30 percent of total employment and food self-sufficiency has suffered the greatest knock. We shall fight hard to revive that sector as a matter of urgency in order to increase the labour absorptive capacity of the industry.

The manufacturing sector contributed 25 percent to GDP in 1980 and was one of the most advanced and diversified industrial sectors in sub Saharan Africa, has not been spared in the economic downturn. The sector registered negative year to year growth from 1999 to this day, shedding off hundreds of thousands of workers in the process.

Our economic policy realises the severity of the crisis. Our policy seeks to address our immediate stabilisation and reconstruction needs as a basis for a comprehensive industrialisation strategy through which jobs and growth shall be sustained in the long term. The level of unemployment here is a national disaster, a national emergency.

We have job creation plan that will see an upsurge in new formal-sector jobs within the first year of assuming power. Through macro-economic stability, we shall provide a favourable environment for the resumption of savings and investment in our country.

That environment shall open-up opportunities for the construction industry, a major source of employment alongside agriculture. The reconstruction phase will call for increased labour as we put together our damaged infrastructure and new facilities for a nation emerging from a war-like situation.

We shall support initiatives from small businesses with access to capital, through training, input supply and other services to encourage job creation.

The revival of tourism will see our resorts and holiday destinations spring to life once more, attracting and accommodating thousands of job-seekers and increasing our foreign exchange inflows. With such a development comes with advances in the transport, food, art and craft industries.

Agriculture, manufacturing, mining and commerce and industry shall be the major beneficiary of a new Zimbabwe.

There will be early opportunities in the mining industry, while recovery in commercial agriculture and the manufacturing sector – the two extremely damaged in the past five years – could be more protracted unless we get sufficient balance of payment support.

The key to the re-generation of faith and confidence in a new Zimbabwe rests with the restoration of the rule of law and the protection of private property rights -- principles to which we are religiously committed as a party.

We shall mount an immigration and resettlement campaign for the prime minds of our estimated four million nationals plying their trade in foreign lands. That campaign has among its elements a relocation package, assured employment and associated benefits to reduce our reliance of expatriates and to reduce our labour imports.

To absorb the shocks of the current damage, our initial stabilisation challenge shall be to tackle the nexus of inflation, interest rates and exchange rates in order to steady prices, encourage savings and restore sanity on the market.

Zimbabwe must re-gain its former position in Africa, dismantle the present economic structure which favours a male-dominated formal sector and harness all our national resources for development. We must make a fresh start.

Together, we shall win.
Tsvangirai is leader of the Zimbabwe opposition Movement for Democratic Change and issues this message every Tuesday
JOIN THE DEBATE ON THIS ARTICLE ON THE NEWZIMBABWE.COM FORUMS
debate@newzimbabwe.com