Beyond Zim ruins to new Zimbabwe

Beyond Zim ruins to new Zimbabwe

by: Obert Gutu

EVERYTHING has got a beginning and an end. Biblically, only God The Almighty has the capacity to survive in perpetuity. Modern science has established that even the Sun, which is 149,6 million kilometers away from the Earth and which has got a surface temperature of 5,500 degrees Celcius with a temperature of 15 million degrees Celcius at its centre, will one day burn itself into extinction.

There's absolutely no point for this opinion piece to reiterate that the national economy in Zimbabwe is virtually dead. It is a fact that today, no less than 96% of the economy is informalised. Put bluntly, the Zimbabwean economy is surviving in the informal sector. Small and medium enterprises are on life support and even big business has gone through a phase of unprecedented downsizing, retrenchments and in a number of cases, total shut down. But amidst all this doom and gloom, there's still hope for Zimbabwe.

Out of the ashes of the Zimbabwe Ruins, we can and indeed, we should be able to build a New Zimbabwe. A new nation state that will have a thriving and formalized national economy as well as advanced and state of the art infrastructure. Yes, it can be done!

The past two decades or so have seen Zimbabwe going through severe political and socio - economic turmoil. From being the second largest economy in Southern Africa at the time of our independence in April, 1980, our economy has shrunk to become one of the smallest in the sub-region with a negative annual growth rate that has seen no less than 4 million Zimbabweans escape into the Diaspora, largely as economic refugees.

Going forward, we have no choice but to pick ourselves up and to forge ahead in rebuilding our shattered nation. None but ourselves shall be able to reconstruct our national economy as well as to build a new nation state that abides by the basic and sacrosanct tenets of constitutionalism, constitutionality and respect for private property rights.

The solution doesn't lie in all of us running away from our motherland and seeking so-called greener pastures in the Diaspora. We simply have to take the bull by the horns so to speak and to begin to believe in our capacity and capability to solve our own challenges.

Japan is the third largest economy in the world with a population of about 125 million people. The land size of Japan is a third of the land size of Zimbabwe. And only one third of Japan is habitable because the other two thirds consist of inhabitable volcanic mountains. But who doesn't know about global Japanese brands such as Toyota, Isuzu, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Mazda, Honda, Suzuki and Kawasaki?

The starting point for us is to adopt a new mind-set that doesn't tolerate laziness, indolence, corruption and greed. We can change our government with the frequency with which we change our underwear but as long as we don't fundamentally change our mindset, Zimbabwe shall remain trapped in a conundrum of political malfeasance and socio-economic deprivation.

It is a fact that across the political divide, corruption is rampant and that it is literally tearing our nation apart. How can we possibly develop our national economy when the entire nation, from top to bottom, is mired in rampant and insipid corruption?

There are certain hygiene issues that have to be urgently addressed if at all Zimbabwe is to emerge as an economic and political giant. We have to renounce and denounce the politics of violence, intolerance, thuggery and chicanery. We have to learn to build strong institutions rather than concentrating on building strong personalities. People come and go but institutions should last forever.

In a country where hatred, selfishness, indolence, laziness and corruption remain unchecked, you can simply forget about building a strong and resilient economy. With so much natural and human resources at our disposal, it is a complete and absolute shame that more than 75% of Zimbabweans are classified as living in abject poverty i.e. surviving on less than US$2 per day.

Our politics is toxic. We are concentrating on minor issues instead of always putting our eyes on the bigger picture. There's primitive and debilitating intra and inter party political rivalry. Instead of always putting the interests of Zimbabwe first, we are busy squabbling on who should get this or that position. We have become so position-oriented that we have almost forgotten that not all of us can be either in government and/or in Parliament. Indeed, we should understand and appreciate that politics is a vocation and not a profession. We should enter politics to serve and not to be served.

This is a clarion call to all Zimbabweans, across the political, religious, ethnic and racial divide, to immediately start believing in ourselves and also to take note that Zimbabwe belongs to all of us. No one should consider themselves more Zimbabwean than the other.

We should dream about a new Zimbabwe that can develop global brands to compete with and even surpass the Samsung, Kia, Mercedes Benz, BMW and Huawei brands of this world. Why should we remain trapped in a small world of salary and wage earners who can't imagine themselves as owners of big companies and corporations employing thousands of people across the globe?

Some of us will never stop dreaming about a new Zimbabwe devoid of grinding poverty and socio-economic degradation and deprivation. We are a great people as Zimbabweans and, oh yes, we have got everything that it takes to become a great nation!

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