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Simbarashe Maringosi
BULAWAYO, the only home I have known, is the second largest city of our beloved nation, Zimbabwe. Memories still linger of the implicit humdinger days when the city was the industrial capital of Zimbabwe. People would hail from all corners of our nation coming to this industrial hegemonic city that offered a parade of employment opportunities. Indeed, this would have mimicked the biblical land flowing with milk and honey to the horde of people that flocked into this city.

No-one can dispute the city was amongst the best in sub-Saharan Africa. Many in those days would have concluded that the commercial thrive of Bulawayo was a prelude of the greater things that would soon follow.

However, the tables were turned. The industries began to fall. In echoing the same estimates by the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries, the Minister of Industry and Commerce, Mike Bimha last year said that Bulawayo’s manufacturing sector could be operating at lower than 30 percent of capacity.

These sombre facts led to Vice President Phelekezela Mphoko, upon assuming his revered position, to hold meetings with the city’s former mayors and their deputies to scheme strategies to rectify Bulawayo’s economic maladies.

Vice President Mphoko was quoted as saying in the meeting, “Our industry has completely collapsed, there’s nothing left. Our children are suffering. The streets of Bulawayo are like a ghost town. We’ve the brains that are still here. I said let’s put our heads together to discuss what we should do for Bulawayo.”

Despite all the glory the city bragged of, in the eyes of many, it was never a presage of the reality on the ground today. The city that was once an industrial hub with industrial smoke punctuating the skyline became a desolate place.

A tour around the industrial areas today will reveal that the buildings once dominated by machines and men are now full of squalor. Industries closed down operations, some relocated with only a few remnants of this industrial genocide downsizing operations and operating below capacity.

President Robert Mugabe once said, “Bulawayo was the hardest hit by sanctions.” The drastic and dire effects of sanctions working hand in glove with a host of factors plunged Bulawayo into an abyss. Some of the factors include the intense competition from cheap imports from China, high borrowing rates from financial institutions, high wage bills choking company operations since many industries are labour intensive and of course, what the former Reserve Bank Governor Gideon Gono would call Zimbabwe’s number one enemy, inflation which reached shuddery levels. Many companies suffered because of the “angel of death’’ with its many hands. This “angel of death”, ruthless and merciless in its quest drained and sapped the life that was in our industries. This amongst other reasons led to the vanishing into thin air of the pride of the city.

As the events of the company closures unfolded, some were swift to react; they escaped what they would have labelled as the claws of a tiger only to find themselves in the jaws of a lion.

They myopic fled the city and went to what would become the “Xenophobic Republic of South Africa’’ in future. They thought that they would become crocodiles in a foreign land but apparently they remained lizards, and their exodus never yielded anything except for the minute that had lady luck on their side.

Well, this is the tale of “kontuthu ziyathunqa?’’ This is the name the city got from the hey days of its industrial epoch. It is a Ndebele phrase meaning a place where there is so much smoke when literally translated.

One might be compelled to ask if this phrase is still relevant today, well to say the truth candidly, it is not relevant in today’s Bulawayo but it can be relevant in tomorrow’s Bulawayo. It is from the perspective of a businessperson that I have tabled what I believe can become some lodestar points that can help revive our city back to its former lustre.

The three points are however not an exhaustive list of what the relevant stakeholders can use in their valiant thrusts to revive Bulawayo.

First, in order for the revival to thrive, there has to be meticulous planning, implementation and monitoring. I happen to be an ardent enthusiast of the gospel of revival but in order for this gospel to produce forth the required results, people must act.

As long as our plans remain on paper with no actions accompanying our plans, all the hopes of a glistening city will be drawn to waste. No one can live in a house drawn on paper.

When one has a building plan for his house, he endeavours to look for builders to build the house so that his idea of owning a house does not remain on paper but becomes a reality. Some nations prosper on plans only but that is not the reality on the ground. If our city is going to be revived, we must be shifted from living in houses drawn on paper.

Planning is not just enough, it is implementation and monitoring the progress of the plans that add value to one’s plans. I believe this city has a plan for its revival, it will only require a bold step to implement the plans. Holding meetings to map out the way forward is not enough, the results of the meeting on the ground are what is credible.

One is never honoured for what he thinks but what he does. Man is not honoured for thoughts but for actions. Success is not a thought, it is an action backed by a thought. Enough of board meetings, it’s time for guided action.

Secondly, but not a dilatory contingent to the above, a new generation of enterprises has to be set up. These companies may or may not necessarily produce “smoke,’’ but at this economic juncture, a new fleet of enterprises becomes a necessity.

Some of the closed industries ceased to have a market; this therefore implies the supreme need to create new companies with an existing market. The city should embark on building skills training facilities and have the spirit of entrepreneurship inculcated in its citizenry.

This “seed” would produce a nerved temerarious generation of entrepreneurs that will be job creators instead of job seekers. These entrepreneurs will not only know what to do, but they will also know how to do it. Their work will be characterised by being productive rather than being busy. Productive people are what our economy needs today not people who will spend the day busy yet producing nothing.

Investing in skills is investing in productivity. If today we don’t reap the benefits of that exercise, tomorrow we will. The thrust of the city is not in building enterprises; its thrust is that of equipping enterprise builders with the knowhow of what they will be doing. Bulawayo will thrive if it has a genre of vibrant entrepreneurs brewed from within itself who have Bulawayo at heart.

Lastly, my three point plan ends with this question that was posed by a certain writer. “Quis custodies ipsos custodes?” It is Latin for, “Who shall guard the guards?” In today’s society, as long as corruption is rampant and reaching alarming levels, nothing noble shall be achieved. Revival will only be achieved in the absence of corruption.

As long as funds are allocated to the right things at the right time, then Bulawayo shall see the light in the tunnel as opposed to seeing it at the end of the tunnel. Let us all nip corruption in the bud. Down with the gorgon of corruption.

It is my hope that the relevant authorities will not give a scant attention to these euphonious proposals penned down in the firm spirit of candour. LET BULAWAYO LIVE AGAIN.

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