Population growth must be sustainable Registrar General Mr Tobaiwa Mudede

tobaiwa mudedeOpinion Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu
The current debate on the use of contraceptives in Zimbabwe is very important to the future of the country not only with regard to the physical health of its female population but with that of its socio-economic welfare.

The public debate was triggered by the Registrar-General Tobaiwa Mudede’s critical remarks about alleged negative effects of a particular type of contraceptive on the users. It has turned out, however, that the remarks were ill advised as they were not based on a sound body of professionally researched findings.

That does not concern this opinion article, however, as its main thrust is to draw the attention of national policy generators to the need for formulating birth-control measures in order to keep Zimbabwe’s population growth rate at a level that can be sustained by the nation’s economic resources and social services.

We have been told that the country urgently needs more than 2,000 additional schools. We do not know how many more health facilities are required to meet the needs of Zimbabwe’s 14 million plus or so people.

We are also very much aware of the fact that every urban municipal centre in Zimbabwe has an extremely long housing waiting list.

In addition to all this, the country’s employment opportunities get less daily as several, if not many, firms either close down or retrench. That has been going on for some years, resulting in thousands of Zimbabweans leaving the country to seek employment abroad.

Presently, there are about four million of them in South Africa, a development that has strained that country’s social services and lowered its national per capita income.

Hundreds of other Zimbabweans, unskilled as well as professional, black as well as white, are in many other countries where some of them live precariously indeed.

What can be done back home to lessen the seriousness of all this? Creating jobs is, of course, the very first measure every Zimbabwean should take, as is stated by the governing party, Zanu-PF, in its Zim-Asset policy document.

Jobs can be created through production as is the case in agriculture, aquaculture, service generation, and also by beneficiation, distribution (exportation and importation included), advertising and manufacturing. Arts and culture, if properly organised and managed, can create employment for a significant number of people.

Similarly, wood technology and carpentry can create tangible and usable wealth which can be exported as articles of national comfort. Investors would be well advised to look into this sector in Zimbabwe with countries such as Namibia, Angola, Botswana, Malawi and Mozambique as target export markets.

Talking about investing brings us to whether or not there is much investment capital in the world at large. If there is, as some people tell us, how competitively attractive is Zimbabwe as an investment capital destination?

It would be most enlightening to carry out comparative research in the Sadc region to find out which countries are the most friendly to foreign investment capital.

That could help us design a probably much more attractive investment policy than other Sadc member states.

Meanwhile, keeping the country’s population growth rate under control is an obvious policy priority, not only because the country’s economy is not doing well, but also because the land itself, that is to say, the very physical living space, is not elastic.

A close look at some Sadc countries would show that there is a great deal of merit in adopting a birth control rate policy. Swaziland is one Sadc country where such a policy is long overdue.

Notwithstanding the fact that Zimbabwe requires more than 2,000 additional schools, the existing ones churn out every year more job-seekers than the country’s industry and commerce can take, what with many factories having closed down, and their premises now turned into churches!

And churches economically gainfully employ only three or so people each although they spiritually serve thousands at some given occasions.

It could greatly serve Zimbabwe much better if those leading some of the now financially well-to-do churches were to invest in either commerce or industry so as to create jobs for some of their members than to invest the fortunes they have made in material comfort, such as the latest Japanese- or American- or German-made motor vehicles and/or in palatial residential houses.

We are, however, talking about the need to control Zimbabwe’s national birth rate so as to enable the people to live relatively comfortable within the country’s meagre economic resources and limited social services.

Some years ago, the author of this article lived in what was then Gatooma, now Kadoma. There was a huge cotton ginnery in that town, and it employed a very large number of people. Employees of that company could afford to maintain large families.

That industry relied for its cotton on the farms in the surrounding area, and those farms employed hundreds of workers. Also in that region there were big and small gold mines some of them on the Eiffel Flats, which also employed literally thousands of people.

Those workers depended on the farms for their food, and the farms were doing well, thank you. Workers could reasonably support relatively large families.

Of course the pound (sterling) was stronger than the current US dollar, and food and beverages, accommodation, transport, entertainment, medical and other services were cheaper than now. There were by far fewer people in Rimuka and at Ngezi than now, and, so, Simango or Zitha, Chimanikire or Nyikadzino could afford to bring up a dozen or so children each. Not any longer.

At that time (1954), there were less than four million people in this country. Now we are three-and-a-half times more than then, and a loaf of bread costs $1 each and not 10 pennies (two pennies less than one shilling), and travelling from Specks Hotel to Rimuka cost four pennies by bus. Now it costs the equivalent of five shillings (60 pennies).

The above calculations may not be as precise or exact as a professional auditor would have them, but they indicate that today’s everyday expenses are way above those of two or so generations ago.

That means, in short, that economic and social policies that obtained some years ago need to be updated to be relevant to today’s socio-economic dynamics and exigencies.

The government ministries concerned, particularly that of Labour and Social Welfare, need to sensitise the state about this so that an effective birth control policy is crafted and adopted for the benefit of the whole nation.

l Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu is a retired, Bulawayo-based journalist. He can be contacted on cell 0734 328 136 or through email: [email protected]

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