Zimpapers Logo

Stephen Mpofu
In his campaign trail as the country approaches the harmonised elections on July 30, President Emmerson Mnangagwa has set an agenda which the next government will find it impossible not to implement, whatever the outcome of the polls.

Most recently, the President spoke repeatedly at his rallies about devolution, a process under which central government deputises power to the masses in the provinces in various aspects of national development.

He spoke about the country’s rich natural resource endowments with minerals occupying a huge chunk of Zimbabwe’s wealth but with our people not in full control of that God-given wealth so that the armed revolution which wrested the motherland from a foreign ruling culture remains at present short of attaining its goal of bringing the country and the riches in its belly home to the people.

To born-frees and others slightly older than they, the armed revolution that set this country free from a foreign ruling culture probably remains a fairy tale in the absence of an authentic history of the revolution written by Zimbabweans and immortalised in cold print for future generations to know how they were liberated from oppressive rule by “those without knees” as elderly Zimbabweans described whites who arrived in the country wearing trousers that concealed their knees.

Yet young men and young women paid the ultimate price to ransom the country from its abduction by colonialists so that everything on the surface and in the belly of the motherland would be theirs verbally and in reality.

But the mission towards total ownership of the name Zimbabwe and all that is in it remains an unaccomplished project which those who survived the bruising armed struggle must now lead the rest of our people in putting the revolution on its last lap of accomplishing the revolution’s home straight by decentralising power to the people in what the foreign rulers called the “periphery” or, more pejoratively “the sticks” — the countryside, home to more Zimbabweans today.

In colonial days the city and its young, the towns, became centres of civilisation and wealth and with that magnets that drew the poor dwellers in the periphery or countryside to join bee-lines for the urban areas to render cheap labour to whites for a poor wage while rural areas remained comparatively poor even during the 38 years of independence and freedom.

It is no surprise therefore that today urban centres enjoy the best facilities such as banks, schools, hospitals, tarred roads and streets all of which exist thanks to the minerals and agricultural wealth in the rural areas while dwellers there continue to settle for the whey.

This inequality between the urban and rural set ups has over lived its tenure and must come to an end without any further ado.

Operation Restore Legacy by the armed forces, which ended President Robert Mugabe’s government when he resigned last November and brought in President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s new dispensation government, must now act and be seen to do so by bringing the revolution back on course and on the home straight through decentralisation of power from central government in Harare to the provinces.

At his campaign rallies President Mnangagwa has reminded Zimbabweans that each province has various rich resources such as minerals and agriculture potential among others for people to grow their own economy rather than look to central government to be spoon-fed all the time.
But what do we see happening?

Apart from panning for gold by our people, big mining concerns remain in the hands of foreign operators so that some of our minerals are carted off for refining abroad with a huge question mark remaining over whether Zimbabwe, the primary source of that wealth, benefits from all the sales of minerals overseas.

When on the other hand people take full charge of the mines with secondary industries being set up locally to process the minerals to finished products for export money earned will benefit provinces where the mines are situated.

What is required therefore is the training of Zimbabweans on how to run the mines and to process the minerals.

Land reform was perhaps the first step by the Zimbabwean government after independence to give power to the people through the provision of farms to grow food for themselves and for export.

Command agriculture under which food crops are grown under irrigation as well as Command Livestock and Command Fisheries are the other means by which the government has and is empowering people to own and use the country’s resources for their benefit as well as that of the country. The Government also has a desire for small scale farmers to go commercial and become self-sufficient in the provision of food rather than depend on imports of the commodity by the government in times of drought and famine, for instance.

Villagers may also grow vegetables for export to the urban areas as a source of income.

A lot of training is needed here for the producers to store and preserve their produce so that it does not go to waste before reaching the market.

Similarly villagers panning for gold, for instance, require extensive training in the use of chemicals when processing their minerals in order to protect the environment.

When all the above is considered the time has indeed come for the devolution of power especially considering Zimbabwe’s very, very high literacy rate on the African continent which should make it easy for the people to grasp whatever they are taught for the success of their enterprises.

Devolution should help transform growth points into viable business centres with industries, shops and post offices among other things being set up to create jobs for local people.

At present most of those development zones are windswept centres, conspicuous by their noisy jukeboxes in bottle stores and poorly stocked shops.

What the above suggests therefore is that people should elect competent members of parliament who will lead them in spearheading massive development in their areas to make decentralisation an effective tool for transforming rural economies.