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Prof Moyo

As we celebrate 34 years of the end of colonial rule, there are still people who want to stand on the side of the oppressor and talk about an end to indigenisation and empowerment policies.
Numerous reports have been published in some sections of the local and international media on the “need” to revise economic empowerment policies so that we can better attract foreign direct investment.

We are told by “analysts” and “experts” that the empowerment and indigenisation, as it is presently constituted, “scares away investors” and will result in major economic malaise for Zimbabweans.

Notably, none of these reports gives any suggestions as to how the policies can be modified or improved upon.
Rather they give the distinct impression that the policy should simply go so that FDI can flow into the country as it did back in the times when a white minority ran the farms and mines and the black majority provided the cheap labour.

Any right thinking person would thus be forgiven for coming to the inescapable conclusion that the ultimate objective of such reports is to rubbish the empowerment of ordinary people so that they simply remain labour for foreign investors.

Naturally, the only ones to benefit from the kind of situation that these sections of the media are agitating for would be the foreign investors and their local lackeys who pose as national politicians (read puppets) and businesspersons (read glorified employees holding the posts of CEOs, managing directors and whatever else foreign capital calls them to keep them happy).

These are people who are content to merely replace one form of oppression with another, without caring about the genuine empowerment of the ordinary man and woman.

Information, Media and Broadcasting Services Minister Professor Jonathan Moyo has said that the popularly-elected ZANU-PF Government will not adjust the empowerment policies to suit foreign interests at the expense of Zimbabweans.

He says there is no way that Government, after having been mandated to lead on the basis of empowerment and indigenisation, can turn around and abandon those policies.

And that is as it should be.
Our debate should by now have reached the stage where we discuss how best to improve on the empowerment and indigenisation laws and regulations and not on scrapping them.

The people have already said, by voting for Zanu-PF, that they want empowerment and indigenisation. They rejected the MDC-T manifesto that was preoccupied with making us largely employees of exploitative foreign capital for a reason and we must all respect that choice.

Surely, our country cannot progress as long as we have individuals in our midst who only think of their share of the pie without thinking about the broader national interest. Let us all put our minds and energy together to ensure that real empowerment comes to the people.

Let us not waste our time lobbying for the end of a policy that is here to stay.
Our time and energy must be expended on implementing good policies and fine-tuning those potentially beneficial policies that are perhaps not well-structured at present.

There is much work that is to be done so that we make Zimbabwe great.
We cannot expend precious time and energy on flogging dead horses when the race is there to be finished and won.