When citizens carry the burden of Engagement and Re-engagement

SEVERAL citizen-centred developments, all of them positive, have registered on my mind this year.

In July, a group of young Zimbabwean girls and boys brought gold to our country after beating all nations of the World to become champions at the 2022 Moot Court Competition. This world competition took place in the Netherlands.

More recently, in this month of October, another team of Zimbabwean youngsters, this time from Tynwald High School, Prince Edward High School and Bernard Mizeki College, made history in Geneva, Switzerland, by grabbing the gold prize on Innovation. They beat 183 nations, again drawn from the world community.

As I write, I am enraptured by the performance of our cricket team, the Chevrons, which has won over Scotland in the ICC Men’s T20 Cricket World Cup. They have more games ahead; still this does not bedim their spectacular performance so far, or the joy it brings to us all.

I am also aware that our own Chief Charumbira prevailed as the President of the Pan-African Parliament (PAP). Barely a few weeks later, Zimbabwe’s Dr Zavazava was chosen to head the strategic International Telecommunications Union (ITU). He shrugged off several challengers drawn from many countries of the world, including those backed by powerful nations.

Barely two months ago, I was in Kigali, Rwanda, to attend a summit on Africa’s Green Revolution in the current season of global food crisis. Zimbabwe became the model country at the Summit, thanks to our hardworking farmers who break the clod, thus translating our agricultural policies into real food for the stomach. Our influence grow from our example.

Only last week, over 150 Zimbabwean teachers left for Rwanda, under a bilateral agreement between us and the sister Republic of Rwanda. These Zimbabwean professionals will share their skills with their counterparts in that friendly African country. This will benefit children of that African country. In fact, I will host President Kagame in our country in a week’s time.

Through his Government’s effort, our power utility, Zesa, has secured a US$800m loan for our rural electrification. This would not have been possible for Zimbabwe to do, given the punitive sanctions against us. There are many other headline achievements of global scope which our citizens registered this year, including in areas of competitive sport, and that of culture.

Indeed 2022 has been a landmark year for our country. At its inauguration, the Second Republic unveiled a two-pronged policy of Engagement and Re-engagement. Through the policy of Engagement, the Second Republic extends the scope and its hand for global friendships and partnerships.

It seeks to break into new frontiers: beyond limitations of geography, of politics, of ideology, economic ties and of cultural differences. This is assisted by our firmly-held persuasion that Zimbabwe must be a friend to all, and an enemy to none.

Through the policy of Re-engagement, the Second Republic seeks to repair relations with any nation, relations which might have been broken or might have suffered in the past, for whatever reasons. It is a policy that enjoins us to let bygones be bygones, and by which we urge those who might have broken ties with us, for whatever reason or cause, to do the same, so we open a new chapter in our relations, and so we embrace as before.

What the year 2022 has shown me personally is that the domain of foreign affairs and relations goes beyond the President, the Ministers, other State actors or Government Departments. Citizens, too, have a big role to play. In fact, I am now completely persuaded that in many respects and spheres, citizens do far better and go further, than does Government or its Departments.

The more than 154 teachers who have left for Rwanda to help with education in that sister African country are set to do far better in deepening Zimbabwe-Rwanda relations than any one Joint Permanent Commission we may convene. We saw this when Cuba offered us a similar opportunity in the early days of our Independence.

This is what is meant by people-topeople relations, which we recognise and celebrate in Sadc and the African Union. The young boys and girls participating in, and winning the World Moot Competition, raise our flag higher than I can ever do as their President. The impression they create globally, the legacy they leave in global annals, and at such little cost to our Exchequer, beggars belief and is indelible. Our Zimbabwean lady boxer who knocks down an opponent in a world boxing championship advances our Zimbabwean brand more effectively than any one international public relations company we may expensively engage as Government.

The same goes for our cricket team, more so when it prevails as it is doing now. We have to begin to believe in our own people; the unique inputs they can make in advancing our foreign relations.

When we collate all these spheres of citizen activity, each of which positively projects us globally, what we have is an intangible yet veritable national resource we call soft power. We in Government have been slow in realising this intangible national resource; slower even in recognising, harnessing and rewarding it. It must now become part of our overall strategy in engaging and re-engaging other nations and peoples of the world.

A Nation’s soft power is a key resource and capital of that nation; it must be built, promoted, summoned, harnessed and deployed to purposeful outcomes. It, too, must be rewarded and celebrated as it manifests itself in our citizens who personify and actualise it. Our national cultures, our values, our policies, our education, our patents, our inventions, our unique competencies, our cuisine, our song, dance, art, poetry and other creative products: all these go towards this intangible capital we must bank, cherish, support and project worldwide to carry our mission.

Late last week, I hosted a multinational team of Board of Governors from the highly reputed Mutare-based Africa University. Among this group of eminent global citizens were American nationals. Unbeknown to me, they had taken time to study our Education 5.0, a policy by which we have changed our curriculum to make it skills — and competencies-based.

They not only hailed this policy as path-breaking; they actually pleaded with me to expose them to the team which had conceived and developed it! Who would have thought that our country could make such an impression on minds of citizens from a global superpower?

Going forward, we have to inventory our soft power, itself a repertoire of many activities, of many disciplines, and by many players, many of them lying outside the confines of officialdom, and official structures and actors. This intangible resource must be harnessed to forcefully project our Nation globally. Government must invest in this area we have neglected to our own detriment.

I am aware that countries like Australia use their education and educational institutions to project themselves globally. That must be quite easy for us to do or adapt in our circumstances. I, too, am aware that the sister Republic of Cuba uses its medical personnel and expertise in tropical diseases to project itself worldwide. We ourselves are a beneficiary of this Cuban large-heartedness.

Recently, the People’s Republic of China used its advances in developing vaccines against Covid-19 pandemic to save the world at a time of callous vaccine nationalism. That gesture went a long way in stoking goodwill, and in building friendships with and for China. We did the same in our own small way here in Sadc when we shared our small Covid-19 vaccines stocks, and donated critical medical oxygen to sister African countries.

We also have a vast heritage of fauna, principally elephants which continue to multiply beyond our carrying capacity as a country. All this speaks to our good policies on wildlife conservation. Have we considered what mileage our country could get by helping the world repopulate the elephant herd now that CITES does not allow trophy hunting and trophy selling? Are those huge mammals not a key resource in our engaging and re-engaging the world about us, starting with our Africa?

Then we have our unmatched heritage, led by our monuments. Recently, I was in Masvingo to launch a French-funded programme to rehabilitate the iconic walls of our Great Zimbabwe Monuments. How many citizens of Africa, let alone of the world, have visited this world heritage site? What can it do for us as we seek to build and rebuild bridges worldwide? What tours can we facilitate in the spirit of engagement and re-engagement? Why have we sat on such timeless architectural splendour, without turning it into a formidable resource in negotiating with the world?

I want us to demystify the Policy of Engagement and Re-engagement; to de-centre it away from the State, so ordinary citizens find space and can play a part which complements what we do as Government. And what a more opportune time to start rethinking engagement and re-engagement with citizens in mind than this week as Sadc, our Continent and the progressive world take a position against illegal, punitive sanctions we have suffered for more than two decades?

That programme, after all, is citizenled and centred.

Economic Focus with His Excellency President ED Mnangagwa