Building Zimbabwe through industrialisation

I was born in colonial Zimbabwe and grew up in a politically free Zimbabwe where it was fashionable to emulate and be assimilated by other cultures, especially those of the Europeans who had colonised us.

I grew up a highly conflicted person as I saw Zimbabwe struggling to free itself from political oppression and economic bondage from the same societies it emulated.

After Independence, I saw a Zimbabwe full of life and exuberance, with many of its people totally oblivious of its invisible economic bondage.

Having gained political freedom, Zimbabweans are now set on a path towards economic emancipation.

The road to a highly industrialised economy that is driven by Zimbabweans is not an easy one. It demands that we awaken the spirit of mushandirapamwe to rebuild our nation and industrialise our economy for the benefit of all. The Nyika Inovakwa neVene Vayo philosophy is the reaffirmation of the mushandirapamwe spirit that served us well in the Chimurenga wars.

We, the people, were responsible for the deconstruction of an oppressive colonial system and brought about political freedom.

We are today being called upon to take charge as we did in the past and build a prosperous economy in the same spirit of oneness.

I remember as a child living in Zimbabwe – then Rhodesia – during the Second Chimurenga in an unassuming village called Jekwa, the nightly “Dandaros” held in the nearby “Dzete mountain” to which my mother and father were a permanent fixture. My parents were teachers at Jekwa School and they were called upon, like all other members of the community in which we lived, to attend and contribute to the Chimurenga in their own way.

I am confident that the Dandaros were the interface between the people and “Dare re Hondo”.

It was a platform through which the Dare re Hondo communicated and received information and support from the people.

The Dandaros were an integral tool for the struggle and they brought the people together. They were a platform for indoctrinating and marshalling collective energy towards a single purpose. That purpose was to dislodge an oppressive system.

The Dandaros were a tool for collective identification of a shared truth.

They served as a collective visualisation tool of a future where all could live in peace in a non-racial society with equal opportunities.

They also brought our people together in the spirit of “mushandirapamwe”.

At the top of the hierarchy were the institutions with the power and authority of divination, which included masvikiro, Nehanda, Chaminuka and Kaguvi, and the church below these were the chiefs (vanendoro dzeushe), generals and other political leadership, and then the dare.

The modern version of this very important “dare” platform is Parliament and Cabinet.

The levels above them are generally still the same. We need to embrace that which made us succeed and modernise it to fit our current culture and traditions.

The spirit of mushandirapamwe was the binding energy that brought everyone, “the povo”, together.

The collective energy brought about by the spirit of mushandirapamwe manifested needed supplies, moral support, including food and information for the brave young men and women. In the Second Republic, more than 42 years after Independence, we are called upon to go back to basics and call upon the same spirit to build Zimbabwe’s economy.

It is important that we recognise that the “people are the land”.

We must reconfigure the Dare from top to the local meeting places for nation building (Dandaro), into a modern mechanism for articulation of our current situation (common truth) and visualisation of our common future of economic prosperity driven by a non-racial proud and hardworking people.

Zimbabwe needs an internationally renowned third party to facilitate the nation building (dare rekuvaka).

We need to have our modern Zimbabwean intellectuals to take up the challenge of helping our society define and articulate our current reality and collective experience to inform and inspire entrepreneurship and innovation.

We need to enter the global marketplace with innovation in public-sector management, business, products and people inspired by our own cultural heritage.

We don’t have to recreate the wheel to achieve this.

We can start by infusion of knowledge and resources from others who have gone through the same process; for example, Korea, Saudi Arabia, China, Japan, Germany, and many others.

In times of success, we must ensure others have the space to thrive and in times of turmoil and tribulation, we support those in need. It is our way because without other people, we cannot claim our humanity; without others, we lose being human.

This way we are an integral part of a global village to which we make significant contribution.

The First Republic was a time for self-discovery and, in the process, our people have struggled through economic turmoil.

This has left many disillusioned as to the benefits of political freedoms brought about by the Chimurenga struggles.

As we moved from the bush to the office, there are processes the “Dare re Hondo” put in place to enable transition from a mindset of war to that of civilian rule.

There was need for an externally facilitated process of reintegrating the veterans into civilian society and exorcising spirits of war in the people (povo) and setting in its place a mindset of building, including the spirits that embody entrepreneurship, innovation, love and compassion.

We are challenged today as we negotiate with life and collectively seek common ground to undertake a major transitional process that will help us define our current situation, envision the future we want and define our roles in the building that future.

We can borrow from our own past and current practices to help our people shift into the spiritual realms that will enable us to build our country.

In his book “In Search of the African Business Renaissance”, Professor Lovemore Mbigi stated that “African traditions have space for the respect, recognition, celebration and affirmation of creative spirits”.

He identified eight categories of the creative spirits within the African spiritual hierarchy.

He also found it fascinating that a maximum of only three spirits become dominant in individuals and organisations at any given time.

The eight categories of the African spiritual hierarchy from the lowest to the highest are the witch spirit, avenging spirit, war spirit, clan spirit, divination spirit, the wondering spirit, the hunter spirit, and the rainmaker spirit.

It is important to know where on the spectrum we are and identify where we should be to achieve our nation-building efforts.

Political freedom and the road to economic freedom

To survive and conquer as a matter of necessity, the three creative spirits that were dominant during the Chimurenga were the witch spirit (mutakati/umtakati), which is cynical, negative, destructive and causes sorrow, pain; the avenging spirit (ngozi/ ingozi), which is bitter, angry, obsessed with revenge and extremely vindictive; the war spirit (jukwa/amajukwa), which strives for power, competition, conflict, and control.

The war spirit must always be there and subservient to others, such as the hunter and rainmaker spirits in our military and defence institutions.

Currently, these spirits are the dominant ones in our people and institutions.

It can be observed in our exaggerated politics (kudira jucha), the state of our urban areas with no running water and rubbish everywhere and overflowing sewers.

A lot has been done and there are pockets of people and institutions that have succeeded.

We need to focus on those that are doing well and shift the rest of the nation into pro-building mindsets with dominant spirits of creativity, innovation and love.

Our collective experience of pain and suffering drove us to respond with cynicism, destruction, revenge, vindictiveness, and so we fought to shift power and take control.

As we moved from the bush to the office, we needed to transition from having these three spirits being the dominant spirits into higher creative spirits that enable building of the new Nation State.

The struggle, however, had moved from a quest for political freedom to a struggle for economic freedom.

This situation saw our people aspire for higher levels of being.

However, we found ourselves drawn back as a collective because of our experiences brought about by new and unforeseen challenges.

The means of production was not in the hands of the majority, so this led to another struggle for ownership, which culminated in the fast-track land reform, again which ultimately was a shift of power and control of the land to most Zimbabweans.

The struggle brought into play the fourth spirit, the clan creative spirit (mudzimu wemusha, indlozi), as many now looked to the survival of self and their families and clan.

The clan spirit focuses on survival of self, family and clan. To protect themselves and their families from the downturn of the economy, many Zimbabweans moved into the Diaspora in search of jobs and opportunities.

Although this had the negative effect of taking many able-bodied and highly skilled people away from Zimbabwe, it also placed our people in virtually every institution and country on earth, thus creating a web of Zimbabweans (Vene Vayo), whom we can call upon to build our beautiful nation.

Opportunities for Transition and Economic Freedom

With the Second Republic, we find ourselves in transition and an opportunity has arisen to change our being.

We are called upon to change our dominant creative spirits and bring about a new context for nation building for the sake of future generations.

We need to facilitate a process that dispossess our people of bitterness and anger as well as a sense of meaninglessness and aimless wondering.

During this transition, the divination spirit (Sangoma/Prophet) has a major role to play. This spirit has divination powers and the authority to know the truth.

It is important to embrace religion in all its forms: the role of churches, traditional religion and soothsayers because these have influence on our people. We must engage modern-day soothsayers (intellectuals) to analyse and understand our current reality.

It is here where we should be able to question and be skeptical of everything and experiment with new ways of solving our challenges as they emerge.

The spirit of divination must be dominant in centres such as Scientific Industrial Research Development Centre (SIRDC), academic institutions and specialised centres like Kutsaga and Triangle research and many other across the country.

The wondering spirit (shave/ishabi) is a spirit of creativity and innovation.

It takes pride in proactively developing and exploiting its greatest strengths.

Zimbabwe’s greatest strengths is our people; it’s time we let them manifest the future we want. Our research centres must be centres of excellence focused on facilitating new businesses and products for the global marketplace through healthy competition.

The spirit has the audacity to defy the crowd and have the courage to be different.

Our crowd includes our peers at the individual levels, our families, our clan/ community, other nations and international organisations and groupings.

This spirit goes hand-in-glove with the hunter spirit (shave reudzimba/ukujimba).

The hunter spirit attributes include risk-taking, enterprise, opportunity seizing, action and performance.

According to Professor Lovemore Mbigi, the hunter spirit is entrepreneurial, restless and recognises opportunities where others see none.

It thrives on achievement and opportunity creation.

We must have the courage to swim against the norm yet appreciate our place and the role we play as part of a global community of nations. This spirit must be dominant in our public sector enterprise as well as the private sector.

The private sector led by institutions such as the Zimbabwe Investment and Development Agency (ZIDA).

Coupled with the hunter spirit, our leadership and public servants must have high morals, seek truth, dignity and welfare for the nation.

The rainmaker spirit is a spirit of morality, truth, dignity and welfare for all, including our neighbours.

This spirit is the Gombwa or Ihosana spirit, which is God’s representative on earth. The spiritual leadership as well as the chiefs/presidium (vanendoro) of the nation must therefore be dominated by the rainmaker spirit.

Mobilisation of the people to effective national transformation

There is need to build a “Dare Rekuvaka” and operationalise it through already existing institutions and where a need arises, create new ones organically in response to the needs at the time. Development is a knowledge-management process.

Knowledge management is discursive “Nyika Vanhu, Musha Matare”.

People and the discursive process are critical in ensuring national development.

We begin with the engagement of several facilitators, both internal and external, to walk our people on a path to discovery of our current situation and the dominant spirits.

They will also help identify the dominant spirits in our institutions and development partners and facilitate the articulation of a shared vision of the future we want informed by our intellectuals (modern day soothsayers).

Once we have agreed on our current situation and share a common truth and a shared vision of the future, we agree on the spirits that must dominate our people, institutions and development partners to achieve our intended goals.

“Dare rekuvaka Nyika” will be a web/ network of organisations and people that span the whole nation and beyond, thus enabling every Zimbabwean to participate, be they in Zimbabwe or outside the country.

Whilst this is going on, an asset-mapping exercise must be undertaken to categorise, value and monitor the tangible and intangible public and private assets.

According to the Institute for State Effectiveness (ISE), the major outcome of the exercise will be an asset registry which includes a map and asset balance sheet.

The balance sheet will measure revenue and expenditure as well as liabilities such as environmental damage and the constraints to actualisation of the asset.

The asset map enables Zimbabwe to shift mindsets of the people and institutions from the passive focus on needs and gaps to a proactive entrepreneurial spirit of assets and the capability.

There are institutions in place to enable the “Dare rekuvaka” through the “mushandirapamwe” spirit to function and these include: SIRDC as the anchor and driver as platform for intellectuals to interrogate everything and organise information for action; Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) for incubation of strategic business enterprises; ZIDA for development and supporting of an environment that attracts investments and creation of national programmes that surface high growth business from idea to Initial Public Offering (IPO); Universities and colleges, imagine tailor-made campuses across the country that bring together all public universities under a banner caller “The Universities@”; and banks that go beyond traditional banking into growing the future markets by focusing on funding of experimental businesses (startups)

We must repurpose and reconfigure our institutions to work toward a shared vision of the future and it all begins with the people and the dominant spirits within the people and the institutions through which they will work to realise our shared goals of prosperity.

◆ Bio for Wilson Magaya-Magaya, is a development consultant with a passion for innovative delivery of socio-economic interventions to build African economies. He has been a development consultant and educator for over 20 years. During that time, he has worked on development programs that spanned over 7 countries in the Southern Africa Region.