1980: Laying the ground for growth

Lovemore Chikova Development Dialogue
When Zimbabwe attained independence on April 18, 1980, the new Government led by Prime Minister Robert Mugabe faced a daunting task to kick-start an economy that incorporated the majority.

After more than a decade of a liberation war waged primarily on the basis of the discrimination instituted by the white minority regime, the country was set for a new trajectory in 1980.

The white regime was not in a hurry to bring development to areas where the locals, who were the majority, lived.

As a result, this was a country in which the majority lived in poverty, while a few enjoyed the fruits of skewed development, especially in cities and towns.

At that time, there was a clear line in Zimbabwe dividing the opulent white minority from the black majority, who lived in squalor.

Apart from that, when the new Government came in, it was confronted with a devastating destruction on sources of livelihood that had been inflicted by the war.

After the first five years of independence, the Zanu PF Department of the Commissariat and Culture wrote a book titled “Rebuilding Zimbabwe: Achievements, Problems and Prospects”, which captured the journey travelled in trying to bring economic development and social justice to the country in the early years.

The book clearly indicates how bad the situation was when the new government came into power, and the mammoth task to correct the situation.

The party recorded that more than 1,4 million people had been reduced to beggars and squatters in their own country and in neighbouring countries.

More than 1 830 boreholes and 425 dams and weirs had been severely damaged, with 1 600 dip tanks out of a total of 1 800 destroyed or damaged.

At least 2 000 out of a total of 2 500 primary schools and 180 out of 240 clinics in the rural areas were also severely damaged, with others completely destroyed.

In agriculture, 56 out of 74 small-scale irrigation schemes in the communal areas had been destroyed or damaged as a result of the liberation war.

Many rural businessmen who were accused of using their wealth to support the liberation war fighters had their business infrastructure destroyed or damaged.

This uncalled for approach by the white settlers led to 4 000 such small businesses in the rural areas out of 13 000 being completely destroyed to severely damaged.

The discrimination by the white minority regime resulted in locals being denied access to education and health facilities, a situation worsened by the destruction of schools and clinics during the war.

In fact, the disparities cut across all sectors, and always tilted in favour of the white minority.

Apart from the destruction of infrastructure, a number of able-bodied men and women were killed during the war, leaving many families without potential breadwinners.

The problems were numerous and needed developmental and economic policies that could change the status quo and bring the marginalised blacks into the mainstream economy.

They needed policies that could act as a catalyst to quickly bridge the gap, and ensure equitable benefits from the economy.

As the country marks 40 years of independence next month, it is important to have a look at what the new Government did in the early years of freedom to correct colonial imbalances.

Growth with Equity

As pointed out above, the developmental trajectory in Zimbabwe before independence was biased towards urban areas and farms where the white minority lived.

Rural areas remained poor, marginalised and without any tangible developmental projects being undertaken to uplift the lives of the people.

The new Government’s first economic developmental programme in 1981 was called “Growth with Equity”.

The major thrust was to bring social infrastructure to rural areas where the majority lived, with the purpose of bringing the once marginalised areas in line with the new developmental trajectory.

Growth and Equity was necessary as it touched on areas like education, health, agriculture, employment and several developmental projects.

Resources had to be distributed equally so that all people could have access to education, health facilities, employment and land.

It was clear at that time that the new Government’s choices were limited because of the biased developmental stance that was being pursued by the white minority government for nearly a century.

The only choice was to bring equity, not only as a necessity, but also as a way of fulfilling the major promises of the liberation war.

According to the Growth and Equity document, the policy was meant to “achieve a sustained high rate of economic growth and speedy development in order to raise incomes and standards of living of all our people and expand productive employment of rural peasants and urban workers, especially the former.”

The policy formed the basis of other empowerment programmes like land reform, education-for-all and health-for-all.

Access to land was one of the major reasons why Zimbabweans took up arms against the Ian Smith regime, and correction of the imbalance in ownership was widely viewed as social justice.

Although land redistribution under Growth and Equity was done through the willing-seller, willing buyer concept, which was slow, it laid the foundation for future land reform policies that eventually culminated in locals having a bigger say in land ownership.

Education for All

To develop the new country, there was need to have an educated majority who would play a major role in moving the economy forward.

The new Government was quite aware that the skilled manpower that was concentrated in the white minority would soon become scarce as they migrated back to their ancestral lands.

And, indeed, it happened that a number of whites were not impressed by losing their dominance, and could not take the advent of independence lightly, and thus decided to leave the country.

Apart from the need for an educated labour force to replace those leaving, there was a pressing need to ensure that locals had access education as a human right.

Education for all was meant to correct the racist system which which ensured very few blacks went beyond primary school.

The free education policy adopted by the new Government was meant to be one of the pillars forming the basis of development in Zimbabwe.

The Zanu PF Election Manifesto of 1980 was very clear on what the new education system designed to achieve.

According to the manifesto, education for all would:

“(a) abolish racial education and utilise the education system to develop in the younger generation a non-racial attitude and a common loyalty to the State;

(b) establish a system of free and compulsory primary and secondary education;

(d) orient the education system to national goals;

(e) give every adult who had no or little educational opportunity the right to literacy and adult education;

(f) make education play an important role in transforming society; and

(g) place education in the category of basic human rights and strive to ensure that every child had an educational opportunity to develop his mental, physical and emotional faculties.

Health for All

Access to health had been problematic for the locals before independence, and it was incumbent upon the new administration to ensure that there was equity in access to health.

A lot of rebuilding needed to be done in rural areas to restore health facilities that had been destroyed by the war.

This means Health for All was mainly about providing health facilities and ensuring that people had access to them for free.

The advantage of a healthy population cannot be overemphasised when it comes to pushing the developmental agenda of any country.

Health service centres were concentrated in urban areas, despite the fact that nearly 80 percent of the population at the time lived in the rural areas.

This meant that most resources for health during the colonial era were being directed towards urban areas to service just a minority of the population.

The remedy initiated by the new Government at independence was to increase the number of health service centres in rural areas, which drastically improved access to health by the rural folk.

Lessons

Although there were many initiatives adopted by the new Government at independence, the above-mentioned policies played a critical role in improving social and economic conditions that catapulted the once marginalised majority into the mainstream economy.

This laid the foundation for an economic development programme led by the locals, in which everyone participated on an equal basis.

It was clear that the Government at independence had a number of priority areas which were centred on consolidating State power and political gains to ensure the creation of conditions necessary for peace and national unity.

Without peace and unity, there could have been no development to talk about during these early years, given the background of the conflict that led to the liberation war.

The Government was also concerned with laying down the backbone for political, economic and social development that would transform the country.

The other major concern was to institute a resettlement programme that would take care of the disgruntlement over lack of access to land and the displacement of thousands of families during the liberation war.

The reconstruction programme, which cost millions, and the rehabilitation of infrastructure were important in determining the new direction the country was determined to follow after attaining Uhuru.