Build conducive socio-economic environment for employment generation to stem migration

The deportees were obviously those who either did not take advantage of the South African government’s Home Affairs ministry’s programme to regularise their stay or presence in South Africa, or those who could not satisfy that country’s legal residential documentation requirements.
South Africa has been the destination of literally hundreds of thousands of employment-seeking Southern Africans since the discovery of gold and diamonds in that land in the late 19th century.

People walked from as far as Nyasaland (now Malawi), Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia), and Tanganyika (now Tanzania) across Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) to either the Kimberley diamond fields or the gold mines on the Reef to seek employment.
Many, including some Zimbabweans, perished on their way either in the jaws of man-eating lions in the Bisoli area of Botswana (then called Bechuanaland Protectorate) or in those of ravenous crocodiles in the Limpopo and other crocodile infested rivers as they trundled southwards to the El Dorado of their dreams.

In addition to these countries, relatively remote from South Africa, neighbouring lands such as Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Swaziland, Botswana, Lesotho and what was called South West Africa (now Namibia) contributed in no small way to South Africa’s migrant workers’ population.
The attainment of independence of these countries in the past four or so decades has changed the region’s socio-economic complexion. Political power and economic control are by and large in the hands of black people except for South Africa where the white people are still exercising a modicum of political representativeness and but a large control of the economy.

With the collapse of the Somali state and the civil strife in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the region is currently experiencing an exodus of displaced people.
The destination of many of those people is South Africa, so is it for thousands of Zimbabweans many of whom across the Limpopo River unlawfully to seek employment on South African farms, mines, in homes, schools, hospitals, factories, hotels, transport companies, safaris or wherever they can be taken.
While it is certainly true that some Zimbabweans went to South Africa to seek political refuge, it is also patently true that most went down south in search of jobs. We need to emphasise the fact that while the

Zimbabwean population is increasing, the country’s economy is certainly not growing.
The country’s educational institutions, churning out literally hundreds of thousands Ordinary level certificate holders yearly, a few of these are not able to proceed further with their studies for one reason or another.
They turn to the world of commerce and industry for employment but draw a blank. Many of them venture across the Limpopo hoping against hope to get something to do as a source of livelihood. Meanwhile, the South Africans themselves are facing precisely a similar socio-economic situation.

Gone are the days of foreign labour recruitment by South African mine industrial labour agencies such as the Witwatersrand Native Labour Association (Wenela).
At its height, that organisation used to recruit mine labourers from as far afield as Tanganyika, Malawi, Zambia and, of course, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Namibia and Swaziland.
With the attainment of independence, each of those countries except Lesotho and Swaziland, decided to have little social or economic ties with apartheid South Africa.
When a democratisation dispensation was introduced to South Africa in 1994, the new administration realised the need to meet the expectations of the people of South Africa. One of these expectations is employment.

The deportation is clearly a national programme meant to reduce competition for the few employment opportunities available in South Africa.
Since there is an acute shortage of jobs virtually all over the world, it is most important that the Zimbabwean government designs projects that can absorb large numbers of people.
Most of the projects, which must necessarily be labour rather than capital intensive, should be rural-based. Road and dam construction comes to mind as one type of government project that can create jobs for a quite large numbers of people.

In addition to government projects, it is advisable for the Government to encourage labour-creating investment by both indigenous as well as foreign commercial entrepreneurs and industrialists.
It is this writer’s opinion that an attractive investment policy is one that exempts the entrepreneur or industrial undertaker from paying tax for a given period provided his or her enterprise employs not less than, say, 100 Zimbabweans.

Another attractive investment policy could encourage the investor to go 50/50 with the State provided the enterprise employs not less than a government-stipulated number of Zimbabweans.
The emphasis ought to be on the State rather than individual Zimbabweans owning shares in most, if not all, medium and large enterprises in the mining, the farming and the service sectors.
It does not make any sense in any way whatsoever to empower economically a few hundred or thousand people while the vast majority, literally millions of people are groaning under grinding poverty.

Poverty eradication should target the silent majority rather than the manipulative local few. It is indeed the members of the silent majority who get deported form wherever most of the time.
We are living in an era in which it is grossly absurd to blame outsiders but ourselves for our economic ills, employment being one of them and uncontrolled population increase is another.
It is, for instance, our responsibility to identify the actual causes of so many Zimbabweans living in the Diaspora. For how long will they remain dispersed? And for how long will the trend go on?

The diaspora phenomenon is not a solely Zimbabwean experience. Many West Africans live illegally in various European countries. Thousands of Eritreans, Sudanese (including Southerners) and Somalis get deported from Saudi Arabia and Israel quite often.
The cause of this unfortunate situation is that many African states tend to adopt economic policies that are hostile to employment-generating investments.

The African continent is most probably the richest in the world in terms of minerals. It has vast agricultural potential.
What it does not have are efficient management personnel, adequate capital, reliable markets, modern industrial technology, reliable communications infrastructure and effective marketing strategies. We are all aware that it is futile to own a whole hill rich in iron deposits if the owner cannot extract the ore and turn it into usable, marketable products.

We also know how frustrating it is to grow agricultural products such as cotton and be unable to ferry it to the market. By the word market in this context we mean people with money, and a wish and authority to spend it on an available good or service.
African political leadership needs must realise and accept the fact that state acquisition of means of production is by far a better form of economic indigenisation than private ownership.

It is better because its exploitation of land and other means of production benefits the maximum number of people most of the time whereas private acquisition of means of production benefits a minimum number of people all the time.

In modern progressive governance, states build conducive socio-economic environment for employment generation, as well as create employment in partnership with formal economic investors. We in Zimbabwe can learn a lesson or two from one or two Nordic countries.