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Cont Mhlanga
OUR comrades have succeeded in killing the fisheries industry of the great Kariba Dam that stretches some 280KM on the northern border of Zimbabwe driving thousands of families along the Zambezi Valley into poverty. We have three Honourable Ministers that can move in and fix the rot with much ease as these fisheries do fall within their jurisdiction depending on how one wants to look at it. These are Hon Minister Francis Nhema, Hon Minister Sithembiso Nyoni, and Hon Minister Saviour Kasukuwere. I don’t care who does it, but any of these ministers can go down to Kariba Dam and fix the country’s fishing industry that is fast being destroyed by our own black brothers. The only question we should all ask is why are they sitting in Harare and not going down to the waters to save the nation’s fishing industry!?
I have always wondered why our so-called modern educated society finds it as justice to put someone away to serve time in jail on tax payer’s money when they murder just one person, but find it normal when a person acquires a high performing company and murders it, driving thousands of lives particularly children and women to alarming proportions of poverty and suffering. This kind of person is not viewed by this same society as a criminal and is left free to wander in bars masquerading as a socialite, attend business breakfast meetings, dine with the top class of our society and be addressed as boss or even businessperson. My foot!
During the years of our traditional society, if a person killed another person, they would be killed too. If a person kills a national asset that took care of people’s lives, in return the person should be killed or banished from the nation because they would have proved to all beyond any doubt that they are an idiot who is not useful in nation building. Simple and fair. This so-called educated modern society called our traditional society’s form of justice primitive! Is it not worse than primitive to drive thousands of children and women into poverty doomed to suffer for the rest of their lives while one enjoys a high life with their own families in the city? Akelingivumele ngibuze.
Thousands of children at Chalala Primary and Secondary schools situated at the once booming Chalala Village on the beautiful valley and banks of the magnificent Kariba Dam are living an unacceptable life filled with poverty and misery with a future that has been totally destroyed by our own brothers and sisters, our own comrades who pretend to be more patriotic than everyone else in Zimbabwe who all acquired the country’s top performing fishing companies only to destroy them shutting them down, some within months, driving hundreds of workers out of work and thousands of children and women to poverty. The village is today a ghost site of poverty. By the way these children are expected to write the same national examinations as those children of the elite who go to the best schools in the country in cities and compete with them in life for opportunities provided by this dream called Zim-Asset. Can the authors of this national number one hit song Zim-Asset tell me how this is possible? Akelingivumele ngibuze.
Let me pick this true story of this one fishery company in Chalala to help you the reader understand how self-destructive we have become as Zimbabweans and what we are playing with when we let a natural resource-driven industry die before us as we sit in Harare, talk and talk while we do nothing about it.
A young white boy from Harare went to Chalala Village in 1979 and started a fishery company with a single small fishing boat and one employee. He grew his company to six fishing boats and 20 employees in three years when he sold the company to two young white boys, one my home boy from the city of Bulawayo and the other from Harare in 1981. This is the difference I want you to keep in mind; (the majority of white Zimbabwean boys start companies and grow them while the majority of black Zimbabwean boys seem to be good at taking over companies and killing them.)
The two new white boy owners did not only grow the company that they acquired and taken over to 12 fishing boats and 40 employees by 2003 but my Bulawayo home boy had used the money from the fisheries company to open a factory in Bulawayo employing 400 people. So did his partner in Harare who also started a factory that employed some 250 people!!
Unfortunately one of the boys died in 2003 and the other got depressed and sold the company to three other white boys all from Harare. Despite the fact that the decade beginning year 2000 became increasingly insecure for white Zimbabweans, the three white boys grew the company they had taken over from a single branch to two branches increasing employment in Chalala to 80 people. As the economy got worse and the security of their businesses became increasingly unguaranteed they used the money from the fisheries to build a top hotel in South Africa that they opened in time for the 2010 World Cup while we were busy marvelling at the Brazilian soccer team at the National Sports Stadium! The white boys left the country to do business in South Africa.
Enter our own black comrade who takes over the two top performing fishery companies in Chalala that had been built by white boys of his age for over 32 years. Within a single year production fell by 80 percent and by 2012 the companies closed down sending more than 80 employees some who had been with the company since 1979 home and their families into poverty.
The factory in Bulawayo closed down sending close to 400 people and their families into perpetual poverty. The same fate befell the Harare factory! You don’t need a Sangoma to tell you how many other downstream industry jobs were lost across the country due to the killing of these two fishery companies.
I stood next to the waters of the lake and witnessed over 25 fishing boats rotting in water with some already under the waters of the lake. Company assets are gathering dust and vandalism of property is taking its toll. The new owners of the companies are nowhere to be seen near the lake. They are said to be in Harare and Bulawayo and in other cities most likely dealing in other businesses that have nothing to do with the fishing industry while the economy through their underperforming or closed fisheries vanishes into thin air. It’s a sorry sight and one wonders why our Hon Ministers let this situation remain uncorrected. It is eating the fisheries industry.
This company story illustrates how our own comrades are killing the people’s economy and blaming everything and everyone they can think of except themselves. This is how hundreds of fishery companies in Kariba have been killed after being taken over by our black brothers and sisters, sentencing thousands of families to a life of poverty.
By year 2000 Chalala Village alone had 13 fishing companies employing about 600 people. Today there is only one company and the rest have been killed by our own black boys and those that are still fishing are now not even worth to be called companies. They are just as good as fish poachers!
As you read this, the fishing camps of Chibirobiro, Makhenzi and Makuyu and many others along the lake are under threat to be killed and this time by Hon Minister Kasukuwere’s National Parks as they open space for wildlife at the expense of creating employment for young people along the Zambezi Valley. When fisheries die young people are driven out of employment and are left with no option to survive. This drives them to poaching of game, cattle rustling and peddling of drugs across the lake. We sit in our ivory towers in Harare and Bulawayo and respond by training more rangers and the police to shoot them! This is sad for Zimbabwe.
Natural resources-driven industries drive the existence of the manufacturing sector of any country ours included. Other countries have to bring such natural resources from far away countries to support their manufacturing industries. By letting our own comrades kill our local industries we are in fact killing the manufacturing industries of our country and driving young people to a jobless life of misery. With such a carefree attitude on starting and growing strategic companies how do we expect to turn around the economy and grow a national economy that can compete globally? Akelingivumele ngibuze. Lake Kariba is a national asset of great importance for the future of this country and the three Hon Ministers that I mentioned above should urgently give themselves time to scan the whole of the fisheries industry on these waters and fix the decline of the industry.
Like it or not it is a fact that a majority of our black people lack a business culture, corporate pride and soft skills to grow a little nothing activity into a great company that changes lives of many people. This is the only reason why a majority of them are comfortable running a small business from a street pavement and find it normal to return to the same street spot or market stand for many years.
This situation calls for our Hon Ministers to be creative and innovative on dealing with the nation’s informal economy, economic empowerment and natural resources management and exploitation initiatives. The current approach that is simply copied from other countries or lifted from some foreign business text books, or worse still delivered in some seminar paper at some posh hotel is not suitable for the nature of the Zimbabwean people and society. Ministers do something! It is the only reason why people voted for you and the President appointed you Ministers; to do things! The ball remains in your court.
Online Reporter