Diaspora engagement going amiss

Nick Mangwana View from the Diaspora

There have been some efforts by the Government of Zimbabwe (GoZ) to engage with its Diaspora population. In this piece Diaspora Engagement is defined as a way in which government sets institutions and instruments to recognise, magnify and harness the value of its populations in the Diasporain order to bring development beyond consumptive remittances. Engagement by nature involves occupying the attention of someone and holding it either through dialogue or a two-way conversation on something of mutual interest.

So the GoZ has set up an Institutional Framework to harness Diaspora Value for the sake of the home country. This is through the Ministry of Macro-Economic Planning and Investment Promotion. A Diaspora Policy was drafted and approved by Cabinet. All these are noble deeds spoken to by good intentions. But as they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. This surely is a road to failure for because beyond the noble intentions there is bureaucratic bungling which if not remedied quickly will only end in a total disaster.

To mobilise the Diaspora as developmental partners for the home country, one had to understand them. They are by no means a homogeneous group. The Diaspora in South Africa is completely different from that in the United Kingdom and that of the UK has a different mindset to the one in China or Canada. But in this policy all these disparate groups are treated as uniform. That may be convenient, but it is equally lazy.

The next pitfall is the definition of the Diaspora Value only in terms of what they can remit to the home country. Of course the warehousing of the bureaucratic institution in the Ministry of Macro-Economic Planning has gone a long way to indicate that the GoZ is now looking beyond remittances, but also investment. But again the problem here is that the Diaspora is getting the message that this is all about their money. But they believe that their value to their country is and should be beyond their money. The moment one talks of also looking at the political interests among others, automatically the Diaspora is being viewed through a prism of hostility or as mischief makers because in their politics, they demand accountability.

This is an opportunity being missed. When one is far away from home and the current link is mainly spiritual and emotional then whenever resources move in the other direction the only other thing left will be accountability. The Diasporans don’t only demand accountability from their government. They demand accountability from their families and anyone with who they interact with at resource level. The attitude that the Diaspora are mischief makers beyond the reach of the law is wrong, but understandable.

After all Evan Mawarire and Stan Zvorwadza are both former UK Diasporans. For the sake of space this piece will not delve much into their handwork. But against these two are multitudes who have been unsuccessfully offering their technical expertise as a resource pool to help share ideas of recovery with Zimbabwe. Some are employed in the London’s Square Mile. Some even work for the Chancellor of the British Exchequer as technocrats. Some work on Wall Street. While their experience might bear little to Zimbabwe’s social context some of their perspective is quite transferable.

We are yet to see these people being engaged. How about those hundreds of thousands who are the bedrock of health systems across the globe, why are they not being engaged in order to help modernise Zimbabwe’s near moribund health delivery system? The UK’s National Health Service (NHS) counts Zimbabweans as some of its top technocrats. They still love their country. Let us look beyond their money. Their brains, experience and exposure is an immeasurable intellectual capital.

But there this narrow view of the Diaspora as a source of Financial Capital only to the exclusion of human, Intellectual, social as well as an entrepreneurial resource which is quite unfortunate. It is clear that the political side of the Diaspora makes the establishment uncomfortable. But this apprehension is only allayed by proper engagement and not the tokenism we see which is setting the process up to fail.

Initiatives should be Diaspora initiated, Zimbabwe facilitated and Diaspora driven. Granted there have been very good initiatives like 3 percent Remittances Incentive Scheme by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ). That is good thinking, but it is not getting much purchase because of the top down approach deployed. One hopes everyone looks beyond the flawed approach and rally behind it.

So one says the RBZ got it right on this one. But who is getting it wrong?

The self-serving type in The Ministry of Macro-Economic Planning. This is the type who sent 10 people to the UK last month to engage with eight people. We need to talk a bit more about this waste of scarce resources because it is this type that undermine Government programmes. We call these the Sanctions from within.

The Diasporans have their networks which span from political organisations, Zimbabwean churches, Zimbabwean professional organisations such as Engineers, Lawyers, Nurses and Doctors. None of these were ever engaged. There are lot of Zimbabweans that work within what is known as the Square Mile in the City of London. They were not involved too. In which world does it make sense to fly 10 people to the UK put them in good hotels and pay them generous per diems so that they can address eight people.

That is the number they saw in the UK on the September 17, 2016 at the University of East London. There were more presenters than the audience. In fact, if one considers that five members of the audience were self appointed executives of this shadowy organisation then in essence there was a real audience of three people. Surely these bureaucrats have held family dinners with better attendances in their homes! People should not turn noble Government programmes into such a joke. And these road shows have now gone to Canada and South Africa where one hoped things would have been different, but the news is that there is no difference.

If anyone wants to learn lessons from this, then people should know that this engagement process should involve the Diaspora from the planning stage. And after the UK disaster people should have stopped and taken stock and reflect on what went wrong. But because picking per diems was probably more important than having interventions that bring positive outcomes to the country, this lot continued on their futile crusade knowing very well that it will produce nothing.

One is convinced that someone is telling lies to their principals for surely the next trip would not have been sanctioned. We want transparency. Diaspora engagement should be an all stakeholder inclusive process and not this type which reeks of nepotism and cronyism amongst other ills.

The last thing Zimbabwe needs is for the very corruption the whole nation is lamenting over to be brought into the Diaspora Engagement. A road show should also be just that. Not to fly 10 people very possibly business class, accommodate them four to five star, give them generous per diems and they address one meeting with an audience of eight. Why did they not visit other cities and arrange other meetings?

Why did they not even go to churches and ask to have a moment to make a presentation? Do they have the success for this programme at heart? Only they can answer these questions. And they should be made to. Just in case the reader thinks there is artistic licence being employed in these figures. No. They addressed a literal and numerical eight people. And where is the Diaspora Policy? It is not online. It is not at embassies? The gang of 10 is not even leaving copies when they address their friends. This columnist had to get one through back channels. So if the Diaspora does not have its own policy, is someone serious about this?

The Diaspora would be happy to work with the Government. But let us not work in the dark. Besides the obvious governance issues what does the Diaspora expect from its Government? The starting point is Social Statistics.

The Government should consider commissioning a study of the Diaspora by possibly engaging the academics and technocrats in the Diaspora to do it. The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) is a possible funding partner. The starting point is to produce very simple answers to social statistics like, how many Zimbabweans are where? What are they doing there? This means a mechanism for registering Zimbabweans is needed. Without demographics any policy informs nothing and is informed by nothing and therefore dead from the beginning.

If the whole Diaspora Engagement is going to work it should be stakeholder inclusive right from the start. It should be transparent and there should be an intellectual honesty from all parties. This process should be mutually beneficial. Only this way can sustainable linkages be forged for the benefit of the country. There should be no marginalisation and alienation of any patriotic groups of Zimbabweans.

That is what engagement is about. It is the participation of the wider citizenry in Government programmes and the listening of the Government to the input of the said citizenry. Let us put our best foot forward. That is an educated human capital dispersed all over the world with all the skills the nation needs.