adminThe schemes are aimed at ensuring that communities benefit from resources found in their localities.
This is a milestone and countrywide initiative aimed at spearheading development and empowering mostly rural communities which will get a 10 percent stake in all businesses exploiting natural resources in a particular area in the country.
Similar schemes have already been launched in Mashonaland West and the Midlands provinces. In Mashonaland West, Zimbabwe Platinum Mines (Zimplats) was the first to come on board when the scheme was inaugurated, ceding a 10 percent stake to communities in which the giant platinum mine operates.
In the Midlands, Unki Mine in Shurugwi and Mimosa Mine in Zvishavane also embraced the programme and ceded 10 percent stakes to local communities.
What is interesting about the Matabeleland South initiative is that 19 companies are involved and we want to believe that this will translate into more communities in the province benefiting.
We also want to believe mining companies and other big businesses operating in Matabeleland South province are ready to embrace this programme aimed at not only alleviating poverty within the communities that they operate in, but also ensuring harmony and peaceful co-existence with the local people.
This is because there is no way a company can operate successfully in an area without ploughing back to the communities that it operates in. In other words, no sane business would want to operate in a sea of poverty as it has been proven elsewhere that doing so would be a recipe for conflict.
We are well aware that the indigenisation and economic empowerment programme has been vilified left right and centre in the foreign media and by some sceptics among us.
Even those leading big corporates have been quoted in the media lampooning the programme. They have sought to portray it as an affront to investors, yet most countries throughout the world, even in the so-called First World, have laws aimed at ensuring that the local people are empowered economically.
In fact, in other countries there are certain business sectors which are no-go areas for foreigners yet in Zimbabwe foreigners are allowed to even compete with the smallest retailer in the townships.
As President Mugabe has said, this programme is here to stay and it would be foolhardy for companies to take pot shots at it. We need not remind them of the fate of former white commercial farmers who resisted the land reform programme.
It is in the interests of those companies targeted to fully participate as that will only result in a win-win situation for everyone. This programme should not be seen as one-sided.
Communities and workers that benefit from the share-ownership scheme become part and parcel of those companies and are therefore compelled to safeguard those firms and ensure they operate profitably.
The country is endowed with more than 60 known minerals, including precious ones like gold and diamonds, but its people remain among the poorest in the world. Zimbabweans are crying out for a share of the resources that are found in their land.
Over the past 32 years, they watched in awe as these resources were carted away to foreign lands to develop and improve the standards of living of foreigners while they lived in abject poverty, surviving on less than $1 a day.
In fact, programmes like the land reform and indigenisation should have been implemented long back were it not for the intransigence of those who owned the means of production then who were under a false illusion that the indigenous people of this country were content with the political independence without economic independence.
But that era of indigenous Zimbabweans being hewers of wood and drawers of water is long gone.
Having said that we are, however, pleased to note that in Matabeleland South province, 18 gold mining companies and a cement company have affirmed their participation in the Community Share Ownership scheme.
The challenge to the local communities that are benefiting from these schemes is to ensure that the funds set aside under the scheme are used to develop their respective areas.
These schemes must be superintended by people of integrity who will safeguard them against abuse. There will be those bent on tarnishing the name of the schemes for their own selfish interests and we say such people must be sniffed out and dealt with accordingly.
Communities must enjoy the benefit of sitting on mineral resources found in their areas while companies enjoy working in a harmonious environment where everyone wants them to prosper for the benefit of the community.
Online Reporter