Let’s empower the majority

their way of industry, in a sustainable and enriching manner.
As such, economic empowerment was to play a vital role in the lives of ordinary citizens. Human and economic development was to be based on political, economic, social and constitutional empowering systems that were built to accommodate the full participation of ordinary citizens and communities across the length and breadth of the land.
According to Consultancy Africa Intelligence, the essence of economic empowerment lies in spreading the benefits of economic growth to the majority, making an economic growth that is premised on the inclusion of ordinary citizens sustainable.
The majority of these previously disadvantaged groups do not comprise people interested in owning shares in big mining companies, but consist of those youths mainly focused on getting good jobs. (Employment equity), improving their skills (skills development), starting and running their own businesses (preferential procurement and enterprise development) and simply living a better life.
In this way, economic empowerment is to be concerned about benefits of economic transformation and empowering the previously disadvantaged ordinary people by means of interventions beyond just selling shares.
Based on the principle of indigenisation, economic empowerment must be central in developing the instruments and a corridor in which ordinary youths are to gain real prospects of accessing the mainstream economy.
Indigenisation must be implemented going forward, within a framework of consistency, appropriate flexibility is required to respond to different economic and enterprise conditions and the ability to measure the progress on implementation. With a consistent approach, it is important that when there is a transfer to black ownership, inventive ways of financing youth empowerment deals be easily accessible to support effective empowerment transactions.
A good example is the current Old Mutual and CABS Youth Fund facility that was facilitated by the Ministry of Youth Development indigenisation and Empowerment. A research conducted shows us that currently only 1,7 percent of the economy is owned by the indigenous people, 43 percent is in the State sector leaving 94 percent in the private, mainly transnational sector.
Counting the State sector in, the indigenous, who constitute the overwhelming majority of the population; hold a mere 6 percent stake of the economy. Privatisation of state enterprises will further reduce this share even if the indigenous were to acquire most of the shares which, however, they cannot do because of the limited resources they command and the need to accommodate technical (usually foreign) partners.
This clearly shows that in our endeavour to redress the imbalances of the colonial era we must pay special attention and be critical to see to it that the ordinary youths who were intended to benefit from indigenisation actually do benefit.
If we miss it, the implementation of this daring process of indigenisation will be reduced to merely a transfer of unfair advantage from former white colonialists to the few influential and affluent blacks.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu once asked a critical question which is very necessary for all the responsible authorities on indigenisation to answer, “What is black empowerment when it seems to benefit not the vast majority but an elite that tends to be recycled?” It is my belief that here in Zimbabwe we can do things right.
Ways can be devised for the implementation of a real broad based empowerment to ordinary youths in communities. What is only needed is the willpower (the want to), the mechanisms of how to go about it are available. Indigenisation for Zimbabwe is not out rightly experimental.
Vast literature and lessons can be gleaned from countries like South Africa, Malaysia, China, India and Sri Lanka. Malaysia’s experience with its New Economy Policy (NEP) is the most well-known example and it highlights how to implement an economic empowerment programme aimed at ensuring that economic wealth is broad based.
With South Africa a generic scorecard is used to measure a company’s empowerment progress in terms of direct empowerment through ownership and control of enterprises and assets, management at senior level, human resource development and employment equity and indirect empowerment through preferential procurement, enterprise development and corporate social investment.
In terms of our own progress on indigenisation in relation to youth empowerment, though moving in the right direction and most young people now developing an innovative entrepreneurial culture, I believe we are still coming short and there is real need to ensure that as the process progresses something is done to make certain that ordinary young people are not neglected and left behind.
This is key to improve the current scenario were the majority of the youths are unemployed and still living below the poverty datum line.

l Innocent Katsande is the Communications Officer for Zimbabwe Youth Council.