Andrew
Sunday Mail Reporter
Ordinary Zimbabweans can effectively lead and drive the engagement and re-engagement drive through their skills, competencies and accomplishments that can help project the country’s influence and alluring culture, values and heritage, President Mnangagwa has said.
Writing in his weekly column for The Sunday Mail this week, the President said Zimbabwean citizens were the country’s foremost resource of projecting its image to the outside world.
Athletes and students who have recently been achieving notable victories and winning international accolades had raised the country’s flag high, thereby exalting the country’s image, he said.
“The young boys and girls participating in, and winning the World Moot Competition, raise our flag higher than I can ever do as their President.
“The impression they create globally, the legacy they leave in global annals, and at such little cost to our Exchequer, beggars belief and is indelible,” said President Mnangagwa.
“Our Zimbabwean lady boxer who knocks down an opponent in a world boxing championship advances our Zimbabwean brand more effectively than any one international public relations company we may expensively engage as Government.
“The same goes for our cricket team, more so when it prevails as it is doing now.
“We have to begin to believe in our own people; the unique inputs they can make in advancing our foreign relations.”
It was important, the President said, to
incorporate citizens in the engagement and re-engagement process, as people-to-people relations were also quite effective.
“When we collate all these spheres of citizen activity, each of which positively projects us globally, what we have is an intangible yet veritable national resource we call soft power,” he added.
“We in Government have been slow in realising this intangible national resource; slower even in recognising, harnessing and rewarding it. It must now become part of our overall strategy in engaging and re-engaging other nations and peoples of the world.
“A Nation’s soft power is a key resource and capital of that nation; it must be built, promoted, summoned, harnessed and deployed to purposeful outcomes. It, too, must be rewarded and celebrated as it manifests itself in our citizens who personify and actualise it.
“Our national cultures, our values, our policies, our education, our patents, our inventions, our unique competencies, our cuisine, our song, dance, art, poetry and other creative products: all these go towards this intangible capital we must bank, cherish, support and project worldwide to carry our mission.”
He also said the country should capitalise on citizens’ educational and professional expertise to charm the world.
“Going forward, we have to inventory our soft power, itself a repertoire of many activities, of many disciplines, and by many players, many of them lying outside the confines of officialdom, and official structures and actors,” he noted.
“This intangible resource must be harnessed to forcefully project our Nation globally. Government must invest in this area we have neglected to our own detriment.
“I am aware that countries like Australia use their education and educational institutions to project themselves globally.
“That must be quite easy for us to do or adapt in our circumstances. I, too, am aware that the sister Republic of Cuba uses its medical personnel and expertise in tropical diseases to project itself worldwide. We ourselves are a beneficiary of this Cuban large-heartedness.”
He said the country could share its wildlife and culture to spread its influence and aid the engagement and re-engagement drive.
“Have we considered what mileage our country could get by helping the world repopulate the elephant herd now that CITES does not allow trophy hunting and trophy selling? Are those huge mammals not a key resource in our engaging and re-engaging the world about us, starting with our Africa?” he said.
“Then we have our unmatched heritage, led by our monuments. “Recently, I was in Masvingo to launch a French-funded programme to rehabilitate the iconic walls of our Great Zimbabwe Monuments. How many citizens of Africa, let alone of the world, have visited this world heritage site? What can it do for us as we seek to build and rebuild bridges worldwide?”
President Mnangagwa added that there was need to shift the focus of re-engagement from the State and give space for citizens to be part of the process.
Online Reporter