PM’s obsession with jobs telling

their lives for the country.
However, it has to be highlighted that it is seemingly the genesis of Tsvangirai’s obsession with jobs. This has influenced the policy of the MDC-T as a party.
According to recent pronouncements by Tsvangirai and his team, jobs are the only way out of poverty. Tsvangirai is on record as saying “people need jobs to uplift their lives.”
He uses this as an argument to shoot down the indigenisation and empowerment programme that the Government has embarked on. A job is never the answer to poverty, especially with the kind of salaries being offered by the business sector.
The earlier Tsvangirai realises this, the better for him. More so, who told him indigenisation and empowerment do not create jobs? A job will just keep you in bondage, in a rat race and at the mercy of the employer.
Tsvangirai just like in the 1970s still thinks only a white man can be an employer and as blacks we should be grateful for the crumbs these so-called investors give us. He still thinks working for a white man will take a man out of poverty.
As someone who purports to speak for the people, I should say Tsvangirai is not in touch with the reality on the ground. This writer strongly believes that there is no one man who became rich while working for someone.
I have been in the working class for long to know that the employers and the business owners are in the business for profit that most of them do not give a hoot about their workers.
In a country where the Poverty Datum Line is above US$500 and most workers earn way less that this figure, I wonder who in his right mind wants to work for someone. I will not bother myself by giving the Honourable Prime Minister the breakdown of how a civil servant earning US$350 is surviving.
An employer will just give you enough to go home and come to work tomorrow. Some employees are actually subsidising their employers, because the money they are given is just not enough.
Most offices in many companies have been turned into tuckshops selling sweets, airtime, vegetables, muffins, sandwiches, perfumes, etc, and what people are doing is to try and augment their incomes. This makes everyone a businessperson.
How many of our professionals are crossing the border on Friday to return on Sunday evening armed with merchandise to sell? These are the same people who will be in offices on Monday morning and they are supposed to be productive. In simple terms jobs at the moment are not the answer to the poverty in this country.
Zimbabweans have shown to be resilient and hardworking, everyone is involved in one business or the other to make ends meet. Yet most people cannot survive one month without a salary.
That makes one poor. Being wealthy is measured by the length of time one is able to survive with the same lifestyle without earning a salary.
Most employees are surviving from hand to mouth.
This is reflected in the absence of the saving culture in the large populace and decreasing domestic tourism.
In church we are taught to increase our revenue streams, and a salary is just but one of them. We are taught to escape the rat race. Jobs are just not the option.
Schools teach that the ones owning the means of production are the ones who are rich, in elementary history we would call them bourgeois.
So to say jobs are the answer is just mischievous on the part of Tsvangirai. So if one wants to be a worker for the rest of their lives, then they should have the option of the Employee Share Ownership Trust, in this way they at least control the company. Salary in itself is not an option.
Most top executives stay in their companies not because of salary but pecks like shares of the company.
We need to be empowered and to have control of our resources so that we can transform our lives.
Salaries can never do that especially the slave-like salaries that people are being paid in the industries.
The empowerment bandwagon is on the move and I urge my fellow Zimbabweans not to be fooled by Tsvangirai and other misguided elements of our society. As they say once beaten twice shy, during the land reform we were lied to by the MDC-T.
We were fooled that the land reform was just a political or election gimmick of Zanu-PF, but we all know what the results are now. People were empowered and now ask any tobacco farmer, there is money in farming. The MDC-T is just out to oppose any policy formulated by Zanu-PF without even taking time to study it or offering and alternative policy.
The indigenisation and empowerment policy is a policy governed by an Act of Parliament and should be supported by every well-meaning Zimbabwean.
So to say Zimbabweans want jobs is a lie of the devil.
We want to control the means of production. This is why the war of liberation was waged.
l Davidson Kaiyo is a commentator based in Harare.