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“People really want to know more about the programme. The other issue is also agriculture and then manufacturing and mining and other sectors of the economy in general.”
One of the biggest developments of the year, the Wikileaks saga, is not on the agenda, although some prominent Zanu-PF officials have been implicated as having secretly met some US embassy staff and making disclosures about the inner workings of the party.
Already all of the party’s 10 provinces have endorsed the candidature of President Mugabe for next year’s elections. This is a party conference held every December, thus is not elective, according to
the Zanu-PF constitution. Leaders are elected at congresses, so the state of affairs as far as leaders are concerned, would remain.
Zanu-PF National Chairman Cde Simon Khaya Moyo stressed the importance of this week’s conference.
“Zanu-PF is the only party with clear programmes and policies hence the theme of our conference ‘Defend National Sovereignty, Consolidate Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment’. This underlines how clear we are with our policies.
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“President Mugabe has underscored the importance of this conference because it is the last before we go for polls in 2012. However, this is a conference and not a congress hence it is not elective. Election of leaders only takes place at a congress and whoever is elected president at a congress becomes our candidate until the next congress,” he said.
More than 6 000 delegates are expected to attend the conference. Delegations from sister parties in Africa and beyond are taking part.
Frelimo of Mozambique, People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) from Angola, South West Africa People’s Organisation (Swapo) from Namibia, African National Congress from South Africa, United National Independence Party (Unip) of Zambia, Chama Chamapinduzi of Tanzania and the Patriotic Front, the newly-elected party in Zambia, are some of the African parties expected to be represented at the Bulawayo conference.
Running concurrently with the convention is the Zanu-PF Business Exhibition.
The business exhibition ends on Saturday. The exhibition centre opens at 8am, closing at 6pm daily. Forty companies had already confirmed participation by yesterday morning. More than 150 informal traders are also showcasing their products and services, said expo convener, Cde Noah Mangondo. A member of the party presidium is expected to officially open the exhibition today, said Cde Mangondo:
“The objective of the expo is to offer a platform for the Zanu-PF leadership to interact with the business community and vice versa. With specific reference to Bulawayo, this exhibition will go a long way towards the resuscitation of business and restoring investor confidence in the city.”
The indigenisation and economic process is rightly the focus of the conference. Zimbabwe acquired political independence on 18 April 1980. Unlike the situation in many African countries where
leaders and their people tend to feel comfortable achieving political independence only, the discerning Zanu-PF leadership, ably led by President Mugabe realised some 20 years after colonialism was defeated that merely raising the national flag and singing the national anthem, though they are defining characteristics of self-rule, do not mean much to a people as long as they have no control over their economy.
Almost a century of colonial authoritarian rule meant that the national politics and its economy were in the hands of whites. But in 2000, the Zanu-PF Government moved to not only correct racial
imbalances in land ownership but also to empower blacks by launching the land reform and redistribution programme. White-owned land, most of it seized from blacks by a combination of violence and unjust laws, was reclaimed. It was then subdivided and reallocated to land-hungry blacks. At least 300 000 people benefited from the revolutionary programme, the first of its kind in Africa, if not the world.
This is a sustainable empowerment exercise. Many farmers who previously eked a marginal existence on rocky badlands are now successful producers who harvest enough for their own food requirements and surplus for sale. Tobacco output has shot up in recent years and so has sugarcane. Maize is coming up but the problem is that the crop is grown across the country including in low-rainfall areas where it often fails.
As the land reform programme is essentially complete, the Zanu-PF Government came up with a law in 2007, the Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Act. The widely popular piece of legislation
seeks to compel foreign-owned companies to sell 51 percent of their stakes to indigenous blacks. Furthermore, the law reserves some prescribed sections of the economy to blacks. Implementation of the law has indeed started in earnest with all foreign-owned firms being ordered to submit their plans to abide by it. Scores of them have complied, some reluctantly.
It is a comprehensive law which also provides for penalties to companies that might be tempted to use some indigenous blacks as fronts or taking their time to submit themselves to the law.
Individual blacks who have the wherewithal to buy shares are doing so, while consortiums are also doing the same. The indigenisation scheme is also being encouraged through employee share-ownership schemes — the shining example being the recent localisation of Schweppes, a beverages manufacturing and bottling company.
Community share ownership trusts are also being encouraged. Two have already been launched — one in Mhondoro-Ngezi and another at around Unki Mine in Shurugwi. More are set to be launched at Chiadzwa, Mimosa, and other mines.
This programme is targeted at mining companies which are being made to set aside 10 percent of their shares for locals in areas where the miners extract minerals.
The economic indigenisation programme is indeed the last frontier in Zimbabwe’s quest for total independence.
President Mugabe is expected to officially close the conference on Saturday.
derick.khumalo