Online Reporter
Dr Richard Mahovha
Herald Correspondent
The Government through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Trade must be commended for setting out a clear diplomatic policy declaration through the First Edition of its Strategic Plan and the Minister’s Action Plan (2025-2030).
In the past years, Zimbabwe’s foreign policy trajectory has been predominantly rhetoric anchored than it was blueprint driven. The introduction of this diplomatic architectural framework registers a monumental success in the realisation of good governance. By the way, good governance is a constitutional imperative and an important benchmark of political modernity.
Contextualising policy-less diplomacy
In the First Republic, the nation’s foreign policy aspirations were abstractly decoded through executive speeches and mantras with no clear foreign affairs-specific blueprints. This was understandable considering the revolutionary situation our nation found itself in after the execution of the agrarian reform.
Therefore, this new policy framework is a cardinal point of reference not only for the international community, but for the media, researchers, investors including institutions and individuals with an avid interest in Zimbabwe’s foreign policy architecture and trade issues. This novel strategy document is for the people of Zimbabwe to accurately appreciate the construct and direction of the country’s foreign policy.
The publication sets out the viewpoint and the thought process underpinning Zimbabwe’s diplomacy and the future of our international cooperation. This also comes at a time Zimbabwe has earned various diplomatic scores, chief among them being gaining the support of the SADC region in calling for the immediate and unconditional removal of sanctions illegally imposed by the land reform bitter Western nations.
Why strategise international relations?
Traditionally, strategies are formulated to shape and determine important achievements for an organisation. Strategy maps and guides attainment of institutional goals aimed at addressing a particular set of needs at any given point in time. In this instance, our institution is called Zimbabwe. To this end, Zimbabwe’s dire sovereign and existential need is to be a respected player in the international scene informs the relevance of this policy guide.
Among other themes, the Strategic Plan and the Minister’s Action Plan (2025-2030) outlines the national foreign policy doctrine which include the following:
a) Nyika Inovakwa Nevene Vayo
b) Chimurenga Chepfungwa/Umvukela Wenqondo
c) Leaving No One and No Place Behind
d) Friend to All and an Enemy to None
e) Zimbabwe is Open for Business
f) Zimbabwe Will Never Be a Colony Again.
The aforementioned doctrine focal points of our foreign affairs strategic plan capture the enduring essence of the revolutionary construct of the Zimbabwean nation-state. Here, citizens are the pinnacle to the nation’s development. This is captured through the Nyika Inovakwa Nevene Vayo philosophy.
The apex positioning of the citizens in this strategy underscores their priority status in the thinking of the State and its development aspirations. Based on this approach, the people of Zimbabwe are agents of building and protecting the nation’s socio-economic and political interests. The strategy simply points out that without the people there is no nation.
Therefore, the people are the nation and the nation is its people. Any comes into existence because there are people who claim their share of belonging to that nation. Thereafter, the people have an inherent mandate to set the priorities of their nation — protect, develop and defend it.
The output of the people’s hard work in building their nation culminates in localised prosperity and opportunities which attract foreign attention. Therefore, domestic effort must also have international impact. The central role of the people in building their nation collapses dependence on foreign aid and exogeneous innovation.
With local production promotion, trade is guaranteed. For the longest of time Zimbabwe has been an importing nation than she has currently evolved into a trading nation. Rapid industrial growth has earned Zimbabwe this credential against a backdrop of our recent agricultural and mining upshoot.
As a matter of common principle, as argued by Professor Amon Murwira — the Minister of Foreign Affairs, trade occurs when you have goods to export and the capital to import goods and services from other nations. However, in the context of our erstwhile industrial collapse due to sanctions and illicit financial flow excesses, we have been a buying (importing) and not a massively selling (exporting) country.
Therefore, the trade facilitation underscored in this blueprint is anchored on local production promotion using the nation’s human capital. This approach demonstrates the logical pathway of harnessing domestic human and material capital in achieving high external impact. The nations we exalt today massively export and register their trade footprints abroad. Meanwhile, Africa’s poverty is best projected through her import bill which indirectly substantiates her innovative lethargy.
The Chimurenga Chepfungwa pillar which speaks to the liberation of the mind is very key given that as a consequence of colonialism, Africans’ rationality to making sovereign decisions has been traditionally undermined in international politics. Therefore, this doctrine evokes the need for Zimbabweans and Africans in general to come to terms with the effects of colonial captivity associated with our politics, economics and other pertinent aspects of human development in the continent.
The Chimurenga Chepfungwa also motivates the need to decolonise diplomacy and unmasking its coloniality. In the process, we are urged to redirect diplomacy to engender true equality in driving the humanisation of the global political-economy. This follows the reality of how international politics has been at the centre of advancing the Global-North’s interests at the expense of the Global-South’s self-determination. This policy path gives merit and logic to Africa’s continued struggle for equality and Africa’s cry for help from centuries of Western economic molestation.
Therefore, raising the point on the liberation of the (African) mind as an entry point to diplomatic efficacy is key in articulating the anti-colonial posture of our policy-making. This is very important considering that neo-liberal irrationality has attempted to make anti-colonial posturing appear very antiquated, polemic and undiplomatic.
However, to have a foreign policy blueprint which explicitly revisits an anti-colonial standpoint is crucial in showing that diplomacy is and should not be synonymous with conformity to Westernisation. This creed highlights that being polite and courteous to colonial benchmarks in order to earn imperialist validation is not and should not be acceptable by all means. African nations should not compete to be viewed as ‘modern’ through the prism of colonial vestiges.
Another point of interest is the Zimbabwe Will Never Be a Colony Again pronouncement of the strategy. This position indicates that Zimbabwe’s ‘Engagement and Re-Engagement’ proposition is never about entrenching neo-colonial interests, nor is it about inventing allies with colonial intentions in their dealings with our nation. This is an important starting point as we navigate the future. This is what guarantees confidence of the people in the Government they elected into office. The average Zimbabwean will never support any policy which solidifies the interests of other nations in Zimbabwe or any initiative promoting the unprofitable exploitation of our natural and human resources.
Pamberi neZimbabwe
Richard Mahomva is Director International Communication Services in the Ministry of Information Publicity and Broadcasting Services. He is also an adjunct lecturer in the Department of Governance and Public Management at the University of Zimbabwe. Feedback: [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> or [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
