Time to broaden empowerment

is more to empowerment than just words or just about economic redress.
Since independence, there have been policies that have been enacted into law, which empowers the individual, man or woman. The first to come to mind is that of the age of majority, which in a way removed the impediments of women to control their own affairs.

A woman now can marry whoever she wants on reaching the age of 18. When the law was enacted, at least 14 000 marriages were registered with the courts without any permission from the women’s parents.

Another aspect was that women have thronged the courts to demand maintenance from the men who may have dumped them when the marriage or relationship turned sour. Even those women who may have been cheated by their boyfriends can go to court if the boyfriend reneges on a promise of marriage.

Men are also free to sue the woman, but on many occasions, the man decides to die rather than go to court for redress. A tragic event indeed! Be as it may, women who suffered a lot of injustice at the hands of men before independence, are now the beneficiaries of the new dispensation called the Age of Majority Act.

But there have been empowerment policies that have been implemented since independence. Besides the land resettlement, women have been empowered to enter into contracts of their own. This brings me to a new development where not only women are being empowered, but also men.
The establishment of the Zimbabwe Institute of Legal Studies, along the famous Herbert Chitepo Avenue in Harare, is a case in point. Anyone is welcome to study law. One can be armed with a diploma not to practice law as such, but to understand what the law is all about in a field of their choice.

Recently, a friend who is a personnel manager enrolled at the institute to have a better understanding of the Labour Relations Act which deals with the employment of workers and issues of discipline, code of conduct and hearings.

I have been told that the next step will be to officers that man the chiefs’ courts so that legal recording can be made in conformity with the modern law. This development will empower the traditional courts with understanding of the law in their discharge of justice.

In Germany, empowerment of the worker is taken seriously by the government. After the World War II, the German government revised all the labour laws to empower the workers. The country has not suffered from strikes like most European countries whose workers are on the streets more than they are at work. Even the economic meltdown of 2008 has not dented the German economy like it has done in other European countries. The simple fact is that workers are represented on any board of the company or public utility.

The workers are free to choose a lawyer, accountant or any of their member to sit on the board of a company. In Zimbabwe, it is not heard of for workers to choose a board member. Maybe, with the advent of the indigenisation and empowerment programme, a time will come when they can choose their own representatives.

Why should this apply to the private sector not the public sector? Workers in the public sector must also be empowered through the allocation of shares. They need to have a sense of ownership like any other workers. This would improve productivity and loyalty.

You do not have to wait until the company has been privatised. If this was done then morale of workers would rise sky high. Many have seen conditions improve in our education system when parents were empowered to run their schools. Standards, which had gone down, are on the rise again.
What empowerment should entail is responsibility being given to the ordinary person. One area that is lagging behind is the empowerment of the ordinary voter to remove non-performers in the political arena. How long should people suffer for lack of service delivery in the cities and towns?

If the resident was empowered to seek redress, none of the treatment at local government level will have been tolerated for too long. How then can a resident be empowered? If the residents associations were formally legalised by an Act of Parliament, then what they said would carry much weight in the running of cities and towns.

Empowerment has to be broadened rather than be subjected to a new definition of redressing past colonial misuse of power. We have to look to the future. We can though not forget what happened before, but the future is more important because it is what our children and the next generation will be judged by.

Whenever any responsibility is added onto our shoulders, that must be empowerment we have been looking for. Whether it is education or skills or serving on any board, it must be the responsibility that goes with our empowerment to improve our society.

As we go for elections in 2013, the voter must take empowerment that he or she has been given since independence to another level of serving the country. We are our own saviours.
Unless we take responsibility seriously, we will be blamed by the generations to come.