malvernmugadzikwa
NEWS that Tanzania had shut down its hydropower plants a couple of weeks ago because of excess electricity filled many on the African continent, where an estimated 600 million people (about half of the continent) reportedly do not have access to power, with wonderment.
They must have mused how this could be possible on a continent that hosts 75 percent of the world’s population without access to electricity.
Yet, for Tanzania, this was quite a welcome turnaround in fortune, especially for a country that until recently was grappling with load-shedding.
While the El Niño weather phenomenon has cursed us with low rains in this part of the world, it has blessed East Africa with abundant rains — perhaps a bit too much rain that has filled dams and caused floods and mudslides.
What is, however, fortuitous for Tanzania — the tragedy caused by floods aside — is the fact that the rains came at a time when the country had begun commissioning the new 2 115-megawatt (MW) Julius Nyerere Hydropower Plant, which is largely expected to have a transformative impact on East Africa’s third-largest economy.
The multiplier effect this will have on its economy will be immense.
Visionary leadership
For Bishop Lazi, what is notable is the fact that although this hydropower project was conceived in the 1960s, it was only consummated under the leadership of the late President, John Pombe Magufuli (may his revolutionary and Pan-African soul rest in peace), who, like President ED, was a man of action, a doer.
Even the odd lot of sponsored activists who tried to block the project by claiming it was located in a United Nations-designated World Heritage Site could not stop the tough-as-nails man who was nicknamed the “bulldozer”.
Although Magufuli’s reign lasted six years, before his demise on March 17, 2021, he left a mark and laid down the marker on what route Africa has to take in order to develop itself and achieve prosperity.
Having at one time experienced the pain of traffic congestion in the capital, Dar es Salaam, the inauguration of the Kijazi Interchange in 2021, which came as a relief to motorists and commuters alike, stands out for Bishop Lazarus.
But this was one of the many innumerable achievements under Magufuli, which include the upgrading of the Dar es Salaam port that also serves neighbouring landlocked countries such as Malawi, Zambia, Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda; and beginning work on the 341-kilometre standard-gauge railway from Mwanza on Lake Victoria to the southern town of Isaka; as well as a massive rural electrification programme.
And the Bishop has consciously picked these examples to highlight the emphasis on infrastructure development — road, rail and electricity — to drive economic growth.
In other words, Magufuli belonged to the pantheon of a new crop of Pan-African leaders who know exactly what needs to be done to lift people out of poverty into prosperity.
The haemorrhage must stop!
This is why Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni’s intervention at the International Development Association (IDA) for Africa Heads of State Summit in Nairobi, Kenya, last week caused quite a stir, as he broke from convention by questioning the sincerity of support provided by international financiers such as the World Bank, under whose ambit IDA, which purportedly “helps the world’s poorest countries”, falls.
“The crisis which is in Africa today is because of philosophical, ideological, strategic mistakes, which we have been talking about since the 1960s,” he affirmed.
Africa, he added, needed socio-economic transformation through investments in railway (to bring transport costs down), electricity and institutions that provide low-cost funding to the manufacturing sector, among others.
Most of the African people, he also said, needed to transition from subsistence to the “money economy”.
“Make money!” as ED usually exhorts Zimbabweans. Museveni questioned the continued export of raw materials by African states and reluctance by international financers to fund economic growth drivers on the continent, concentrating instead on useless seminars on “capacity-building”.
“Africa is producing what it doesn’t consume and consuming what it doesn’t produce . . . This haemorrhage must stop! . . . I don’t entertain that nonsense anymore!” said the straight-talking Museveni.
A system organised for robbery
Evident in Museveni’s candid intervention was a revolutionary and ideological leaning that shines a light on Africa’s continued underdevelopment and poverty.
This is hardly surprising for a man who was seemingly a student of the sharp-witted Pan-African stalwart, Julius Nyerere, the first president of independent Tanzania.
On July 17, 1988, after being invited by Museveni for a four-day visit in Uganda, Nyerere gave a lecture at the International Conference Centre, where he raised more or less the same issues.
“We buy — always — from the North (read the West) and we sell cheap — always to the North. That imbalance is inevitable. You will have that imbalance. What kind of business is that? But this is what is happening on the global scale,” said Nyerere.
“It is an unfair system. So that system the way it is organised by the North — run by the North for the North — takes money from the South to the North. It transfers resources; it transfers wealth from the South to the North . . . So you have to change that system. The system is wrong. It is a system organised for robbery, and robbery by the rich robbing the poor. It is totally wrong. It is known it is wrong . . . We cannot live with a system like that . . .”
Nyerere gave an example of how Tanzanian cotton farmers, with support from the government, doubled their output between 1985 and 1986, before the price of the cash crop dropped by half, which meant farmers earned the same amount even after doubling their output.
Who is the market? And who controls the market? Therein lies the answer.
None but ourselves
Like Magufuli, President ED has similarly been spearheading the greatest infrastructure development programme ever seen in the past 43 years. What has been achieved in the past six years is nothing short of a miracle, especially for a country that is manacled by sanctions from the United States, the United Kingdom and Europe.
Without external financial support, Zimbabwe is on the cusp of completing the Harare-Beitbridge highway, while work on the Harare-Chirundu highway has already begun.
Heartily, all these roadworks, as well as many other local infrastructure development programmes, are being carried out by locals, whose fortunes continue to bulge, helping to drive socio-economic transformation.
Masimba Holdings, for example, which transitioned from Murray & Roberts after being taken over by locals, currently sits on an order book worth US$248 million, of which 89 percent is for public sector works.
Also, the new Unit 7 and Unit 8 at the Hwange Power Station are now consistently producing more than 600MW, helping to anchor local power supplies at a time when generation at the Kariba Power Station is being affected by low water levels.
There are several other transformative projects in the pipeline, including rehabilitation of the railway line to the Forbes Border Post to cater for trade volumes that have been rising in the past five years.
A significant portion of locally grown cotton, whose production has also been rising exponentially, will soon find a home at the revived David Whitehead, which has been nursed back to health by the new investor and will be commissioned soon.
All these success stories are testament to the veracity of President ED’s philosophy that is premised on the belief and conviction that none but ourselves will help build the Zimbabwe we want (Nyika inovakwa nevene vayo/Ilizwe lakhiwa ngabanikazi balo).
In essence, this philosophy encapsulates the wisdom shared by Pan-African greats such as Nyerere. Posterity will look back at this historic epoch, which is a turning point in Zimbabwe’s development trajectory, with awe.
We are a people making history.
Unfortunately, history is seldom noticeable when it is in motion.
It will only be the later generations who will have the benefit of hindsight to acknowledge the great transformative works taking place in Zimbabwe.
There is an insightful Greek aphorism which observes that “a society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit”. Proverbs 13:22 also says: “A good person leaves an inheritance for their children’s children.”
Was it not Nyerere who said “We had to organise ourselves for political independence; now, we need to organise ourselves for economic independence”? We clearly have a generational duty to deliver prosperity.
We will not shirk this responsibility.
Bishop out!
Bongani Ndlovu
Online Reporter