Donald Trump
Based on my very own personal capacity, I have noted a number of loopholes that, if they are to be closed, would make a very big difference for Zimbabwe.
Of course these are not the obvious ones which involve the opposite of the masquerading of state funds. It is about somethings new. The first comes from knowing what our people are truly in dire need of. The second one comes from copying from what other developed/developing nations are doing.
My ear is still haunted by Donald Trump’s rants when he said that African leaders always try as hard as possible to loot African money and deposit it, somewhere in Europe. But as I have highlighted before, I do not want to deal with these gigantic issues of corruption and masquerading of funds.
What striked me most about his rants was that Africa ends up importing goods as petty as matchsticks.
But in our Zimbabwean context, we end up importing goods as small as toothpicks, earbuds, artificial hair/nails and baby diapers.
That is when my perspective on the creation of employment comes in. Are we saying that, as a nation, we cannot ban the importation of such things and open our own industries dedicated to that?
I know for certain that the market for the above mentioned products is there and there’s no way the would be new industries can flop unless when someone chooses not to follow the codes of conduct and ethics of running a business in a sustainable way.
Again, I have witnessed the rise of the importation of numerous fruit varieties. Our people consume large volumes of apples, oranges and peaches everyday. But because our agricultural sector is not at the position that it is supposed to be, the significant percentage of the consumed fruits has been predominantly occupied by imports.
Considering that farms dedicated to fruit production are returned to the level of full functionality, agricultural practitioners will get back to work and the trade deficit will decline. They might not be many prospective benefits, but at least some lifes will be changed for the better.
We then come to the field of copying from other nations. The potential of the arts and media industry in Zimbabwe has always been overlooked and hidden by political conservatism.
Considering that the media’s veins are to be opened and then be equally invested into, it will burst into a volcanic eruption that will create thousands of jobs.
By simply granting new TV stations licenses, job opportunities will be opened. This is the only way presenters, designers and other dormant personnel will get a chance to earn a decent living out of their abilities.
Look at Tonight With Zororo. It has already created inroads into job creation. Apart from offering Zimbabweans a decent deserved content package, it will also offer the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Cooperation some decent competition which will give it a run for its money.
Therefore it will improve the quality of its production, maybe in the end migrating to the worlds of 3D and HD. It will feel the pressure to deploy correspondents into the different continents. It will also learn that beaming Zanu PF party rallies for hours will not help it realise some economic prosperity. Maybe they will also be able to fairly pay some royalties to the well deserving contributing artists.
The availability of various Television Channels will also imply that some channels will be wholly dedicated to the Entertainment sector just like in our neighbouring South Africa across the majestic Limpopo.
This also means that there will be need for the production of quality soap series, short or long movies and some music videos. Therefore actors, stage teams, cameramen, producers, designers and publicists will directly benefit from this new experience.
Remember that, every festive season is always headlined by foreign acts. The Zahara’s, the Mafikizolo’s and even the I-Octanes are the people who always come to us so as to cash in on us more than our very own artists.
We can as well stop this imbalance, by taking into consideration of Cassper Nyovest’s words that we as Zimbabweans should value our very own before we value foreign artists.
By adopting this new perspective, we will do nothing else but promote our very own sons and daughters’ artistic industries. Forget about Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics without some humanities.
By the way, industries are not only those that have got some ever smoking pipes, which are ever causing climate change in Zimbabwe and beyond.
As if these opportunities are not enough, the documentary genre will also be awakened. We will not have to necessarily wait for a certain European to come and produce a documentary about our Victoria Falls, our Harare or our Tonga people.
We will do it all by ourselves and we will be able to inturn sell them to other cable network TV companies for the betterment of our fiscus. We will also easily migrate from the age of cheap talk, like in the prevalent situations loaded in History.
I am talking of people who always wait for a foreigner to create a documentary about we as a people, only to criticize him or her afterwards, as if we didn’t have perspectives before he came to film the documentary.
By the way, there’s no other person that is as oppressed as one who’s always silent.
So, in total, the opportunities do not add up to two million, but at least they offer a realistic prediction of a few thousand jobs which are just but waiting for us, given that the government of Zimbabwe extends its will towards the above mentioned given circumstances.
Just look at what Zim-Dancehall alone has managed to do on its own, in terms of sustaining marginalised livelihoods.
As I always say, We should be better than this and We can as well be better than this.
Post published in: Featured
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