The Herald
By Joram Nyathi
6th December 2013
Once upon a time there was a man, one Hon David Coltart. He declined a ministerial Mercedes Benz on his appointment as Education minister. This gesture elicited sneers from his peers.In an earlier era, His Worship Solomon Tawengwa had pleaded for our empathy.
He needed a four-wheel-drive vehicle. As mayor, he needed to navigate Harare’s treacherous manholes, sorry, potholes, to deliver service to city residents.
I can’t remember but I believe his wish was ultimately granted. Since then no big man in our country accepts anything smaller.
The trouble is that Zimbabwe is a small, poor, rich country.
So often we are out there with a begging bowl to meet the real needs of the poor, not the synthetic wants of our big man. The weather has been very unkind lately, making food security for our rural folk a major challenge.
So we must beg as a nation. And what’s that got to do with Coltart or Tawengwa? It’s about our national priorities, managing our resources and cutting our cloth according to our size. Zimbabwe has just come out of an election.
Our small country has been quartered into 210 constituencies and an extra 60 legislators chosen by proportional representation. That means we have 270 Members of Parliament for a nation of just 13 million souls.
I haven’t mentioned senators and their perks. Ordinarily that should not be a big problem. With “enough†resources I don’t mind everyone being one’s own MP. But we don’t have limitless resources and most of our minerals are still in their natural state in the ground.
Those which have been extracted are exported in their raw state to enrich other people’s nations. So is our tobacco. But we can manage our resources better. Our honourable MPs are already scanning the horizon for four-wheel-drive imports. These have become a status symbol.
I am not interested in crunching numbers. But imagine what would happen if the money required to import nearly 270 4×4 vehicles were invested in Willowvale Mazda Motor Industries to assemble them locally!
WMMI assembles sturdy Mazda BT-50 vehicles which can traverse the worst terrain in Zimbabwe. They cost far less than your high-maintenance, fuel-guzzling Prado, Chevrolet, Range Rover Discovery, BMW and Jeep among others.
This imported luxury is not affected by sanctions. Government should simply decree that every official below the level of a minister should get their vehicle from WMMI.
The same should apply to MPs. Those who want to import should pay punitive duty. Surely beggars cannot afford to be finicky about vehicle models.
We can’t afford luxury and extravagance at the same time we are begging. The point is not to dole out money to Willowvale Mazda Motor Industries. It is to give it capacity for higher productivity.
It is to enable it to create jobs by opening up branches across the country. It is to enable the company to employ the many graduates and artisans which our universities and colleges throw onto the streets every year.
Above all, it is to save the little foreign currency earned from tobacco and other exports which can then be deployed to other productive sectors such as manufacturing, health, education and agriculture.
Imagine the goodwill this modest gesture by our MPs would engender in the nation! Once Government demonstrates indeed that charity begins at home, the nation will love the Mazda brand.
Soon we should begin to earn foreign currency from regional exports the moment people learn that the Mazda assembled in Zimbabwe is almost a status symbol.
Former Finance minister Tendai Biti indicated in his last budget that the country had a trade deficit of almost US$4 billion. Because our exports are so limited, much of the foreign currency we use to import second-hand vehicles, human hair and many dangerous skin lightening products never returns.
That means in real terms we have fewer US dollars in circulation with every import, much of which has nothing to do with essential raw materials or production technologies beside computers.
Through programmes such as the land reform, black economic empowerment and education President Mugabe has restored the dignity of Zimbabweans and indicated to us the way to prosperity.
Unfortunately, we have not learnt to be modest in our desires, in our management and consumption of what we should only hold in trust on behalf of the poor or generations still to come.
We have not learnt to be modest in spending the little foreign currency earned through sweat and blood from back-breaking labour on the farms.
The culture of saving and service must start at the top.