WHEN thousands and thousands of a country’s young graduate from colleges and universities year after year and their only question is; shall we get employed, when their only hope is that someone will offer them jobs, when all they are looking for are neat little corners to snuggle in and eke out a living, this signals failure of a system.
It is the success of that system which says you have nothing, and you are helpless, you are at my mercy and unless I, at my discretion and mercy, offer you a job, you are stranded.
This is the success of a system that has totally erased the knowledge that these youngsters are the owners of everything this country is endowed with; the land, the minerals, the flora and fauna. It is also the success of a system that has said you have no responsibility beyond your nuclear and maybe extended family, a system which has excluded the welfare of the community and nation from your pre-occupations, a totally different world view from that which inspired those who fought for and liberated this country. Therefore the success of this system cannot be good for Zimbabwe because it is the antithesis of the process that brought Zimbabwe into being, it is contrary to it.
If our young graduates are comfortable that they, together with the pundits in economics widdle their fingers hoping someone somewhere will bring investment so that they too can get jobs, better salaries, better allowances then they too can shop abroad and keep up with the rest of the ‘world’, it is the saddest scenario one comes across in a country such as Zimbabwe, a reservoir of everything so special. Kozvaitasei? Fungayioka kuti mungaitesei munyika menyu.
These youngsters are so totally alienated from their background, from their history, that whenever they go home to their families in the rural areas they feel lost, they can see neither social nor economic future hope at all. They would rather ‘lodge’ (kuroja) in one room with two or three other boys, girls, anything but kumusha, aiwa hazviite they all agree.
They would rather be in town and scrounge for a living, dress themselsves in cheap used clothing from Europe found at Kotamai Boutique, never mind the risk of disease and God knows what else. Europe has its own share of strange diseases, but no-one seems concerned if any measures were taken to protect against diseases.
What is even worse, some of it is used underwear. Is it a belief that everything European is pure, clean?
Many epidemics have swept across Europe, including, more recently, the swine flu. Europeans are very circumspect about what comes from Africa into Europe, ‘lest they import what might wipe them out’. This does not seem to be an issue on our side of the world
They cannot think outside the box — starting from the basics, growing fruit and vegetables commercially and marketing them locally. The concept is too farfetched for them. Besides what would people think; ‘a whole graduate like me’. They cannot think of raising goats, road runners (free range chickens) commercially, supplying the local markets.
They cannot think of raising fish for instance, they cannot imagine these projects are viable. It is much easier to be offered a desk, a chair, a car perhaps, and ‘lodge’, ensconce in crowded, dirty or dilapidated circumstances.
They can’t think of fattening cattle at home with their parents to raise money for other projects, they cannot think of raising rabbits, hanga, nezvimwe zvakadaro.
It seems prudent to wait with the pundits, lamenting the liquidity crunch, the economic slowdown or is it meltdown across the globe, twiddling their fingers, waiting for something to happen. This is the stance of the hopeless, those who have accepted to be at the mercy of capitalism and its vagaries, forgetting that those who ‘make something happen’ do so on their own terms, for their own purposes and no-one else’s.
They cannot think of uniform-making projects to supply the local schools at affordable prices, they cannot think of selling solar power to the villagers, perhaps accepting payment in goats, sheep or chicken, electrifying the local schools and businesses. They cannot think of carpentry shops to supply furniture to homes and schools.
These projects and many more are affordable, they do not require millions in start-up capital. If parents could raise money to put one through university they surely can work with someone who wants to do something useful. The journey of a thousand miles starts with the first step.
If you are an engineer, fine, you’re an innovator, an originator, do something to uplift the standard of living of Zimbabweans and in the process earn a living. If you are a doctor, fine, go out in the rural areas and heal the sick and in the process earn a living. Our water engineers should be out in the rural areas laying pipes, connecting water to projects and ensuring homes have clean water.
They should not wait to be employed by NGO’s (zvekuno ndezvedu, zvekwavo ndezvavo) or anyone else, they should be entrepreneurs. They can collaborate with the people and other entrepreneurs to make this possible.
For mining engineers the sky is the limit. They can work with all budding miners who are bungling along, degrading the environment, endangering their own lives and those of others and hardly making anything worthwhile.
The hospitality graduates can run affordable restaurants and lodges and build up local tourism for ordinary people instead of pining to be employed in five-star hotels.
In other words, the solution is not kuronzera vana kune dzimwe nyika in their thousands, Zimbabwe has readymade jobs for them. It is their destiny to serve Zimbabwe and Zimbabwe has not been served yet.
There are jobs in Zimbabwe, so there is no need for them to be upset that no one has offered them a job; to create one’s own job is the best way to be independent, to do precisely what they want and to enjoy and grow to be the best person they can be and serve the nation.
If each class of graduates had applied itself in the rural areas for the last 35 years, by now the standard of living of the majority of our people would have transformed way beyond what it is today. Our people would have real reason to be proud of their graduates. Thus children should not be educated to serve certain companies, but to serve Zimbabwe; these two are not necessarily synonymous.
We have not achieved this because we have not designed the courses of study to directly serve the needs of Zimbabwe, we have not linked learning to production but to meet certain perceived international standards.
Our teaching and learning should gear our children to love and be proud of Zimbabwe, to know about it, appreciate it and to commit to learning what they need to serve it and Zimbabweans, especially in the countryside where the majority are.
The colonial process can still be undone.