MANY newspapers in Zimbabwe have been running stories saying that ZANU PF has failed to deliver on its election promises.
They give employment creation as an example.
I don’t agree because by creating an enabling environment (indigenisation) for black people to own land and resources, ZANU PF and the government have laid the ground for job creation.
The ZANU PF election manifesto clearly stated that employment creation would come after indigenisation, empowerment and development.
When I came to Zimbabwe in May, I was impressed to see many black people owning businesses doing jobs that were once a no-go area for black people.
A few weeks ago, I wrote an article about how indigenisation policies had taken a black person, Masiiwa Table, to the skies when he owned the first international airline, Vic Falls Airways.
Secondly I think in Zimbabwe people need to redefine the meaning of employment, or at least make a differentiation between being economically active and economically inactive.
Is being employed going to an industry or factory owned by another person or wearing a suit and a neck-tie and going to an office?
A few months ago, the Director-General of the Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency, Mr Dzinoyei Mutasa said: “We have always had this argument about what is the percentage of people that are employed or unemployed in Zimbabwe.
“Textbook economists will say 85 percent, but that is not true.
“If we had a population like that most people in Zimbabwe would have died, it is not possible.
“One is either a farmer, selling juice cards, driving an emergency taxi or you are working as a hair dresser, all these people are economically active.”
Here in the UK, such people (hair-dresser, vegetable vendor etc) would be known with a beautiful name: self employment or small-scale business entrepreneurs.
And there are many of them.
I am one of them.
Since 2008 years when my youngest child was barely a year old, I have always been self-employed; running my own business as a publisher (books), editor and proof-reader and working with scores of African students and upcoming writers as well as seasoned writers such as David Mungoshi, Aaron Chiundura Moyo and Dr Memory Chirere to say a few.
The motivation of becoming self employed came after I realised that with three young children I would not be able to go out and work (shifts) for big companies as many people do.
The Telegraph (August 12 2014) published the findings of a survey carried out by a think-tank IPPR, which stated that the UK is “becoming the ‘self-employment capital’ of Western Europe after an increase in the number of people working for themselves.”
The same report also stated that the average self-employment rate in the European Union (EU) is 14 percent; with self-employment in Greece as high as 32 percent, self-employment in Italy standing at 23 percent while in the UK it is now 14 percent.
The Guardian Newspaper (May 6 2014) also reported that self-employment figures in the UK was on the rise, with self-employed in the south-east rising by 116 000; in London rising by 85 000 and the West Midlands (where I live) rising by 61 000.
I am one of the 61 000 self-employed people in the West Midlands (Coventry, Birmingham and Walsall etc).
When the UK’s Office of National Statistics (ONS) publishes figures of unemployment rates in this country, I will not be classified as unemployed; same as the other 14 percent of the UK’s self-employed workforce.
In fact they would report that unemployment figures have fallen.
If they classified us as unemployed, then the UK would have a higher unemployment rate more than what is officially known.
Many Zimbabweans in the UK are also taking to self-employment for many reasons; including failing to get jobs that they trained to do in universities.
One of my friends is self-employed and provides cleaning services to people’s private houses (domestic worker).
Another is self-employed and cleans people’s carpets, while another is self-employed as a gardener.
Others are plumbers, plasterers, and a close friend distributes Avon catalogues and gets a commission from Avon whenever people purchase Avon products through their catalogues.
All these friends kumusha vangadai vachinzi ana feja-feja vanorarama nekukiya-kiya, but they are all self-employed and pay taxes.
A small-scale farmer in the UK is considered as being self-employed or a small-scale business enterprise/entrepreneur.
David Mwanaka, a Zimbabwean farmer based in the UK, makes an annual turnover of about £500 000 from growing maize and selling it to the African community in the UK (according to the London Evening Standard published on September 23 2010).
In Zimbabwe an A1 farmer would not consider himself as employed.
Same as a person who owns a small piece of land where they grow vegetables to sell or rear chickens for sale.
A university graduate who starts his own carwash company is not considered employed and seen as a failure unless he wears a suit and a tie and goes to an office (to earn even less than what he can make from the carwash).
The world’s second largest retailer store, Tesco, (founded in London in 1919), was founded by a market stall holder Jack Cohen, who earned a living by selling groceries on market stalls.
In 1919 after receiving £30 as demobilisation (after serving in the First World War), he bought a market stall and later owned many market stalls that later became a wholesale business, and culminated into the world’s second largest retail store. To date, Tesco has stores in 12 countries in Europe, North America, Asia, Malaysia and Thailand.
Today it employs more than half a million people, owns a mobile phone network and a bank (Tesco Bank).
I think it is time that Zimbabweans should re-define employment.
We should not expect whites to come from Europe and America in droves to employ us.
And it is also high time we should stop looking down on economic activities such as selling vegetables because that is a form of employment.
In addition, I think the Government needs to regularise or formalise the so-called informal sector by issuing out licences and making people to pay taxes.
I am registered as self-employed and every year my accountant looks at my books and files my tax returns with the Inland Revenue.
I think it is wrong to say the Government has failed to create jobs when people have been given resources to make a living from.
Furthermore it’s barely a year after the election victory and it’s too early to come to such a conclusion.