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NewsDay

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A timely read for these rough times

Opinion & Analysis
I HAVE just gone through one of the best reads of my life — a book titled Personal Crucibles: Learning to Lead Through Adversity and Struggles

I HAVE just gone through one of the best reads of my life — a book titled Personal Crucibles: Learning to Lead Through Adversity and Struggles, written by Joe Mutizwa, who stepped down voluntarily as the CEO of Delta Beverages, the biggest counter on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange whose range of products are found in every Zimbabwean household.

CONWAY TUTANI ECHOES

I know Mutizwa from our young, innocent teenage days at Fletcher High School in Gweru when it was still a boys-only boarding school and as fellow students at the then University of Rhodesia (UR).

He struck me as particularly bright and pleasant, and that thoughtfulness and good-temperedness oozes throughout the book. That quality of agreeable manner in interacting with others — high or low — is sadly lacking today among some prominent people masquerading as politicians.

From suffering great personal grief when his mother died in 1972 when Mutizwa was only 17, to political detention and torture by the Rhodesian regime (1975-1978) after being arrested along with fellow university students — among them Amos Midzi, now Zanu PF Harare provincial chairman — as they were about to cross the border into Mozambique to join Zanla, the Zanu PF military wing, to entering the corporate world and rising to the pinnacle of it incorporating the period 2005-2008, when, according to Mutizwa’s words, Zimbabwe became “a political and economic earthquake zone”, and to stepping down on his own when he could have stayed on and on, to going back to school to chart a new path at the age of 58, shows focus, determination, vision and the magnanimity to step aside for others.

Going through Mutizwa’s somewhat autobiographical book, one cannot help but see everything that is wrong with Zimbabwean politics.

What else can one make of the crude insults and threats made at First Lady Grace Mugabe’s rallies?

And some power-drunk, politically ignorant youths demeaning Midzi by questioning his loyalty?

What has been shown at the First Lady’s rallies is complete lack of knowledge, class and respect.

Furthermore, why is Grace behaving as if she is already in office? She is Zanu PF Women’s League secretary-designate.

Her term has not commenced. She is not in office yet. She is at the nomination stage, but she is already exercising the power and authority of that post, even straying into ultra vires territory, in excess of powers vested in the post. What other nominee anywhere in the world has behaved the way she is? She can’t go on insulting people. It’s an ethical travesty. She needs to decompress.

Recalling his arrest and detention, Mutizwa writes: “Physical torture and solitary confinement gave me an understanding of the need for humaneness and compassion. I saw the face of brutality and I was repulsed by it.” (Page 26)

Instead of hate and itch for revenge against whites, he derived great positives from his horrific experiences. This shows maturity and intelligence. I remember when he was released in 1978 and resumed his studies at the UR that he looked as jolly and affable as ever, he did not bear any visible psychological scars.

That year he left the UR mid-course and enrolled at the famed LSE (London School of Economics and Political Science), where he again excelled, becoming top of the class at the prestigious university, “earning the only first-class in the final-degree classifications for my particular degree”, carrying on from what he did at Fletcher. After that, he was completely healed of the remnants of animosity against whites.

He writes: “The bitterness was gone . . . The burden of resentment against my oppressors that I had carried before lifted, I felt lighter and eager to embrace all fair-minded people without regard for race, colour, tribe, or ethnicity. Ever since this healing, I have, as a matter of principle, fought racism (whether black or white), tribalism, ethnicity, or any other narrow-minded bigotry to this day.” (P33)

At Delta, Mutizwa quickly recognised the essentiality of building a strong, transparent organisational culture where you don’t chop and change at will, where you don’t tinker with a winning team by bringing in complete outsiders with high-paying job titles, but with no knowledge whatsoever on how the sector operates, thus adding no value at all, but weighing down the organisation.

He writes: “It is all about people at the end of the day. Everyone wants to be respected, and once their self-esteem is assured, this opens the way to productive dialogue.” This is instructive to those company bosses who take the human resources element as an appendage or irritant. Writes Mutizwa: “I learned about interdependency and collaboration. You cannot do it alone.”

Indeed, you need buy-in from all stakeholders for optimum results.

Mutizwa is not an upstart. An upstart is a person who has suddenly risen from nowhere to wealth, power, or a position of consequence and is made self-important, arrogant, boastful and presumptuous by the change, and stops paying attention to what is happening around them, pushing only their own thoughts and unrealistic ideas, proving they are undeserving of such position.

That is why Mutizwa, who has travelled a long journey and earned his stripes, writes: “In April 2008, at the height of political uncertainty following the inconclusive March 2008 presidential elections, I initiated, at great personal risk, discussions between senior officials of the ruling Zanu PF and the opposition MDC-T party to explore the possibility of a coalition government. I believed that it was in the national interest then to resolve the political conflict as this was causing the economic meltdown to accelerate.

Contrary to Press reports at the time, this was an initiative I took entirely on my own. . . I figured that I did not need anyone’s approval to save my country.” (P69)

This is the spirit that Zimbabwe needs — not the ungentlemanly, unladylike, graceless mudslinging going on and the cringing, fawning, servile show accompanying that.

No one individual can define us or be the sum total of who we are as a nation.