FOR a while 24-year-old Chenai Kamoyo (not real name), a History and International Studies student at Midlands State University, only dreamt about her graduation day.
BY JAIROS SAUNYAMA
She laboured over her books until the crowning moment, when she was capped by the university’s chancellor, President Robert Mugabe and thought she was ready to face the world and hoped to secure employment at the Parliament of Zimbabwe after her graduation.
But the reality and her dream differ starkly, as Kamoyo—just like thousands other graduates before her — is now grounded at home, with little hope of finding employment.
This is the predicament many Zimbabwean graduates, due to company closures and trimming of labour force following the infamous Supreme Court ruling allowing employers to terminate employment contracts on three-months’ notices find themselves in.
The ruling delivered by Justice Godfrey Chidyausiku saw thousands losing jobs, forcing many graduates, desperate for survival, into menial jobs, they would otherwise have sneered at.
The last quarter of the year is characterised by several graduation ceremonies in both the public and private tertiary learning institutions, but the question remains, where will these graduates find jobs?
In a country where unemployment is over 85%, coupled with breakdown of the social and moral fabric, many youths have resorted to gambling to eke out a living, despite many of them holding different diplomas and degrees.
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“I operate a pirate taxi here in Marondera, but I have a degree in media studies. There are no jobs, but life has to go on. At the moment, anything that gives me money will do. I spent years at school and I won’t spend more years sitting at home,” said Sunday Chirombe (28).
Despite his academic qualifications, Chirombe has learnt the art of being a skillful dodger, playing cat and mouse games with municipal cops and traffic police officers. Some graduates have flooded cities and towns as vendors selling different wares.
Others now survive through installing WhatsApp and other applications on peoples’ phones. Zimbabwe’s 13 universities annually produces an average of 10 000 graduates, while colleges, polytechnics and vocational training centres produce tens of thousands more.
It is undeniable that Zimbabwe’s unemployment rate hovers over 90% due to the prevailing political and economic crises.
Social commentator, Pardon Tawodzera said the current unemployment rate can only be resolved if government changes the education curriculum.
“Zimbabwe’s curriculum was designed to train employees rather than employers or entrepreneurs, according to the Nziramasanga Commission. When former Education minister David Coltart attempted to reform the out-dated curriculum he was left frustrated, as his proposals for the wholesale adoption of the Nziramasanga recommendations found no takers,” he said.
Now that the current Primary and Secondary Education minister (Lazurus) Dokora is doing something related to that nature, maybe there is light for the future generations.
“Until the government has clear-cut strategies on employment creation, the future for youths will remain bleak, with the dream of ever securing employment fading with each day.”
Tawodzera said graduates, who are bold move to foreign lands or resort to unscrupulous means of survival, like gambling.
The government has, through the Youth, Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment ministry, been encouraging youths to create rather than seek employment, but the lack of capital to kick-start project, has been a hindering factor.
Corruption also has been a stumbling block, as the little funds disbursed by government to empower youths failed to reach the intended beneficiaries.
In a 2013 report, the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Youth Development, Indigenisation and Empowerment said youth unemployment in Zimbabwe is four times higher than that of adults.
Zimbabwe has since become a net exporter of skilled personnel, with millions of professionals having taken up foreign jobs following deterioration of the local economy.
MDC–T youth league chairperson, Happymore Chidziva, bemoaned the unemployment situation in the country and called for government to put measures in place to address the crisis.
“We are disappointed in the government because it has failed to deliver and has failed to think about moulding the future leaders. It is a fact that there are no jobs, while college graduates expect to find employment after college,” he said.
Chidziva said it was depressing that thousands of people continued to lose their jobs as the labour market was shrinking.
“This makes it apparent that the government of the day is failing, especially with economic policies such as ZimAsset that have failed to induce necessary economic growth and reindustrialisation,” he said.
“It is painful to acquire education and fail to use it. Vast numbers of young graduates resort to vending or simply moving out of the country to perform menial jobs just to provide a livelihood for their families, which shows gross negligence on the part of government, which is failing to attract FDI and revitalise the country’s once thriving industrial sector.”
In 2013, Zanu PF promised to create 2,2 million jobs in five years, this seems impossible.
A 2013 report titled Nexus between Growth, Employment and Poverty in Zimbabwe: The Economics of Employment Creation by the Labour and Economic Development Institute of Zimbabwe (Ledriz), said unemployment worsened before the economic crisis.
“Even before the decade-long economic crisis (1997-2008), the economy of Zimbabwe was already failing to absorb the high numbers of people, mainly youth, joining the labour market, with increasingly high levels of education,” reads part of the report.
The country’s economy remains fragile, with business and industry’s capacity utilisation depressed due to a liquidity crisis and poor foreign direct investment flow among other constraints.
Getting youths employed or involved in meaningful economic activities is cause for concern for all developing economies.
But Zimbabwe has violated a number of regional and international conventions that emphasised the need for action on the matter and these include the United Nations resolution on promoting youth employment of December 2002, the UN resolution concerning policies and programmes involving the youth of January 2004 and the 93rd International Labour Conference of June 2005 concerning youth employment.
