Time was when big companies used to stampede to the University of Rhodesia (now University of Zimbabwe [UZ]) to headhunt final-year students for employment even before they wrote their examinations.
echoes: CONWAY TUTANI
Fast-forward to 2016: It’s now a different scenario altogether as students graduate into joblessness.
But, of course, it needs to be mentioned that the whole country had one varsity before independence — University of Rhodesia — so employers were fishing from a small pool. Now there has been an explosion of varsities with the current number at 20 and still counting.
But there has not been concomitant developments. Job creation has been in inverse proportion to the increasing number of graduates mostly because of lopsided conveniently ultra-nationalistic economic policies that have enriched the few asset-stripping political elites — apropos of the $15 billion looted from the depleting Marange diamond fields — and devastated the economy and, consequently, employment.
It is this disequilibrium which has seen graduates roaming the streets and/or under-employed. Being a father of two graduates — one of them with a master’s degree — I can substantiate that. It cannot be closer to home than that.
What’s needed in Zimbabwe is a wholesale change in policy outlook and direction, not the trifling and insulting suggestion by State media columnist Nathaniel Manheru that unemployed graduates should embark on chicken-rearing or some such projects to start off with. What we need are practical and sustainable solutions, not absurd or nonsensical talk or ideas.
The first step is to dismantle the patronage system and cronyism that has devastated the economy as corrupt executives are shielded from arrest by powerful politicians with whom they share their filthy lucre by donating to, among money-laundering conduits, Zanu PF congresses and conferences. In other words, they are partners in crime.
- Chamisa under fire over US$120K donation
- Mavhunga puts DeMbare into Chibuku quarterfinals
- Pension funds bet on Cabora Bassa oilfields
- Councils defy govt fire tender directive
Keep Reading
These top executives and their political masters have — to put is generously — done well for themselves, but not for the people. Most of the money is circulating among themselves while the majority is deprived and forced to queue for hours on end at the banks only to get $50 for their ordeal. We have seen conduct from these executives that is unlawful and, most of all, criminal. Look at NetOne where suspended chief executive officer Reward Kangai and his band of thieves in top management have been siphoning millions to their private company. Zimbabwe does not need any worse sanctions than that.
So, Higher and Tertiary Education minister Jonathan Moyo’s invitation for bids to study the effects of sanctions cannot be justified in the face of this self-inflicted debilitating damage on the economy.
And people being people, a tax evasion or money-laundering amnesty should be offered as an incentive for these white-collar criminals to turn over some of their loot into State coffers.
This could go a long, long way in creating employment for graduates and others. Nearly $10 billion worth of undisclosed assets were declared following a one-time tax evasion amnesty window in India last week. This is a practical and workable approach because we know that much of the stolen money in Zimbabwe is irrecoverable, but if we get at least some of it back, that would greatly benefit the nation at large because the fiscus, as it stands, it empty.
We don’t need Manheru’s propagandistic political claptrap, but such practical measures. The law should descend like a hammer on those failing to take advantage of the amnesty because we need to start on a clean state.
So,it’s not any wonder that angry and frustrated students confronted President Robert Mugabe at the UZ graduation ceremony last week about their grim jobless plight. Former Zimbabwe National Students’ Union president Tonderai Dombo raised a placard that read: “Graduates today, marovha mangwana (loafers tomorrow), tipei mabasa (give us jobs)”. Indeed, the buck stops with Mugabe as Head of State and UZ Chancellor.
But Moyo went ballistic and was at his trivial, insulting, lying and irrational worst about the whole saga. Exploded Moyo: “Just because one is Mr Dombo (dombo is Shona for stone) does not mean that they should throw stones everywhere anytime. Disrupting a graduation ceremony can cost a degree!”
First, are people whose surname is Savage necessarily savages? Are Shona people called Gudo really baboons? Are Ndebele people called Nkawu actually monkeys? Moyo’s misplaced pun is not only distasteful, but defamatory.
Second, Dombo did not throw any stone; it was a peaceful demonstration. Since when were people fined $10 for public violence? Moyo has been caught lying and distorting again. This, again, makes Moyo liable to be suable in court for defamation. But then why dignify his insults with a lawsuit?
Third, as for withdrawing degrees for disrupting the graduation ceremony, prominent lawyer Tendai Biti exposed the emptiness of Moyo’s threat, saying: “It is not possible because those protesters are no longer students because they have graduated.” Despite Moyo masquerading as a super minister, who knows most and best on all issues, this rather small detail or differentiation completely eluded him.
Naturally, the politician in Biti couldn’t resist signing off with this rejoinder: “They (the protesters at the UZ graduation) obtained those degrees because of academic conduct, not as a donation . . . They can take away (First Lady) Grace (Mugabe)’s degree because it was an honorary one.”
Indeed, PhDs cannot become so cheap as to be a dollar for two. If they be so plentiful, they consequently become of little value.
But then this a reminder of the unintended consequences of Moyo’s reckless abandon. Indeed, Moyo ought to be reminded not to reopen some embarrassing chapters. It’s wise to leave things as they are. It’s prudent to avoid restarting or rekindling an old argument.
All in all, to borrow from South African satirist and social activist Pieter-Dirk Uys, the more Moyo criticises anyone — including the opposition, war veterans and protesting graduates — with such venom, the more it has the opposite effect of sounding like a rave review. The more condescending Moyo makes of something, the more people find positives in that something.
Thus, Moyo’s “joke” aside, the protesters’ degrees are not withdrawable.
Conway Nkumbuzo Tutani is a Harare-based columnist. Email [email protected]
