MASAWARA Group founder and chief executive officer Shingai Mutasa says business should help politicians build the economy and the region.
Speaking at the In Conversation with Trevor (ICWT) Africa Day Gala Dinner held last Thursday in Harare, Mutasa said the mindset of the Chinese was correct as it allowed them to grow into an economic powerhouse.
This mindset, Mutasa added, involved them realising that they needed to make significant investment to achieve growth.
“We have to help our political brothers and sisters to build this region. We are responsible. We should not leave it to them alone and that is the one weakness that we in business have had. We sit back, we watch and look on. But we have a role to play as business, an incredibly important role and that is of business,” he said.
“Not as politicians, but as business. My belief is that we must help embark on infrastructure that builds this Sadc region into one. We have to get to a point where we are Sadc. The mentality, psychology, legality of Sadc must be something that we embrace fully including our roads, rail, and power generation.”
He added: “If think we are going to be successful without those four or five elements being at the forefront of our minds, we are playing. We have to help our government realise this, we have to help our Sadc realise the same.”
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Mutasa said the challenge was that despite not being colonised, African mindsets were still colonised which would keep both the country and continent from progressing if not changed.
“We need to strengthen our political leadership. You know recently I studied two political parties. One, the British Conservative Party and the other one, the Chinese Communist Party. The ideology of these two political parties is like chalk and cheese, but there is something that I learnt that makes both of them incredibly successful,” he said.
“When you look at what the Conservative Party has done over the last 300 years you have to respect what they have done. And when you look at what China’s Communist Party has done over the last 45 years it’s out of this world, so you got to respect these institutions. The one thing that they do is they recruit the best and the brightest.”
He said the two parties’ success involved them recruiting the best and the brightest from a very early age and this is what makes them successful.
“Political parties must learn from this and recruit those young men and women. The long-term strategies to achieve our vision needs some of our greatest minds to think through, lead and implement our future,” Mutasa said.
The ICWT is a weekly podcast owned by media mogul, Trevor Ncube, that is nearing 10 million lifetime views on YouTube and rapidly growing across all social media platforms.
Ncube is the founder and owner of the private media firm, Alpha Media Holdings, publishers of NewsDay, The Standard and Zimbabwe Independent. AMH also owns online broadcaster Heart & Soul.