Career Choice Cross Roads

First President of Zimbabwe Canaan Banana & First President SA Nelson Mandela

Before I turned 40 I never imagined I would ever be passionate about Zimbabwean politics the way I am now until I started engaging Zimbabwe from diverse backgrounds in 2008.

My life before that was centred around spending my free time socialising with South African middle class and grass-roots families. I was basically just one of those working professionals who was inspired by American Black celebs like 2Pac, Snoop Dogg, Dre Dre and the Luther Vandros, TP, Monica & MJB's with a touch of Kwaito and South African Jazz artist.

Zimbabwe politics is like a drug addiction, it's hard to pull out once you have immersed yourself and understand the deep challenges faced by Zimbabweans. 

Though in the back of my mind I have been building up enough courage to enter active politics before the end of 2016, my experience working with a small group of Zimbabweans is making me have doubts about my intentions to commit my time and resources in a more aggressive and visible manner on the ground.

I have no doubts that the individuals I have been working with all want whats best for Zimbabwe but it is discipline in terms of time management and ability to effectively accomplish our agreed objectives that has been the greatest concern and nightmare. I appreciate that some of the challenges that we have all faced are influenced largely by resource availability and at times the lack of basic services in Zimbabwe and Southern Africa in general.

As for my engagement with technocrats and professionals in the business sector, many have beautiful sounding ideas but are reluctant to bee seen in a position that may be viewed as going against the status quo, as it is viewed as biting the hand that feeds you..so the popular question has been 'what is in it for me?' or a straight forward request like 'I want the Mines portfolio'. That for me means most go into politics for the wrong reasons and if that is the kind of mentality one will come across in all political entities then we have a very serious problem in our hands.

Shamiso Children's Home Marondera

I was starting to believe I can hack it like my late father and Madiba did but on a smaller scale but maybe I should just return to philanthropy and focus on building my small business empire to ensure I can retire with peace of mind or just to to work for International Organisations like UN and AU focussed on a much broader global community...my father's generation were a very rare fearless breed, perhaps the reason they were able to accomplish so much in their lives.

Our generation focusses a lot on 'self' than the 'collective' and we are failing to transform some of their great ideas and our own to practical visible outcomes. I do not have all the answers but are playing my part when ever the opportunity presents its self to do so. 

There many others in a far better position than I am trying to play their part I have great respect form them, whilst there are some abusing their position and influence to pursue the 'self' interests that I highlighted earlier thats reducing opportunities for a much broader sections of society. 

Are we doing enough as individuals and a collective to challenge what can be described as a corrupted norm in our socio-economic and political environments?

The African Diaspora Professional

The struggle working in the Diaspora.

"Institutionalised discrimination refers to the unjust and discriminatory mistreatment of an individual or group of individuals by society and its institutions as a whole, through unequal selection or bias, intentional or unintentional; as opposed to individuals making a conscious choice to discriminate.”

I know someone that I shall refer to as a 'second class citizen' who previously worked in management role in Africa, but migrated to the U.K because of family, desperate for a job they sacrificed their career progression and took a pay cut and accepted a much lower role in company A.

Company A recruited new employees which 'second class citizen' had to train to understand their roles. Second class citizen suffered personal abuse from some of the new employees but remained strong as they appreciated the value their job added to their life.

Eventually one of managers resigned and later one of the abusive employees was dismissed and 'second class citizen' was forced to work from home. The same cycle of recruitment and training of new staff continued, second class citizen thought after all the years of hard work and commitment perhaps their opportunity to move back to their management role was now possible.

Second class citizen was shocked when one of the new employees they trained called them an advised they were now the new manager. Second class citizen was not even invited to apply for the role or advised by the senior management that they were going to be looking for a new manager. Second class citizen was very upset by this and if life was as simple as leaving one job for another, I'm sure second class citizen would have already left the company.

But the reality is job hunting as a second class citizen has become more and more of a lottery, so second class citizen has to just adjust to their new environment and just try make the best of it, because where second class citizen comes from, people can not even have a meal all day.

This story is some of the realities of the Diaspora, the African Migrant worker, these are the sacrifices some have to make just for the sake of being able to access good public services they struggle to get in their home country.

Zimbabwe needs it's Diaspora citizens.

Zimbabwe needs it's Diaspora citizens.

This is not to suggest that those in Zimbabwe are not capable of running the country or that those in Diaspora are special, but the brutal truth is most of those who migrated have had the opportunity to experience different socio-economic and political environments in more stable economic and political conditions than those in Zimbabwe.

The Diaspora have also not been exposed to the deep retrogressive culture of corruption that has almost become an acceptable norm to some sections of our society. I know some might want to argue that those who have been exposed to it are now in a better position to deal with it as they understand it but how then do we identify those men and women of integrity amongst our deeply scared population?

As I see it just from the political leadership arena there is a sense of desperation for relevance and the results of those pursuits is inflated ego's and pursuit of quick fast-track solutions in favour of thoroughly researched and gradual implementation of ideas that have a lasting impression.

The downside as to Diaspora involvement is most of them now have very young families who would require access to affordable education and health care besides being able to find employment or business opportunities that would give them that sense of a purposeful life.

In short every citizen irrespective of location needs to have that sense of security, not just as in law enforcement but in being able to fully unleash their potential without being threatened by an unstable socio-economic and political environment.

So why do we sometimes sense tension between between citizens of the same country who have access to different opportunities in different socio-economic and political environments?

It's FEAR of the UNKNOWN, the THREAT created by divisive sentiment 'THEY' instead of 'WE'..

In politics and sociology, divide and rule (or divide and conquer) is gaining and maintaining power by breaking up larger concentrations of power into pieces that individually have less power than the one implementing the strategy.

The concept refers to a strategy that breaks up existing power structures and prevents smaller power groups from linking up.

In South Africa, United Kingdom or even the United States how often do you hear political parties being labelled 'OPPOSITION'? It's either the Democrats, the Republicans, the Labour Party, the Tories, the ANC, the D.A and the EFF, this is because political parties are sub-structures of a nation, so in a sense they belong to that nation even though they may differ in terms of the approach to leadership and development of the country.

When terms like 'opposition' are constantly used it's almost as if we are always divided on a way forward when in reality we actually have far more in common than those window dressed differences that are used to differentiate our views on national policies.

Having a different view/perspective should not make us enemies to such an extent that we even kill each other and disassociate ourselves as being citizens of Zimbabwe.

It is only through our collective efforts, compromises and tolerance that we can build bridges of understanding and make Zimbabwe great again.

"None but ourselves can free our minds"