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Attempts at resuscitating Zimbabwe’s moribund economy have to be underpinned by a solid skills base.

This was the message from Zimbabwe’s new Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai when he addressed a high level meeting of senior business executives in Harare.

Tsvangirai informed the senior business executives attending a workshop hosted by KM Financial Solutions that the public service was reeling from an acute skills shortage that has seen one ministry, that of Public Works, having to contend with the services of two structural engineers against an establishment of sixty.

Zimbabwe has witnessed three waves of skills migration since independence.

The first wave occurred between1980 -1983 where 19 300 white professionals migrated to South Africa, Australia and New Zealand.Government affirmative action programmes to achieve employment equity among the black majority triggered this initial wave.
On its part, the new government then accelerated skills development through apprenticeships. Consequently, many of the skilled whites were replaced without much haemorrhage to the economy.

The second wave of skills migration occurred in the early 1990s where close to 500 000 skilled professionals migrated largely as a reaction to the difficult economic conditions necessitated by the adoption of an economic structural adjustment programme in 1992.
This particular skills migration included both white and black skills.

The final wave, and probably the severest of them all, occurred in 2000 and coincided with the fast-track land-reform programme, the Constitutional Referendum and General Election.
It is estimated that close to five million Zimbabweans left the country between 2000 and 2007. The political violence, appropriation of private property, and worsening economic conditions were critical push factors under this third wave. Professionals ranging from farmers, engineers, academics, health personnel, teachers, skilled artisans all left the country in droves mostly to neighbouring South Africa, and some to Botswana and Namibia.

Unlike under the first two waves of emigration in which government was able to do something in terms of replacing lost skills, the third and last wave poses severe challenges for government, industry and commerce.

It is against this background that Prime Minister Tsvangirai stated that one of the key priorities of the unity government is “the repatriation of skills”. It is a bit of an oxymoron that a country that boasts of one of the highest rates of unemployment in the world can seriously talk of skills shortage.

While Zimbabwe has made significant investments since independence in ensuring access to education and thus high literacy, this does not necessarily translate to work-related skills vital for economic success. It takes additional resources (chiefly, time and money) to develop such skills.  Zimbabwe has thus lost this limited pool of highly trained cadres and these are skills that cannot be replaced overnight.

This is the challenge facing the country and is the reason why it is imperative to create an enabling environment for these skills to voluntarily come back home in support of national development.  An enabling environment is one which respects civil liberties. The political intolerance of the past few years should never have room in this new Zimbabwe.

I quite agree with the observations of the new Prime Minister that Zimbabwe needs a new “value system” predicated on these civil liberties.  It does not make sense to talk about economic stabilisation when this country does not respect these civil liberties. They are not only a political imperative but also a business imperative because they define how things such as respect for property rights and corporate governance evolve and shape business relations.

Over the past ten years, Zimbabwe has become one jungle of lawlessness. There is need to restore rule of law.

It is fact that we cannot expect to revive the economy without the participation of all stakeholders from business, to donors and even churches.  At the core of this stakeholder map are the skills-the human capital- that is resident locally and externally. It is these skills that will get Zimbabwe working again. But for that to happen, there is need to create the right conditions within the framework of the inclusive government that would serve as a pull factor.

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lAnthony Jongwe is a Principal Consultant at Global Workforce Solutions (Pvt) Ltd — a management consultancy company that offers innovative workforce management solutions to private, public and not-for-profit organisations. He can be contacted at consultgws@gmail.com