My Zimbabwe
Filed under: Economy, How Zimbabwe can be better, Opinion, Analysis, Advice
I have listened to a thousand critics about the Zimbabwean situation. People are busy pointing fingers, insulting and anything their troubled mind can think of. Almost everyone at one moment pointed a finger but has that ever changed the situation? No!!! Why? Only you and I know better.
In my own view, the economic situation has been a blessing in disguise. Despite the pain we went though as a nation, I strongly believe that we are a better paople. Let the sun in our situation rise and you will know exactly what I am talking about.
Looking back, I see someone thinking hard how he/she will manage to put food on the table the following morning, a civil servant struggling to make ends meet, any other employee seeing a dark cloud ahead. Isn’t it surprising to have people going to work everyday, parents/guardians managing to put at least something on the table?
Zimbabweans, let’s appreciate. We have been empowered more than any other nation. Can you imagine that we are now experts in establishing avenues of survival under the hardest of circumstances. Who ever thought we could have bacossi food, airtime, kombis etc?
No matter what the inflation rate says, we have managed to penetrate and explore new dimensions. Tell me which part of the world has never had a Zimbabwean? We have managed to expand our wings, explore new horizons and grab every opportunity at our disposal.
The younger generation have been disturbed academically but I believe that if they are given an opportunity to recover their lost academic year, they will be experts in Mathemetics, Accounting and Economics.
Let the sun rise and see my Zimbabwe. The darkest hour marks the breaking of dawn for a new day.
Food for thought!!!
Catch you on the rebound
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Comments
Was it worth all the pain? We have learnt many things from this but did we really have to go through murder and rape and hunger and poverty and so many other vices to realise that we are blessed?
This is interesting. I am waiting for news from the Tsvangirai press conference that was scheduled for 3p.m. today. The future is still uncertain. The present and past are clearer. What we have gone through is not pretty. Was it worth it? Well, we’ve already gone through it and so it can’t be undone. Will it teach us to value our blessings, safeguard them more, appreciate their true worth without taking them for granted? Do we deserve to suffer, in one way or the other, the way we do? But suffer we do but it is what we do with our suffering that determines whether it was worth it or not
It’s all about our mindset, isn’t it? After all lemonade is made out of a lemon…
“Isn’t it surprising to have people going to work everyday, parents/guardians managing to put at least something on the table?”
Personally I dont find it surprising. The reason why Zimbos have survived when production is close to zero cannot entirely be attributted to innovation, street-wisdom, determination and all so many of the positive reasons thrown around most of the time. Yes some have been innovative but some of the reasons Zimbos continue to survive in Zim include: 1. “Illegal” Ngoda from Mutare 2. Belonging to the “correct political party”, you will be above the law no matter how corrupt and scandalous you are if you belong to this party 3. A thriving “Simbi” market (simbi is slang for stolen property).Most zimbabwean now go to work steal. These are some of the negatives we rarely talk about but they will still need correction even in a new zim especially Corruption.
Solomon Kembos last blog post..Let Her Be Celebrated, Elevated
Congratulations Tindo for thinking differently about our situation. I am impressed at the optimism in your article. As the other comments before me I do not wish the things that have happened in Zimbabwe or will happen for any other country and its people because I do not think it is worth it. I do believe that you are very strong to manage to get that feeling of optimism when many are fighting depression. I love the alternative view.
Sephen Covey talks about the 90/10 rule. He says that 10% of life is made up of the things that happen to us and 90% is made up of OUR REACTIONS to those things.
Styles asks was it worth it? Weather or not it was worth it is therefore not the issue. The issue is what is our reaction as a people to the situation? Are we going to look forward like Tindo or be full of regrets?
In 1945 after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings Japan was devastated. But the Japanese swore that they would rebuild their country bigger and better. The CEO of SONY corporation at the time made a promise that one day Sony’s products would set the standard of quality in the world. Look where they are today…
This is turning out to be an interesting debate. Caleb the same Stephen Covey you quote makes a clear distinction about positive thinking and being positively realistic; if you remember the incident he cited when he trained a group of retail managers at a shopping centre. The same Steven Covey talks passionately about the law of balance in Habit 2:Begin With The End In Mind. 7 Habits is about being self-aware and holistically solving problems, you need to look at all angles to strike this balance if you are to have an effective “Centre”.
Albert Einstein once said “A clever person solves problems, a wise person avoids them”. The reason why we trying to highlight the negatives as Styles does is so that we have a holistic approach to the Zim situation, we can leverage the good that is the innovation etc and we build the negatives on top of them by turning them around. Maybe the situation is good enough but its not the best we can do. We dont need a political crisis to be resourceful, so if we can, lets avoid it in future. I’m sure a future leader, scientist or sportperson was lost in this madness and so why not put structures and systems (according to Covey again) so that this is not repeated. Good is the enemy of Great. This positivity is Good but we are capable of Greater stuff.
Even though I’m optimistic I don’t take it for granted that Zimbabwe will recover from this crisis and I also don’t subscribe to the contention that we are a ‘better’ people because of this crisis. I think it’s too early to reach that conclusion. My take is that there are positives and negatives in ANY situation. What makes you better is not the situation but your response to it. Since Covey is the flavour here I’ll also take a little from him. Covey quoting Victor Frankl observes that a person achieves ‘ultimate freedom’ when there is a gap between stimulus and response i.e your environment provides the stimulus but you choose how to respond to that. So your state of being is determined by your decisions not your environment. Historically speaking there is not much that is unique about the Zim crisis, nations have gone through convulsions and upheavals since time immemorial. Great nations have been built when citizens take responsibility, note I say citizens not leaders (i.e politicians, businessman/ women, clergy etc). The most profound changes are made when ordinary people do extraordinary things. If you are waiting on Tsvangirai or the political process to make things better then you may as well be whistling in the wind. I think a big flaw in the Zimbabwean mindset is that most of us don’t have a sense of ownership and lack a moral imperative to make our land a better place. Caleb you rightly quote the Sony founder’s vision whats profound about what he said is not only the context of a ruined Japan but he also says in “50 years time…” he was looking at the long term not the here and now. He set about to build for posterity. His vision was born out of a desire to leave something of lasting value not simply responding to the stomach. I certainly think it’s feasible for Zimbabwe to be a developed country in less than 50 years with a standrad of living comparable or better than most OECD nations. A cursory look at most developed nation economies shows you that achieving that is not rocket science. The only key ingredient we don’t have are visionaries a la Sony.
@Brian Gondo-”A cursory look at most developed nation economies shows you that achieving that is not rocket science. The only key ingredient we don’t have are visionaries a la Sony.”
You have really nailed it. We need visions not to respond to but to create possibilities, period. The Asian Tigers are an excellent example that we can also do it in 50 years as you say. Am amazed by the thinking of Zimbos. Lets keep on with these lively debates some of us are learning.
So, what do we have, people who debate about visionaries but are not visionaries themselves? If we think that we do not have visionaries a la Sony, then we are falling into the same old rut where we expect them to drop out of the sky, or be leaders of a political party.
Surely visionaries come from us, just as visionary leaders should be born from the people, their struggles, aspirations…Some of us have become better people, some have become worse but which ones will triumph at the end of the day?
Our bane is that we have tended to have the wrong people in key positions, instead of key people in key positions- thus the seeming dearth of visionaries…but they are there.
As part of the reconstruction is ernsuring, yes, that past mistakes are not repeated, and also that the right people get to do the right things in the right places at the right time.
But above all, that visionary bloggers, Zimbabweans with beautiful minds, look not to Sony and Japan while failing to see what they have- their own visonary and beautiful minds. After all, what contribution can be deemed too small? Does not a grain of rice tip the scale?
Indeed I believe there are visionaries amongst us but let that label be applied to us by others. Let the fruits of our minds and muscle bear testimony to our vision. Let us not be filled with empty pride and arrogance because the task before us is too grave for flattery and empty praise.
True. If we take seeds we believe are orange seeds, and one day, the trees we planted start bearing lemons, then we never had oranges to start of with. My point was not that we start singing each other praises, because we all know that it was people who were busy singing praises to themselves, about how wonderful they were and how Zim wouldn’t be Zim without them so loudly and incessantly that they began to think they were infallible, accountable to no one, who destroyed Zim in the process…
Nay my point was that it would be dangerous to start from a negative premise that Zim has no visionaries. While it is the fruits of such people’s labours, philosophies, etc, which will lead them to be labelled as such, I just think it is a little too pessimistic to start off from that premise that there are no Zimbabwean visionaries a la Sony.
As for some of the minds and thoughts that I have encountered on this site so far, well, it ’s amazing isn’t it, that Zim has so much wealth and it is what makes you lament that we we dragged into the mess we are in at all…but it also gives you hope for a brighter future…And that is quintessentially Zimbabwean isn’t it?