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Give Zimbabwe's poor mine workers shares too
Zimbabwe Unemployed People's Association (ZUPA)
February 27, 2012

These are times when I would not like to be a Prime Minister or President of any country in the world. Leaders in the West are facing mounting economic challenges that have already influenced politics in Spain, Italy, Greece, and Portugal and may yet influence how the French, Americans and Germans will vote soon.

In Africa, leaders are struggling to prove to their electorates that they are independent and uninfluenced by the interests of the West. It is amazing how all leaders promise heaven on earth and "maximum two terms" only to renege on both delivery and leaving after the two terms.

We may as well abandon this myth that anyone who is not Mandela will leave office voluntarily after one term or that unless the ordinary citizens decide to participate in empowering themselves, no leader even those who drink holy wine at communion every Sunday will do so.

In the Arab world, no-one is clear where the uprisings will end or what will happen once rocks are thrown and guns start blazing.

Zimbabwe is a nation that went through a brutal war to gain independence. Our route to political stability should therefore never be one where blood is spilt, but one where the ordinary citizens have political power to hold their government to account. I am told by those in the know: "Money talks politics. Goldman Sachs had influence on who runs America." I can list America's presidents, but I have no way of proving if Goldman Sachs had any influence despite being one of the world's richest companies.

I am told through my work with ZUPA; the organisation that represents the interests of millions of unemployed Zimbabweans that Zimbabwe's economic empowerment is the key to a democratic state. I am challenged to research on whether there has ever been a politically stable country with 90 percent unemployment rate whose citizens live in dire poverty. I am informed too that economic prosperity for the majority is equivalent to democracy and political stability.

If this was to be the case, Zimbabwe has to achieve and protect that stability urgently. For companies, farmers and miners, it means looking after the interests of their employees. For the Government, it is ensuring that the laws and policies promote growth and investment.

Zimbabwe's farm workers and mining employees have for generations been poorly paid. This goes back to the time most of them migrated from Malawi and Zambia to work in mines in what was then Rhodesia. The Chamber of Mines maintains the wages for some mine workers are still pathetic today.

The nearest thing one gets to a slum in Zimbabwe could be found in the mining residential compounds most of which were shack bachelors' quarters. Most workers were travelling from Malawi and Zambia leaving their families behind. Zimbabwean workers travelled to work and stayed there during the week leaving their families in the rural tribal lands reserved for Africans. Things have changed with many bringing their families to join them making life very difficult indeed.

The conditions remain poor today for the average mine worker in what was called class B. The wages for the mine worker are so low, they are struggling to make ends meet or to escape poverty.

The mining companies in Zimbabwe have a perfect opportunity to change all this and avoid disruptive industrial action as is the case in South Africa. They could easily economically empowerment all of their workers by allocating 10 percent of their shares to employee schemes in partial compliance with the Indigenisation and Empowerment legislation.

In the past two weeks, Britain has seen a huge outcry over bonuses for bank managers with some being forced not to take the bonuses. The fundamental issue here is that it is seen as wrong in tough economic times to see a few getting so much money leaving the rest behind in poverty.

For the scheme to make a real difference, the gap between management and the ordinary employee must be minimised. Just like the British are encouraging equitable distribution of bonuses, I encourage the mining companies to exercise blindness to positions of the employees in the management chain and ensure that all employees from tea boy to General Manager have equal share of the 10 percent share-lot.

This could turn out to be a viable way of empowering ordinary people and retention.

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