Opinion / Columnist
Millennium Development Goals! Did Zimbabwe miss the targets or did the world miss the point!
15 Nov 2015 at 13:09hrs | Views
Zimbabwe seriously missed the targets of the MDG and the world missed the point too. President Mugabe was signatory to the 2000 Millennium Development Goals. He together with 189 countries pledged to 1) eradicate poverty, 2) to make primary education available to all children, 3) ensure gender equalities in all aspects of the country's development, 4) to reduce child mortality. There are eight of them but it is important to mention those first four and not eight because already it was too much for a country like Zimbabwe to embark on those eight noble goals. Zimbabwe was already off-track before he and all other Heads of States signed the Millennium Development Goals.
The MDGs advocate the need to guarantee the citizens life with adequate food and income, access to basic education, as education is a right to every child in any country. The MDGs emphasized availability to health education clean water and sanitation. The empowerment of women was paramount to any development of every country. Zimbabwe is lagging behind and the present administrations, with their unproductive and self-destructive policies are not able to uplift the lives of the poorest or ever to get some decent living.
Zimbabwe even before the grand signing of the MDGs was in economic freefall. Zimbabwe had gone to Congo to take part in a war that was not Zimbabwe's and the financial and human costs aspect of the war was unbudgeted. The costs that are not known to this date may have cost the country over a billion US dollars if the cost of sustaining the war was one million US dollars a day.
Again, President Mugabe had given War-Veterans almost half a billion US dollars as payment in taking part in the 1970 liberation war against Smith regime. Head of State of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe who consciously signs a MDG declaration to reduce poverty in the country did not need to kill the very cow that feeds the nation; the white farmers of Zimbabwe who produced en-masse to even sell their produce to the rest of Africa (bread basket of Africa). Before the farm invasions of the year 2000 Zimbabwe was self sufficient in food, a good leader should have known this that to temper with the golden cow because of self ego, just to prove something at the detriment of millions of people was not worth it.
More than sixty percent of the population do not have safe drinking water today in 2015. Most of the population in rural areas do not have toilets. Basic sanitation is scarce of absent in most densely populated urban and rural areas leading to cholera and diarrhoeal diseases. 5000 children under the age of five die still to date due to water borne diseases. Safe drinking water and basic sanitation is way away, out of reach of the majority of the population.
In 2015 we are told by the President of Zimbabwe that a woman can never be equal to a man at an international conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The good question is why he signed the MDGs that underpin the gender equality as one of its noble aspirations. We wished Dr. Nkosazana Zuma could have challenged the Chairman of the African Union, President Robert Gabriel Mugabe for undermining her office!
In 2010 all participants including the President Mugabe was at the UNDP conference that again emphasised the need to meet the MDGs by 2015. Countries were supposed to renew their strategies through action plans and enhanced policies in support of the MDGs. The MDGs are as a matter of fact urgent, and they are to be accelerated for the Goals to be met by those countries mostly lagging behind and poverty stricken. The global recession, food and fuel crisis and indeed the reality of climate change may have been some the factors that impeded the noble goals implementation. In the case of Zimbabwe the government's misplaced policies hindered the implementation of the MDGs.
President Nyerere of Tanzania once said we have to be very careful about our development in Africa; we need to match global developments processes as we cannot develop outside the global trends as we are part of the family of nations. It was in this backdrop that he thought the philosophy of Ujama was not matching the global development aspirations and pace. He, instead challenged the scholars to deconstruct the philosophy of Ujama to meet local and global challenges.
If President Nyerere in his later years of his administration could predict this global trend, we wonder if this so called educated Mugabe with seven degrees knows what he is doing in Zimbabwe's economic development in year 2015! But President Nyerere, unlike President Mugabe, with his policy of Ujama was an unquestionable leader of great integrity as he was far from selfish and self-centred; he proposed equitable economic production that fused some traditional values and socialism as an entity. Privy of the neo-liberal policies of ESAP, he wanted to side step this prescription from World Bank World Bank Groups, policies that had dismally failed in some most parts of African countries. Ujama was a desperate attempt by President Nyerere to avoid inequalities and elitisms in Tanzania's early development of its independence, some scholars will call it inward oriented. President Nyerere's vision for Tanzania and Africa is still unmatched to this date even by eloquent scholars of the African continent.
It is not the failure of the late President Nyerere but the absence of Africa social-scientists and scholars who are supposed to deconstruct Ujama and to interpret African needs and aspirations to fit into the global economic and social development.
Parallel to Ujama, the South African Freedom Charter too was a timeless document that would have been a solution for the entire African continental needs and aspirations. The Freedom Charter resounds that all people in South Africa will be equal in all aspects of economical and social of South African development. The country shall share the wealth, share the land and be equal before the law, human rights will be sacrosanct, guarantee the work for all and open all avenues of universal education to be reachable to all in the land, afford to give decent housing and facilitate security to all citizens in the land. The Freedom Charter speaks eloquently from peace and friendship to all citizens black and white people who live in South Africa.
But we all know what the neo-liberal ideologies that has been prescribed by the world bodies has manifested in the ANC politics to deny those timeless aspirations to the ordinary peoples of South Africa, the ordinary people of SA have been reduced to mere spectators of their own dreams of a free South Africa, economically and politically. The ANC have adopted neo-liberalism to the letter, after more than 20 years of independence, there is no sign of just societies envisaged in the Freedom Charter, it has become a mere decoration in Freedom Tower in Klipstown and in all corporate boardrooms of corporate capitalists leaving a poor South African poorer than during the time of Apartheid era. Capitalism in South Africa is even ruder than it was during the Apartheid administration.
It is not failure of President of Nelson Mandela but the absence of social scientists and scholars who are supposed to deconstruct the Freedom Charter and to interpret African needs and aspirations to fit into the local and global economic and social development.
The MDGs, Ubuntu, the Freedom Charter, and the President Nyerere's Ujama are the cornerstone of Africa's development. We challenge African scholars and indeed global scholars to come up with workable ideologies, policies and philosophies that will think through local needs and empower Africans to be equal global players.
It is indeed naive and almost stupid to imply socialism is Soviet era socialism and we fail to think beyond the falling of the Berlin-wall, and the subsequent political and economic developments thereafter. Most countries in Scandinavian deconstructed socialism to meet their social ethical ends well before the fall of the Berlin Wall. The Scandinavian socialism has some of its roots in the culture of its people. We challenge scholars to deconstruct the MDGs, Ubuntu, the Freedom Charter and President Nyerere's Ujama to meet Africa's social and economic ethical ends.
The MDGs advocate the need to guarantee the citizens life with adequate food and income, access to basic education, as education is a right to every child in any country. The MDGs emphasized availability to health education clean water and sanitation. The empowerment of women was paramount to any development of every country. Zimbabwe is lagging behind and the present administrations, with their unproductive and self-destructive policies are not able to uplift the lives of the poorest or ever to get some decent living.
Zimbabwe even before the grand signing of the MDGs was in economic freefall. Zimbabwe had gone to Congo to take part in a war that was not Zimbabwe's and the financial and human costs aspect of the war was unbudgeted. The costs that are not known to this date may have cost the country over a billion US dollars if the cost of sustaining the war was one million US dollars a day.
Again, President Mugabe had given War-Veterans almost half a billion US dollars as payment in taking part in the 1970 liberation war against Smith regime. Head of State of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe who consciously signs a MDG declaration to reduce poverty in the country did not need to kill the very cow that feeds the nation; the white farmers of Zimbabwe who produced en-masse to even sell their produce to the rest of Africa (bread basket of Africa). Before the farm invasions of the year 2000 Zimbabwe was self sufficient in food, a good leader should have known this that to temper with the golden cow because of self ego, just to prove something at the detriment of millions of people was not worth it.
More than sixty percent of the population do not have safe drinking water today in 2015. Most of the population in rural areas do not have toilets. Basic sanitation is scarce of absent in most densely populated urban and rural areas leading to cholera and diarrhoeal diseases. 5000 children under the age of five die still to date due to water borne diseases. Safe drinking water and basic sanitation is way away, out of reach of the majority of the population.
In 2015 we are told by the President of Zimbabwe that a woman can never be equal to a man at an international conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The good question is why he signed the MDGs that underpin the gender equality as one of its noble aspirations. We wished Dr. Nkosazana Zuma could have challenged the Chairman of the African Union, President Robert Gabriel Mugabe for undermining her office!
In 2010 all participants including the President Mugabe was at the UNDP conference that again emphasised the need to meet the MDGs by 2015. Countries were supposed to renew their strategies through action plans and enhanced policies in support of the MDGs. The MDGs are as a matter of fact urgent, and they are to be accelerated for the Goals to be met by those countries mostly lagging behind and poverty stricken. The global recession, food and fuel crisis and indeed the reality of climate change may have been some the factors that impeded the noble goals implementation. In the case of Zimbabwe the government's misplaced policies hindered the implementation of the MDGs.
If President Nyerere in his later years of his administration could predict this global trend, we wonder if this so called educated Mugabe with seven degrees knows what he is doing in Zimbabwe's economic development in year 2015! But President Nyerere, unlike President Mugabe, with his policy of Ujama was an unquestionable leader of great integrity as he was far from selfish and self-centred; he proposed equitable economic production that fused some traditional values and socialism as an entity. Privy of the neo-liberal policies of ESAP, he wanted to side step this prescription from World Bank World Bank Groups, policies that had dismally failed in some most parts of African countries. Ujama was a desperate attempt by President Nyerere to avoid inequalities and elitisms in Tanzania's early development of its independence, some scholars will call it inward oriented. President Nyerere's vision for Tanzania and Africa is still unmatched to this date even by eloquent scholars of the African continent.
It is not the failure of the late President Nyerere but the absence of Africa social-scientists and scholars who are supposed to deconstruct Ujama and to interpret African needs and aspirations to fit into the global economic and social development.
Parallel to Ujama, the South African Freedom Charter too was a timeless document that would have been a solution for the entire African continental needs and aspirations. The Freedom Charter resounds that all people in South Africa will be equal in all aspects of economical and social of South African development. The country shall share the wealth, share the land and be equal before the law, human rights will be sacrosanct, guarantee the work for all and open all avenues of universal education to be reachable to all in the land, afford to give decent housing and facilitate security to all citizens in the land. The Freedom Charter speaks eloquently from peace and friendship to all citizens black and white people who live in South Africa.
But we all know what the neo-liberal ideologies that has been prescribed by the world bodies has manifested in the ANC politics to deny those timeless aspirations to the ordinary peoples of South Africa, the ordinary people of SA have been reduced to mere spectators of their own dreams of a free South Africa, economically and politically. The ANC have adopted neo-liberalism to the letter, after more than 20 years of independence, there is no sign of just societies envisaged in the Freedom Charter, it has become a mere decoration in Freedom Tower in Klipstown and in all corporate boardrooms of corporate capitalists leaving a poor South African poorer than during the time of Apartheid era. Capitalism in South Africa is even ruder than it was during the Apartheid administration.
It is not failure of President of Nelson Mandela but the absence of social scientists and scholars who are supposed to deconstruct the Freedom Charter and to interpret African needs and aspirations to fit into the local and global economic and social development.
The MDGs, Ubuntu, the Freedom Charter, and the President Nyerere's Ujama are the cornerstone of Africa's development. We challenge African scholars and indeed global scholars to come up with workable ideologies, policies and philosophies that will think through local needs and empower Africans to be equal global players.
It is indeed naive and almost stupid to imply socialism is Soviet era socialism and we fail to think beyond the falling of the Berlin-wall, and the subsequent political and economic developments thereafter. Most countries in Scandinavian deconstructed socialism to meet their social ethical ends well before the fall of the Berlin Wall. The Scandinavian socialism has some of its roots in the culture of its people. We challenge scholars to deconstruct the MDGs, Ubuntu, the Freedom Charter and President Nyerere's Ujama to meet Africa's social and economic ethical ends.
Source - Nomazulu Thata
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