F�town doomed as Zims� return home
Ryder Gabathuse | Thursday November 23, 2017 15:40
Following former Zimbabwe president, Robert Mugabe’s resignation on Tuesday, the changing environment in the neighbouring country has set in motion a process for those in the Diaspora to return home. Mmegi caught up with a few Zimbabwean businesspeople operating in the second city, amongst them engineers, panel beaters, lawyers, service providers and professionals from a wide range of spectrum.
Huggins Jongwe is a professional panel beater who came to Botswana in 2002.
“We are here not because we wanted to. It’s just because we were forced by circumstances to be here. We worked very hard to open our own company,” he says, adding that, “What we do here we can as well do it back home in Zimbabwe”.
He was optimistic that whoever takes over, as the new president of Zimbabwe will create an enabling environment so that they can be able to run their professional businesses back home without any hindrance. Another professional panel beater Joe De Souza of Mototech Botswana based at the Dumela Industrial Site is adamant that after the Botswana government gave them a conducive environment to operate, it was time for them to return home and battle to revive their country’s economy.
“We can now all go back home in Zimbabwe with a smile and play a vital role in the reconstruction of our country’s economy,” declared De Souza who has been in Francistown for the past 30 years.
He said he was particularly driven here by the need to provide for his children.
A man who identified himself as Mpofu and a teacher at John Mackenzie English Medium School was over the moon about the developments in Zimbabwe.
“We are going to reap the immediate rewards of freedom in Zimbabwe and our plan is to reconstruct the economy of Zimbabwe from where it was,” he says.
As Mpofu and his compatriots engage in the ideals of reconstruction of their country’s economy, it goes without saying that he cannot do it better whilst engaged in his current job at one of the country’s premier private schools. The only logical thing will be for him to cross the border back home.
Edmore is another Zimbabwean professional who grew up under the Mugabe rule. He has experienced both the good and the bad of the Mugabe’s administration. He is convinced that Mugabe’s bad side of things outweighed his good side.
“We now cry for the future of our children so that they can have a better future. If Mugabe was going to rule forever, he was going to corrupt everybody. Our children were going to see him as a hero and follow him like a textbook, which was going to be very bad.”
Edmore is in a league of those who have chosen to go home and add value in changing things anywhere they could.
Gift Thobiwa is also a panel beater who is keen to return home and add value in changing things for the better.
“We are so happy and I hope we will start rebuilding our country’s economy which will surely benefit the whole southern Africa region,” he says, encouraging fellow Zimbabweans to go back home and start the process of rebuilding their country.
While Zimbabweans contemplate returning to their country of origin, such an act will leave the city of Francistown more vulnerable. The city’s economy was anchored upon the collapsed mines in its environs. In particular, the closure of the Tati Nickel Mine last year October shed about 764 direct jobs and thousands more jobs indirectly crippled through companies that were contracted to the mine.