Senator says Zimbabwe needs more people to be viable- family should have minimum of eight children

Zimbabwe has too few people to be economically viable so the government needs to come up with a population growth policy under which each family will have a minimum of eight children, a Zimbabwean Senator said recently.

Mike Musaka said the population growth policy was necessary because Zimbabwe was failing to attract effective investors because of its small population.

He even doubted that the country had 14 million people arguing that this figure was political.

“If you look at the population of Zimbabwe and compare even with those countries that are even five times smaller than Zimbabwe, take for example England, it is five times or four times smaller than Zimbabwe. It has got a population of 76 million or more and the dynamics of development is enormous,” Musaka said in his motion calling for the promotion of population growth in Zimbabwe.

“We have only about 14 million people and even that 14 million may actually be a political figure, we could be less than that.  The country is vast with many resources but empty. We have no people.  We should be serious about development. 

“The issue here is a very serious one.  Let us take development alone  – which investor would come to Zimbabwe to invest seriously  for 14 million people? Even that 14 million, we will only have may be less than 200 000 people who are an effective consumer of any product, seriously.”

Musaka said the small population was a security threat as Zimbabwe could run out of soldiers if it goes to war.

“Madam President, on population again, I will take you through history again the problem of having less people. Even if there was a conflict, we cannot fight a war because we will run out of people.  We do not have the people, we cannot even fight it. This is very serious in terms of security; we just do not have the soldiers,” he said.

The Mashonaland West senator said non-governmental organisations that are currently financing birth control programmes should be asked to reverse their populations and instead pour that money into population growth.

Ironically, Musaka’s motion was supported by several senators including women and those from opposition parties.

Here is what he said in full

Continued next page

(256 VIEWS)