Hwange Central legislator Daniel Molokerla-Tsiye says the poverty in Zimbabwe today is unacceptable because God blessed the country with a lot of natural resources.
“We cannot continue to remain poor while foreigners come and mine our wealth and leave us poor,” the legislator said in his contribution to the debate on introducing a law to make it mandatory for companies to have community ownership schemes.
“Poverty is a curse, poverty is not a blessing, we must not accept poverty,” Mplokela-Tisye said. “The poverty that I see in Hwange today, the poverty that I see in Zimbabwe today is totally unacceptable because God has blessed this country with a lot of natural resources. God has blessed this country with more than 60 minerals.
“We have got platinum, gold, coal, diamonds, lithium and many others but we cannot continue to remain poor while foreigners come and mine our wealth and leave us poor.”
The legislator said the people of Hwange were today worse off than they were at independence.
Here is his full contribution.
HON. MOLOKELA-TSIYE. Thank you so much Madam Speaker for the opportunity to debate on this important motion raised by Hon. Hlatywayo. I do support the motion to a very large extent and I think it is a proposal in the right direction. Let me start by quoting the Word of God. In Ecclesiastics 10 verse 7, the Bible says, ‘I have seen something very strange in this world. I have seen princes walking on their foot, while beggars riding on white horses or on horses rather’.
This is the situation that applies to my community. I am from Hwange. I am a son of the coal. I was born of the coal. Where I come from, the coal is supposed to uplift our lives. It is supposed to improve our lives as the local communities but what is happening today in Hwange is exactly the opposite. Those who were born and raised in Hwange like me watch while people from foreign lands, thousands of kilometres away from Hwange, come to Hwange, establish mines, mine the coal and take away the profits from the coal to their foreign lands. The people of Hwange are today now poorer than they were in 1980.
In the last 45 years, their standard of living has collapsed. It has moved from good to bad, from bad to worse. Today, everyone who is born in Hwange is born poor while Hwange is a town built on coal, the black diamond. Why is it so? When I was a child growing up in Hwange in the 1980s, the company was owned by Anglo-American Corporation. When I was a child growing up in Hwange, the Hwange that I saw and the Hwange that I see today are complete opposites.
The company that used to run the coal mine in the 1980s understood totally the concept of corporate social responsibility. It invested a lot, not just in the employees, but in the communities. It invested a lot in housing. All types of houses were found in Hwange. It invested a lot in water supplies. We drew water from the Zambezi River, 42 kilometers from my town. It invested in healthcare. The Colliery Hospital was one of the most modern and one of the best hospitals in Zimbabwe. It invested a lot in road systems and education. I am a beneficiary of the Hwange Colliery Company in terms of funding my education and I feel privileged that the company funded my education to be what I am today.
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