Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front Senator Monica Mutsvangwa, who lived in China for five years when her husband was ambassador to that country, said while it was a good idea to have large families to boost investment, this should only be encouraged when the economy had improved. She said while in China one could not talk about investing in a country with a population of 14 million because this did not make sense to the Chinese.
China is the most populous country in the world with an estimated 1.4 billion people. Its most populous city, Shanghai has an estimated 24 million people.
“In our efforts as diplomats in China to try and bring a lot of companies to Zimbabwe, the first question they would ask is what the population of Zimbabwe is. The moment you tell them we are about 14 million; they will all look around and say ah, I do not know how I can continue,” Mutsvangwa said.
“However, we need to look at many other things if we are going to encourage our people out there to have more children. We need to see if we are developing as a country, our infrastructure, do we have enough schools to send these children to?
“Do we have enough hospitals to send these children to, have we done enough in terms of food security because you may end up having 15 and lose 10 of them because of malnutrition…..”
Full debate
*HON. SEN. MABHUGU: Thank you Mr. President for giving me this opportunity to contribute to the motion that was moved by Hon. Musaka and seconded by Hon. Murwira. A large population is very important but, there are challenges that come with that. Firstly, if we compare the life that people had long back and that they used to bear more children, the children used to wear traditional clothes made out of animal skins. But now, things have changed because you need to buy proper clothes for your children. So, having more children depends on whether you can look after them or not.
Secondly, when we increase the number of children, you need to make sure that they go to school. Nowadays we see that other children, especially in the rural constituencies where we come from, children are failing to go to school and they are failing to send those children to school. So, should we have more children so that they end up just sitting at home? Right now, they are unable to get any employment and I do not think that that is a wise move. On the issue of investment, that is a difficult one; we might bear more children thinking that they will invest, but we also need to address the issues that we have in this nation. I do not think 51% will attract any investors. So we also need to address issues that will attract foreign direct investment. There are a lot of things but I will only touch on a few issues that really are pertinent to me.
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