Why should I have 10 children when they cannot benefit from Zimbabwe’s resources- Senator asks?

On the issue of employment, there is none now.  A child finishes university education but they cannot get a job.  Our children are now living in the Diaspora because there are no jobs.  If we were more organised, all our children would be getting jobs in Zimbabwe. So, we need to look into that and address it to ensure that development takes place.

On the issue of the fact that children can die, yes, that is God’s choice. I had an uncle who had over five children but now he is left with one.  I also have an uncle who has two but those two are looking after him but the one who has 15 and has one left is not being looked after by his child.  So, let us first create a conducive environment for us to bear more children.  With those few words, I thank you.

HON. SEN. MUTSVANGWA: I rise to commend the mover and the seconder of this motion.  In principle, I totally agree with it. Without a good population, it is difficult to draw investors.  From experience, I can talk a little bit on that.  The Chinese for example; I lived in China for five years, why that country has succeeded so much and over the last 40 years they have moved maybe from the bottom of the least of all countries to be the second largest economy in the whole world.  They have taken advantage of their population.  In China, if you move around as a tourist, the biggest percentage maybe 96%, everywhere you go is full with domestic tourists.  They have also taught their people to visit places of interest in their own country raising revenue for the country.  I totally agree.

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.  What we have done as a country in China, we came together as a SADC group, so that when we spoke to these companies, we gave them a population of 250 million which is the population of SADC and that is when they got interested.  I am talking about the big businesses.

However, I tend to agree with what the Hon. Senator has just been saying.  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.  So in terms of food security, what is it that we have done to make sure that our population increases.  We need a bigger, population that is indisputable.  It is true we need to have a big strong army to fight in times of war.  In Europe, they are actually paying, the older population is more than the younger population and that is very risky.  Like we said, we go back to the investor; the investor wants to invest in a country for 50 years so they do not look at this population which is in this House today.  They look at the population 50 years from now.

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