Dr. Chimanikire, OSSREA Liaison Officer, Zimbabwe, gave the opening remarks. He welcomed all the participants to the one-day National Workshop. In his brief to the participants, Dr. Chimanikire highlighted that in March 1997, the OSSREA Secretariat organized a meeting for all regional liaison officers in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. At this meeting, it was unanimously agreed that because of the interest generated at previous national workshops, regional Liaison Officers were tasked to facilitate Annual National Days centred around OSSREA-related activities. Each affiliate organization, however, had the flexibility to choose its own themes that reflect the particular circumstances of each chapter organization.
In line with this OSSREA mandate, the Zimbabwe chapter hosted a seminar whose theme was: The Role of Popular Participation in Development. The importance of the selected theme is that it addresses many fundamental and controversial issues, especially on the role and importance of democratic participation and good governance in the national development process.
In his opening remarks, Dr. Chimanikire briefly laid out the historical context of Zimbabwe's efforts to address the question of national development. Dr. Chimanikire pointed out that under colonialism, Zimbabwe's development map was characterised by vast political, social and economic imbalances.
At independence in 1980, Zimbabwe grappled with how to effectively develop itself. The newly elected government was driven by a socialist ideology, an ideology that it felt would best fulfil its developmental objectives at the time. In its efforts to fulfil its goal of social justice and social equity, the Zimbabwe government's development mandate was two-pronge first, to redress the racially inspired inequalities and inequities inherited form the colonial past and, secondly, to achieve socio-economic development, growth and equity.
Dr. Chimanikire stated that the "Growth with Equity" and the "Five Year National Development Plans" were aimed at accomplishing these objectives. Decentralisation, a strategy to encourage greater popular participation in the national development process, was also introduced during this early transformation phase. Provincial governors were identified by central government to co-ordinate these efforts towards participatory democracy.
He also pointed out that immediately post-independence, many gains were recorded, in health, education, rural infrastructure development, promotion of disenfranchised and vulnerable groups, especially women and children, the Africanisation of the Civil Service/Public Service which had until now been highly European in character. Racial discrimination and segregation were also de jure eliminated.
In his presentation, Dr. Chimanikire noted that the situation soon changed. In the early 1990s, the economy began experiencing negative growth. Many development projects began suffering from inadequate financing. The Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP), a foreign-driven economic reform programme was initiated to restructure the ailing economy. He pointed out that ESAP has now been declared a monumental failure. He further stated that the government of Zimbabwe, appreciating the constraints created under ESAP and appreciative of the need to sequence the economic reform programme, embarked on a new strategy to rejuvenate the economy. This new initiative has been dubbed the Zimbabwe Programme for Economic and Social Transformation (ZIMPREST).
He outlined that the main objective of the one-day seminar was to bring together academics, researchers, policy makers and other relevant stakeholders to critically evaluate the concept of popular participation in development with a view to contributing to development policy.
He also spelt out that the seminar covered various themes. Some of these topics covered included issues of inequality, poverty, indigenisation, affirmative action, empowerment, social justice and equity. Several sub-themes on the subject of popular participation and the development process were presented by various experts drawn from several university faculties.
Topics covered included a presentation on the recently launched economic reform programme, the Zimbabwe Programme for Economic and Social Transformation (ZIMPREST), land reform and poverty alleviation, decentralisation and popular participation, the informal sector, education and poverty and, gender and poverty. Several discussants, experts on the various topics, also made invaluable contributions. Each of the paper presentations was followed by exhaustive discussions, further enriching the seminar's objectives.
This report briefly captures the main issues raised from the paper presentations, the comments from the discussants and the contributions from the floor.
