Africanizing Employment in Zimbabwe: The Socio-Political Constraints

The racially-structured nature of the occupational structure in Zimbabwe during the "Rhodesian Years", 1890-1979, with its built-in bias favouring White employees, has been amply documented elsewhere O) and requires no amplification here. Equally patent is the fact that a major policy objective of the new government which comes to power as a result of the February 1980 elections will be to redress this bias. What is not clear is the extent and form which this redressive action will take. The debate on these questions is likely to take place under an obfuscating cloud of assertions concerning goals; propositions stated axiomatically in terms of values and objectives, what is considered to be 'right', 'proper', 'ethical' or 'desirable'. But planning is not simply "the art of the desirable". It is, like politics, also "the art of the possible". To be effective, planning must take into consideration the constraints which circumscribe progress towards goals and must therefore balance principle with pragmatism. One of the best descriptions of this tension was made by Henry Kissinger who, speaking on U.S. foreign policy, once wrote, "Foreign policy is, like life, a constant effort to strike the right balance between the best we want and the best we can have - between the ends we seek and the means we adopt." While recognizing the importance of "ethical purpose" he went on to add, "But we need as well a mature sense of means, lest we substitute wishful thinking for the requirements of survival."(2)

A ZJE article on 'job-creation" for African people in the 1970's.