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A week in Africa: Zimbabwe 2015

Travel report by David Speirs MP, Member for Bright

View from a school classroom window

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Visiting a rural village

Contents

Trip objectives and introduction ……………………………………………………….. page 3

Travel itinerary & key activities .………………………………………………………… page 4

Country profile ………………………………………………………………………………….. page 5

City profile – Bulawayo ………………………………………………………………………. page 6

Region profile – Midlands Province ……………………………………………………. page 6

Reflections on key events ………………………………………………………………… page 7-8

Key observations …………………………………………………………………………… page 9-10

Legacy of the trip ……………………………………………………………………………… page 11

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Trip objectives and introduction

Between 19th and 25th January 2015, I travelled to Zimbabwe as a guest of World Vision Australia. The

purpose of the trip was to:

better understand the work of World Vision in Australia

view projects funded through partnerships between World Vision and Australia’s international

development agency, AusAid

develop knowledge and understanding of the challenges facing the delivery of international

development projects in developing countries

support Edge Church International in their philanthropic work in Zimbabwe (Edge Church

International serves the southern suburbs of my electorate and leaders from the church were among

those travelling on this trip)

build links with NGO officials in Zimbabwe.

The trip was initiated following an approach from World Vision Australia staff, who were aware of my

long-standing interest in international development and my previous work in Uganda, undertaken in

2007 and 2009.

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Travel itinerary

19 January 2015, Depart Australia, Sydney to Johannesburg, South Africa

20 January 2015, Depart South Africa, to Bulawayo, Zimbabwe

24 January 2015, Depart Zimbabwe, to Johannesburg, South Africa

25 January 2015, arrive in Sydney, Australia.

Key activities

20 January 2015 Visited Robert Sinyoka Area Development Program (ADP) and met with

children who are part of the World Vision sponsor child program; visited a local

microfinance savings bank program

21 January 2015 Briefing from World Vision Zimbabwe on Channels of Hope, a gender equality

and domestic violence reduction program

21 January 2015 Attended a school celebration in Robert Sinyoka ADP, the culmination of a

program which has seen new classrooms and toilets constructed at the school

using AusAid and World Vision financial support

21 January 2015 Met Bonlat Machiha, Youth Governor, Bulawayo Province

21 January 2015 Visited several microfinance projects which have enabled local people to

establish and grow small businesses

21 January 2015 Had dinner with local community leaders and US NGO workers

22 January 2015 Travelled to Zvishvane, a town in Midlands Province, approximately two hours

from Bulawayo, then travelled ‘off road’ for two hours to view a range of aid

projects and potential future projects

22 January 2015 Met local government leaders, including Florence Khumalo, the first female

politician in the Midlands Province.

23 January 2015 Shot footage for World Vision documentary

23 January 2015 Visited Matobo National Park, UNESCO World Heritage (Natural) site and

location of Sir Cecil Rhodes’ grave

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Country profile

Zimbabwe, officially the Republic of Zimbabwe, is a landlocked country located in southern Africa,

between the Zambezi and Limpopo rivers. It is bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the

southwest, Zambia to the northwest and Mozambique to the east. The capital and largest city is Harare.

Average age: 19.18

Population: 14 million (approximately)

GDP per person: US $400

Life expectancy: 50 men/49 women

Adult literacy: 94% men/87% women

Political system: President Robert Mugabe, in office since 1980, gained a new term in controversial

elections in 2013

Language: Zimbabwe has 16 official languages with English, Shona and Ndebele being the most widely

spoken

Climate: The country has a tropical climate with a rainy season usually from late October to March.

Zimbabwe is faced with recurring droughts and severe storms are rare. Zimbabwe has actually been rated

as having one of the best climates in the world.1

1 International Living magazine’s Quality of Life Index, published January 2011

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City profile - Bulawayo

With a population of 653,337, Bulawayo is

the second largest city in Zimbabwe after

the capital Harare. It is the nearest large

city to Victoria Falls.

Bulawayo is Zimbabwe’s principal

industrial centre; its major products are

automobiles, tires, concrete and other

building materials, radios, television sets,

textiles, furniture, and food. As the

headquarters of Zimbabwe railways,

Bulawayo is the country’s main

transshipment point for goods to and from

South Africa.

In recent years, Bulawayo has experienced

a sharp fall in living standards coinciding with the severe economic crisis affecting the country. Today it is

home to the strongest opposition to the government of Robert Mugabe. The main problems include poor

investment and widespread unemployment. Water shortages due to lack of expansion in facilities and

supplies are also an issue and have become steadily more acute since 1992.

Region profile – Midlands Province

Midlands is a province of Zimbabwe with a

population of 1.6 million. The third largest

city in Zimbabwe, Gweru, is located within

this province.

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Reflections on key events

1. Robert Sinyoka Area Development Program

Area Development Programs (ADPs), are run by World Vision throughout the developing world. ADPs

form a fifteen year commitment by the NGO to a particular region (most of which are rural) and aim

to deliver sustainable progress within a community across a predetermined range of development

goals, usually involving economic development; healthcare; gender equality; early childhood

development; sanitation and HIV/AIDS awareness and support. The World Vision model is a powerful

one because of its focus on the long term. Often international aid is criticised because it involves

building something tangible (an airport, a school or a road) and then walking away and leaving a

shiny, new and entirely unsustainable object. The ADP model involves investment which essentially

lasts for a generation and which aims to lift an entire community’s capacity to sustainably thrive in an

ongoing way.

As part of the trip to Zimbabwe, I visited two ADPs, one in Bulawayo, known as the Robert Sinyoka

ADP, and one in rural Midlands Province, known as the Negove Ngungumbane Nyamondo (NNN)

Province ADP. At the Robert Sinyoka ADP we visited a series of sustainable development programs,

including a community savings bank, established by local women to assist local people to save as well

as various small businesses which had been provided with seed funding to establish and grow.

2. Channels of Hope

Channels of Hope is the way World Vision mobilises community leaders - especially faith leaders - to

respond to core issues affecting their communities, such as HIV and AIDS, maternal and child health,

gender equity and gender-based violence, and child protection.

As part of my trip to Zimbabwe, we visited a local World Vision office and were given a presentation

on this program and how a local church network was being used to work with male community

leaders to provide them with mentoring and support as to how to drive gender equality and tackle

domestic violence, discrimination against women, and the oppression of women; all things which are

sadly commonplace in Zimbabwe’s traditional culture.

3. School celebration in Robert Sinyoka ADP

The upgrading of Hyde Park Primary School, was funded through World Vision’s connection with the

ADP and supported by Edge Church International and, in particular, its lead campus at Reynella,

South Australia. As part of our trip we visited the school for an official celebration to recognise the

completion of an upgrade program. Funding from Australia had delivered new classrooms and toilets.

The celebration event lasted for the majority of the day. Like all African events that I have been a

part of, it was laden with ceremony; vibrant singing, dancing and traditional clothing; and filled with

speeches from many community ‘elders’, all of whom had to speak to fulfil local traditions. We were

treated very well and locals expressed a genuine, heartfelt gratitude for our attendance and support.

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Pictured with Florence Khumalo, an influential local

councillor and the first female politician to be elected

in the province

Pictured meeting Bonlat Machiha, Youth Governor, Bulawayo Province

4. Visit to Area Development Program in Midlands Province, rural Zimbabwe

Our trip to Midlands Province involved a drive of several hours from Bulawayo into the outlying rural

region. After a couple of hours we reached Zvishvane (formerly known as Shabani), which was once

Zimbabwe’s centre of asbestos mining. The town was characterised by small homes with corrugated

asbestos sheeting on every roof and large factories which appeared to be almost entirely constructed of

asbestos sheeting.

At Zvishvani we met with the local NNN ADP managers and project officers who gave us a presentation

on their local projects, which were again around economic development, healthcare and child

development. From Zvishvani we drove further into the bush and made a number of visits to

development projects. The most significant of these visits was to the unfinished Whikwi Secondary

School, a remote school site where local residents are desperately seeking funds to complete the building

project. Currently students living in this district who complete primary school have to walk 15km to the

nearest secondary school. This results in a very high dropout level as students are unable to sustain the

early morning starts and girls are at a high risk when walking home alone in the evening. Edge Church is

likely to contribute funds to this project through their Ride for Hope charitable event.

While in Midlands Province I had the opportunity to catch up with Florence Khumalo, an influential local

councillor and the first female politician to be elected in the province.

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Key observations

Failure of governance

Zimbabwe is an example of what occurs when there is a large scale failure of governance. The country is

bankrupt, with almost 80% unemployment.2 There is an absence of commercial activity, with enterprise

limited to roadside stalls selling food and bric-a-brac. Yet Zimbabwe’s former affluence, relative to other

sub-Saharan African nations, is quite apparent. Beyond the decay, it is possible to see infrastructure

which formed the backbone of a thriving nation. Roads, now pot-holed and disintegrating, are wide and

well planned; the Bulawayo Botanic Gardens have tall exotic trees and ornate statues towering beyond

the weed-ridden garden beds and overgrown lawns; and large industrial factories lie empty as a reminder

to a long lost manufacturing capacity.

The city of Bulawayo has an apocalyptic feel. It is notably empty, with many of its qualified residents

having fled to South Africa in search of work and, in some cases, safety. Bulawayo is an ‘opposition town’

and President Robert Mugabe is regarded as a pariah here. The vote for Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party is low

in Bulwayo and one surmises that the community is suffering as a result of this political disobedience. The

population decline has resulted in an eerie emptiness in what should be a bustling metropolis. While

reading the local newspaper I noted that that the local government had declared bankruptcy, unable to

collect rate revenue from its impoverished citizens.

Interestingly, the framed image of a younger looking President Mugabe was very present in community

buildings and NGO offices.

Red tape and bureaucracy

With 80% unemployment, the 20% of the population who are employed are largely accommodated in

NGO or public sector jobs. While I’m wary of overusing statistics, local World Vision staff informed me

that 70% of those who were in paid employment were employed by NGOs, with the majority of the

remainder being public servants. With a deeply disempowered population, it appears that at every turn,

public servants and NGO employees attempt to extend their power wherever possible. This results in a

proliferation of committee meetings, forms and other paperwork. Every time we wanted to do anything,

forms were required to be completed and committee meetings held. I was taken aback that the local

World Vision office appeared to be heavily bureaucratic and obsessed with holding committee meetings

at every turn. While some of this was clearly cultural, I felt that some of this behaviour was focused on

giving local people some control in their disempowered lives. Our visit to the UNESCO World Heritage site

at Motobo National Park was accompanied by multiple rounds of paperwork and long waits to get in.

Given this could and should be one of Africa’s premier tourist sites, the barriers put in front of visitors at

every turn can only be doing further damage to Zimbabwe’s dying economy.

Fear

The fear that pervades Zimbabwe is extreme. People are absolutely petrified of authority figures,

2 Figures vary extensively on what the unemployment rate is, but locals quoted it as 80%

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particularly government leaders. When it was ‘discovered’ that I was a politician, the local World Vision

office was deeply troubled by this – and clearly fearful. They insisted that I be referred to by the unusual

title ‘community leader’ and introduced me at all official functions as such! I was disappointed at this

approach as I felt that there was an opportunity to demonstrate that not all politicians are necessarily

corrupt and despotic and NGOs should be promoting the existence of such leaders, as opposed to

pandering to the stereotype and thus legitimising it.

I noticed that people felt entirely unable to talk about politics or government. On a number of occasions

my inquiring nature let me to ask questions about the systems of government and how services were

delivered. I also asked questions about the President and local MPs in an attempt to understand how

government works (or doesn’t work as the case may be) and how they are perceived. However, I was met

with a combination of silence, horror and fear. When having a conversation with an American missionary

who had been working in Zimbabwe for many years, I discovered that he too was overcome by this fear

and would not breathe a word (good, bad or indifferent) about the government.

Within a couple of days of arriving there, I felt the malignancy of fear creeping into my being and I too

was constantly looking over my shoulder. It was a strange and uncomfortable feeling and one which

underlined the sadness of the situation facing Zimbabwe.

Aid funding cuts

Australia’s decision to reduce its overseas aid budget by $11.3 billion over five years has had an obvious

impact on NGOs such as World Vision which have been committed to long-term development goals in the

developing countries. World Vision’s model of lengthy partnerships with communities (such as the 15

year Area Development Programs) relies on lasting commitments by overseas governments. The

reduction in aid has resulted in the stepping down of some programs and I visited one area where a local

economic development project was unable to progress to stage two because of a loss of funding.

Inspecting the unfinished Whiwiki School

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Legacy of the trip

I am of the view that such trips should leave a lasting legacy with the Member of Parliament who attends.

It has been my intention to use this trip not only to learn about international development and in

particular the challenges facing Zimbabwe, but also to use my position as a leader to inspire ongoing

support for the communities I visited.

I have promoted my trip extensively through social media (Facebook and Instagram) and through my

community newsletter (Appendix 1). I have also delivered a speech in Parliament on the trip (Appendix

2). In my newsletter I delivered a call to action for those in the community who wanted to partner with

me to assist a Zimbabwean community and I plan to form a small planning committee in the coming

months to work out how local individuals, community groups, churches and schools can be involved. It is

likely that we will undertake fundraising activities which raise funds for the Whikwi Secondary School

project, described above.

In May 2015 I will present to World Vision staff in Adelaide and later in the year I will travel to Melbourne

to share my experiences with the head office of World Vision Australia.

Making friends with the locals

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Appendix 1

Story in March 2015 edition of David Speirs’ quarterly newsletter

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Appendix 2

Speech delivered by David Speirs MP in the Parliament of South Australia

12 February 2015

Extracted from Hansard

Mr SPEIRS (Bright) (15:55:16): During the summer break I had the privilege of being able to travel to

Zimbabwe as a guest of the South Australian office of World Vision. The purpose of this trip was to look at

World Vision—

Mr Whetstone interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member for Chaffey is warned for the first time.

Mr SPEIRS: —coordinated projects which South Australians have had input into and which are supported

by World Vision Australia and federal government agency AusAID. Travelling with World Vision staff and

me was a small delegation from Edge Church International, which has its south campus close to the

southern end of my electorate and which the member for Mitchell and I have regular interactions with.

Our trip to Zimbabwe was challenging in many ways. The country is a live example of what happens when

the systems of government totally fail. Everything in Zimbabwe is in decline, decaying. Unemployment

rates are hard to reliably calculate but, if subsistence farming is excluded from the definition of

employment, the rate of people out of work could be in excess of 80 per cent. Of those in actual

employment, a huge proportion are employed by NGOs meaning that, in effect, they are part of a

necessary but false economy.

There is barely any commerce and free enterprise in Zimbabwe. I took $US400 with me as spending

money and came back with $US300. There was little to spend money on. Everything in Zimbabwe is more

difficult than it ought to be. Immediately upon our arrival we struggled to get camera gear through

customs and had to pay an official bribe or deposit of $US1,000 to get the equipment through. It was the

beginning of a web of bureaucracy which we were tangled in for most of our trip.

It was obvious that so disempowered is Zimbabwean society that anyone who has a semblance of

personal power—a customs officer, a police officer, a national park ranger, an NGO worker—would

inflate their power, complicating life and slowing everything to a standstill. What was most startling for

me was the way that fear coursed through the country. The government has the populace right where it

wants it—paralysed by fear, entirely apathetic, disempowered and broken. In fact, those who are most

depressed and completely trapped by government are those who stay most loyal to the despotic Mugabe

regime.

After only a couple days in the country, I felt that fear spread like a cancer into our thinking and our

actions. Our conversations became filtered and we began to walk on eggshells. The real tragedy of all this

is the needlessness of the situation befalling Zimbabwe. It should be a prosperous country. Its climate is

amazing, warm and mild, with decent levels of rainfall. In fact, in 2011 Zimbabwe was rated as having the

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best climate in the world on the Quality of Life Index. Zimbabwe has fantastic agricultural soils and rarely

experiences the natural disasters which often befall Third World countries. It all comes down to

leadership or a lack thereof and the great brokenness of the Zimbabwean government, the power

wielded by ZANU-PF and its ageing leader, Robert Mugabe.

Despite this difficulty, our trip was good. I had a good time and I enjoyed spending time with warm,

welcoming, energetic Zimbabwean people. I enjoyed their smiles and their enthusiasm for life. We spent

most of our time in Zimbabwe’s second largest city, Bulawayo—a city which has traditionally been seen

as Zimbabwe’s industrial capital—but mass departures to South Africa in search of employment have

hollowed it out and left it a shadow of its former self.

World Vision’s approach to development in Zimbabwe is based around area development programs

(ADPs). ADPs are established for the long term with World Vision connecting with and supporting a

community through its ADP for 15 years. Two years are spent planning how support programs can be

rolled out, then over the ensuing decade a sustained effort is made to improve food security, access to

clean water, create economic development solutions and develop local leaders. We visited a range of

projects across those categories both in Bulawayo and in the country. On one occasion we visited a

village where we sheltered under a tree and listened to the villagers’ dream of building a new school so

that their children did not need to walk a round trip of 30 kilometres—that is 30 kilometres—every day to

get to school and back. Their vision to build a school will hopefully be supported later in the year by Edge

Church International’s Ride for Hope appeal.

We talk a lot about federal cuts in this place, sometimes too much, but I think it is worth mentioning the

disappointing reduction of $11.3 billion over five years in our foreign aid program. I have heard people

say phrases like ‘Charity begins at home’ and that we should be getting our own situation in order before

helping others. To me, this attitude is at best naïve and at worst idiotic. We need to look at our foreign

aid budget and look at ways we can help the most vulnerable overseas as well as at home.