Whatever anyone’s feelings, one can only say that Zanu PF has changed Zimbabwe. And whatever anyone feels about land redistribution, it has changed Zimbabwe’s economy. In some far reaching, and unexpected ways.

They have destroyed cheap labour.

While trying to avoid any value judgement on this subject (i.e. is it good or bad?), can I just point out how, and what might need to be done to survive. While I know most ‘cheap labour’ cannot read any of this (it is not mass available), the ‘common people’ are whom I am addressing. The working class. Those people who make a living (or try to) by selling their physical power, their labour, their energy, their daily effort.

The message is, get skilled, or get more skills. The days of cheap labour, the days of a need for unskilled human energy, are over. Labour is no longer going to be cheap, and industry, society, the economy, can no longer afford it.

The only reason labour can be sold cheaply, is because food is cheap. And that is no longer the case. Since large scale commercial farming (itself built on cheap labour) is dead, food is no longer cheap. We can see a majority of food is imported, therefore, most food will now cost the same as it costs in Germany, China, Peru, Australia, the UK, North America, etc. and it is expensive there. Last time I was in Perth, West Australia (for my father’s 70th), chicken cost 8 times what it cost in Harare. And West Australia is a cheap food exporter. Most other food around the world is the same cost. In much the same way, my electricity bill is less than half of my friends summer (he lives in Scotland) bill there.

So, the days when you can feed yourself by being a maid or gardener, or factory floor sweeper, messenger, gate guard, or any ‘unskilled’ labour, are over. And the ability to pay schools fees, feed a whole family, get transport, ZESA, water…. is over.

The amount of jobs for maids, or messengers, will be the same here as they are in the UK, i.e. there are none. Only a small niche, of very wealthy people, can afford maids, or house keepers overseas. And then, they are called ‘butlers’, or some such rarefied term. A messenger boy in Australia (my father in Perth) provides his own car. They are skilled. They provide their own tools. They work all hours. They run themselves as a business.

Not simply, ‘been mowing a lawn for 16 years, so need a raise’. Labour will have to be sold for a very specific purpose. And it will have to compete with many other labourers, who are physically as strong, and therefore able to do the same job. What do you have that makes you stand out? That makes you a better employment prospect than the next person? Mowing the lawn, as an occupation, will be taken over by gardening services. And if you cannot mow 13 lawns in a day, you will lose to someone who can. Gardeners, and all that sort of work, will no longer be paid, just to be there.

You cannot expect to sell something, “because I need the money”. You will have to sell something that is valuable, that people need and want, that is better than what the next guy is selling. There is no surplus cash out there in the market for people to afford to be generous. And ‘assist’ because of YOUR condition. Their condition, and what they had to do to get the money, will make the money more valuable. So you have to offer something valuable to get it. You must be able to mow the lawn, sweep the floor, guard the gate, better than the next person.

As the cost of living goes up (because cheap food has been destroyed), the wage a cheap labourer needs to survive must go up. And in order to get a higher wage, more work, more output, more value, has to be seen by the employer. Because she is suffering the same constraints. Her income is not increasing! So employers will employ less labour, and there will be more competition for those, fewer, ‘cheap labour’ jobs out there.

So, my conclusion, my message, is get skilled or starve. Thanks to Zanu PF, this is what they have liberated us to.

And get involved in your governance. It is your life they are playing with.

This entry was posted on June 20th, 2011 at 9:30 am by Michael Laban and is filed under Economy, Governance, Reflections, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.