Strive Masiyiwa Exploits Workers And Supports African Dictators For Profit Says Munyaradzi Gwisai

Who remembers Munyaradzi Gwisai? He was one of the founding members of the opposition political party, Movement for Democratic Change. Gwisai was elected to the legislature becoming one of the youngest MPs at the time until he was expelled from his party in 2002.

Now, Gwisai heads up a group called the International Socialist Organisation in Zimbabwe. Now you rememember him? That Gwisai issued scathing attacks on Strive Masiyiwa, the founder of Econet and Cassava Smartech. Gwisai made these remarks while at a meeting organised by Sivio Institute yesterday. He said:

I think there is a naïve belief of class unity of Strive Masiyiwa, trade unions and peasants when he talks about a vision when he talks about the people of Zimbabwe.

Masiyiwa has become a billionaire by exploiting Zimbabwean workers and using the advancement of technology.

Strive Masiyiwa and Tsitsi (his wife) were worth less than US$500 million at the end of 2017 or the beginning of 2018. Today, one year later, and as a result of this world advanced bidding of Ecocash, Strive Masiyiwa’s net value now is at least US$1.4 billion.

But the same Strive Masiyiwa is at the forefront of fighting for casualisation of labour, outsourcing labour, fighting trade unions, fighting the right to strike and in ensuring that workers are paid peanuts.

So this is the exact fundamental contradiction of capitalism that cannot be resolved by giving the lead power to this class to lead the society, its interest and its profits does not allow to play this role including allowing the 4th industrial revolution to take place.

Exploitation?

Exploitation is a very strong word and I don’t think it is a fair word to use. Econet has always had fair remuneration for its workers and I am not sure how Gwisai defines exploitation.

His mention of ‘casualisation of labour’ could be in reference to services like Vaya (Cassava’s version of Uber) and Technites, a crowd sourcing platform for services like plumbing, electrical fitting etc. The fact of the matter is that Vaya or any of the Cassava on demand services did not ‘casualise’ labour, they converted unemployed and idle folks into a labour force. A lot of these people including EcoCash agents were already unemployed, Masiyiwa’s companies actually changed that status.

I am interested to know how Gwisai proposes to solve the high unemployment problem we have at scale. He is even attacking technology and says the 4th industrial revolution must be stopped. I don’t even know what that means. Unfortunately for him technological and economic revolutions cannot be stopped. They are painful processes. The industrial revolution itself was painful for those who went through it but years later we are glad it happened.

African dictators

Gwisai also said:

Strive Masiyiwa has now expanded with his liquid company from Cape to Cairo and he is now going to do the same across West Africa.

Strive Masiyiwa said the person he thanked most for allowing him to expand is Paul Kagame when he was AU chairperson. That butcher and dictator of Rwanda is the one who facilitated him to do the project.

Strive Masiyiwa now says that ‘I am thankful to General Sisi (Egyptian President)’ the incoming chair of AU. The butcher of Cairo is his friend.

So these are of authoritarian liberalism; they cannot be the friends of democracy. I believe that the only class is the working class, the working class knows no border, the working class knows no country.

Strive Masiyiwa, John Moxon have a greater relationship with Kagame with Bill Gates than with peasant and workers of this country, their vision is a vision of global exploitation.

He is a capitalist whose interest is profiting through the exploitation of labour.

So for that reason, the only way forward can only be one of social war, a social revolution led by the working class as the way forward.

The problem with socialist ideals is that they assume the so called working class is independent from entrepreneurship. It’s an ideology that denies the natural human tendency: human beings are motivated by self interest. Once you remove the incentive for entrepreneurship you may realise that there is no working class as well. Anyway these are deep rooted debates that are fruitless.

If Masiyiwa refuses to deal with the Kagames of this continent someone else will and fibre networks will still be built. Why can’t it then be him?

Labeling people in absolute terms is never a good idea. In fact it’s a sign of immaturity. Masiyiwa is neither an angel nor a devil, he is merely Strive Masiyiwa. When people see him as a god they get disappointed and those that see him as equal to Lucifer are not honest with themselves.

Quick NetOne, Telecel, Africom, Econet Airtime Recharge

The post Strive Masiyiwa Exploits Workers And Supports African Dictators For Profit Says Munyaradzi Gwisai appeared first on Techzim.