Greed, graft major undoings for Zimbabwe

Over the years, the Zanu-PF leadership has taken the country and its citizens down a bottomless pit where recovery is proving very difficult.

Since independence from the British in 1980, when the country was still under one of Africa's longest ruling dictators - Robert Mugabe - Zanu-PF policies have been populist but largely retrogressive.

Most of these were crafted to push citizens into artificial bliss when a deep hole was developing somewhere, negatively impacting on the country's capacity to absorb future shock.

The free education and health policies appeared noble and corrective on the whole but they, on the other hand created a population that expected freebies all through.

As ordinary people enjoyed the temporary bliss provided by such policies, the leadership in Zanu-PF pursued self-aggrandisement at the expense of the majority of the population, engaging in corruption and unbridled greed.

It is these attributes among others that have proved to be Zimbabwe's undoing. Management at State enterprises was continuously reshuffled although there was well-documented failure.

When diamonds were discovered in Marange, all the country's hope for recovery was pinned on the gems believed to have represented 25 percent of the world's total alluvial diamond deposits.

However, it was shocking to learn that the sector actually lost about $15 billion through illicit dealings and outright theft of the resource.

Meanwhile, the nation had remained hopeful in the hope that economic turn around would be found through diamonds revenue.

Most top Zanu-PF officials are super-rich, continuously taking advantage of postings in government to stuff their pockets.

Sadly, this has been at the expense of the majority of Zimbabweans and the nation itself. Somehow, we begin to wonder what kind of country future generations will inherit.

Current efforts to get the battered economy back working again are failing to sail smoothly because of the issues of greed and corruption.

There is no need to dig deeper than the recent attempt by some City of Harare employees to fleece  an Econet Zimbabwe fund created to fight a cholera outbreak through overpricing.

Clearly, corruption has been one of the biggest cancers Zimbabwe has had to battle while the avarice - insatiable to be precise - of officials has also contributed to the collapse of the economy.

Those who have benefitted from past porous systems do not want to see things normalising because they thrive in chaotic situations.

For the country to move forward, government should deal with graft and greed among other ills.