Honorable Minister Nhema home, with us

Zimbabwe has almost metamorphosed into a carnival, all owing to our slowly derailing sense of responsibility and focus from core mandates. Slowly into detritus of our own crumble.
My relation of this matter is not directed to any one fraternity, but the composite body of our nation Zimbabwe completely.  It is only unfortunate that Zanu PF is goaded to take responsibility of all transgressions which propagate beyond its noesis.

And, any mention of the party Zanu pf somehow then amounts to fingers criminatingly pointing at Robert Mugabe. How unlucky. And any overdoing applies burden to his already task laden shoulders. But yet still, it is not for him to create resonance of the government ministers with the people they ought to serve under their ministerial consecrations. They have to own up to their duties and deliver, in the same manner all public officials have to, going down to the level of the general civil servant who forms cell of the government structure. These are clear statements which even His Excellence would veritably enunciate. Robert Mugabe has maintained his position against ineptness and remissness urging competitive action to redeem and preserve the economy from a complete prostration.

The Financial Gazette of the preceding week of 14- 20 was shuddery. For a person unaccustomed to the media running of this country or any other, or a person unfamiliar with tone setting and political fidgeting. It could stop a breath. Or better still, create a sense of incertitude on the caliber of the country's public officials. I liked it though. Partly because it is that one weekly that has never nerve wrecked me before except for this particular instance and largely because, it identifies a need and reason to establish checks and balances of that which is running amiss, under the society's sometimes discourteous eye.

The paper ran with a headline, "Ministers' jobs on the line". It sold the paper attiring itself with the face of Hon. Minister Francis Nhema which rather reflected a nonchalant smile, tellingly indicative of not being appalled and easy to the big scare the paper parentaged. The paper did not concentrate on the person of Francis Nhema alone although it used his person to sack bag all other ministers who fell victim to the same ‘possible loss' of their ministerial seats. Cde Patrick Chinamasa of the finance ministry was subject too, sold out by the melting economic outlook and the strenuous efforts to secure sources for national financing, and trials to suffice the heightening wage bill for the government's 350 000 workforce. Oh, Deputy Justice Minister Chasi too played his ball to exposure and was on the fixture.

Apparently, the issue came right in line with the 6th Youth League conference which was equally dissatisfactory to President Robert Mugabe as it presented a glaringly defective culture of interference during the youth electoral process. He clearly lamented against those that went on the idea of buying votes, strongly insisting that those that engage in such practices deserve not to be called leaders by any stretch.

 "To me you don't deserve to be a youth leader at all. If you allow other people to buy you and if you have voted because ndakapihwa mari nangana kuti ndivhote nepapa nemutowo uyu ende ukavhotawo nemutowo iwowo nekuti wapihwa mari, goodness me, you are rubbish", said the President, verbatim.

What comes to mind is a clear indication and possibility that youths amongst themselves could not afford such an undertaking, it is a transaction far out of reach. This patently therefore leaves all accusing fingers pointing sharp at party goons whose interests in egocentric powerfulness then out rules needful party ethos. The president's usual stance on such self-labeled cadres does not go covert.

One would hastily detect the culture of political mega-powers' stochasticity demonstrated through the ballots to be effects of loud echoing officials whose megalomaniac panaches are a bit off the grains of effectual commission. Those who seek to politically reposition themselves obstreperously. Loud, loud, loud and very loudly.


Indigenization Minister Hon.  Francis Nhema

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Nhema's honorability was evidently being put under trial as the pasting of his image on the paper's front page carrying a story that sought an attempt to compare character and not service delivery as it should be. The story questioned why the Honorable Minister was not born a non-reserved gentleman who would not exude a grin and act all in a militant manner. Why he was not like so and so, only in character and grain, all in abstraction that irritably divagated from Ministerial service and party servitude. Why he was not one with a combative behavior and one who could represent youths' aspirations with ‘youthful vigor'. How I wish the indigenization programme could stand tall and talk, loudly someday. Prodigious. This laborious errand? In a politically charged environment, the media becomes more and more erratically objective.

Astute, the tabloid neutralized the issue's fickleness by quoting outgoing ZANU-PF deputy secretary for youth affairs, Edson Chakanyuka and one Blessed Ziwome, who was prefaced as having presented resolutions of the committee on social services and poverty reduction, ideally to relegate blame to the party's existing factional tug-of-war.

I am sure likewise Mzembi's crime is that of uncasing himself of credential revolutionalism while perfecting political game stunts with svelte modernism (whatever this might get to entail), and professionalizing politics. I opt to leave this issue hanging. At least for now. And at least, he has been identified by President Mugabe and branded as one dissimilar from the rest.
The headline and story suggested that the highlighted Ministers could be campaigned against. Their posts put at risk of loss. The President engaged and them, chucked out. God save us!

There has never been anything wrong with petitions, especially when they are done in good purpose and attempting to realign a particular social concern. They are well advisable and not something of the Zanu PF or MDC make up or architecture. It is social responsibility that should well groom social accountability in all manner and standing.

For even during days of the debile Government of National Unity (GNU), public pique could be well shown through the same ways. Directed to the GNU and not to charge Mugabe, Tsvangirai or Welshman but to scoff at systems and only but systems that at that time could be seen cockeyed.

During the same time of the GNU, some notable handful of pressure groups had petitioned the GNU against its idea of acquiring luxury vehicles for cabinet ministers and their deputies as they queried it was demonstrating opulence amidst poverty. The petition sought to see the return of luxury vehicles and acquire a reimbursement of the US$20 million resources and give a full explanation to the public as to why such a transaction had been deemed necessary and then to reallocate the resources that had been used to purchase these vehicles to the Ministries of Health, Education, and Higher and Tertiary Education in order to purchase medicines and books for hospitals, schools, colleges and universities. Indeed, not bad relish for development.

Another representative suggestion of public dismay is a document from DARE (Democratic Assembly for Restoration and Empowerment) which was against the now famous salary-gate scandal and was addressed to the president for his consent on the matter. Fair enough, it is not politics time.

Asked, I would think Walter Chidhakwa and Nhema had a good start and are promising. Others have, too, I am sure. Their cases are not on the table. Maybe they reside on close comfort under an armpit? But, the nation yearns growth, beyond mere palaver, mere useless screams,       and hoax militancy.

Where Julius becomes a hero.
The assertion may not be perched on Julius' unexpected yet successful resurrection or resurgence from the state of an almost indisputable elimination from South African prime political range, following his expulsion from the African National Congress' Youth League, but on the realization that despite mere politicking, youths' growth is pinned largely on economic freedom. It is a fight, a struggle. And his newfangled party, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) is much more descriptive of this factor. He has a clocking million souls who also believe in this idea in South Africa. EFF parliamentarians put on overalls in parliament to show their practical solidarity with the country's working class, the economics. For that, he has risen to stardom early unlike Zimbabwe's MKD, MDC-N and that of Tsvangirai even, in no time. He is delivering and talk becomes ‘believable', militancy dreadful.

 
Economic freedom fighters (EFF) Leader Julius Malema. (South Africa)

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While I waver to ingest to the submission that Nhema's ‘cool man' approach is youth unfriendly, I am more sure-footed then in my stance that since we seem propelled by presumably wrong motives, an idealistic re-union is of an urgency. A tabling of ministerial strategies implemented and those yet to be is needed, across ministries, of the garish and the restrained. Or national projects will only hang on cliffs but never give us the results we expect yet stadiums will fill to brim in campaigns and rallies and the economic affairs will be seen dashing in a hejira climb -down. For example, vigor, has since given birth to premature "gentlemanly negotiated' contracts whose progeny came out denatured and still. The country is living in awe and communities are in a complete puzzle.

What becomes more detrimental than focusing on authentic economic revival for youths? God, let this concept elude my mind! A writer like me can only write.

 (Zisunko Ndlovu is a social development practitioner and political writer from Binga, Zimbabwe. Send comments and suggestions to: kubutonga@gmail.com)