Zimbabwe's promises of mega deals are yet to materialise

GOOD day, President Emmerson Mnangagwa.

Your Excellency, there could be no vainly venture than perversion. It cannot withstand scrutiny. It melts on the onset of cross-examination.

As I see it, it was unintelligible camaraderie for the Southern Africa Development Community  (Sadc) to congratulate you on  the said electoral victory. Yet, it was apparent that the Zimbabwe harmonised elections were a sham, through and through.

They did not meet the Sadc Principles and Guidelines Governing Democratic Elections (2021), neither did they comply with the Constitution and the Electoral Act.

It could have been honourable had Sadc been assertive and honest. Pity, it opted to contradict its observer mission instead of being frank with you. Yet, truth can never be concealed to the extent of losing its essence.

Your Excellency, Zimbabwe is perched on the horn of a dilemma. She is forlorn due to your legitimacy deficiency. One does not have to be a rocket scientist to discern the alienation that awaits you in the international community.

Promises of mega deals are yet to materialise. They are in the unseen distant future. Yet, there is no likelihood, even a far-fetched one, for the positive outcome of the said economic reforms government claims to be implementing. Hence, the youth is in pins and needles.

They are frustrated that even their vote does not count towards shaping their destiny. There is nothing for them to look forward to. They lack the basic livelihoods commensurate with those of nationals of a country with an bountiful natural resources.

Consequently, they are trooping in their thousands to the diaspora as an option of last resort. They probably heeded the call by Alina R Lucas that, "If there is a slight chance at something that makes you happy, risk it."

Your Excellency, among the social ills that are causing despondency to citizenry is the outbreak of cholera. It is wreaking havoc in some parts of the country. Ordinarily, the cholera outbreak ought to have been prevented by provision of clean running water.

Yet, that is not the case with Zimbabwe. Hers is a sad reality that over the years, the country has undergone progressive infrastructural degradation. All social service institutions are ruined, with service delivery bordering close to non-existence.

As I see it, the citizenry is at the mercy of fate. Yet, their plea for good service delivery are falling on hardened hearts. There is no end in sight to the desperation of citizenry.

Standards have fallen to the extent that a police pass-out parade had to be postponed because of the unavailability of uniforms. Yet, the ruling class flaunts its riches true to a society which Karl Marx rebuked, "There must be something rotten to the core of a social system which increases its wealth without diminishing its misery".

Your Excellency, the deplorable public service delivery is an eloquent rejection of your Presidency. There is evidence galore to prove that all is not well in the area of public service delivery throughout the country. Sadly, the citizenry bear the brunt of the ruination.

With the national airline no longer the saluted national flag carrier, two of its aircraft, which were acquired from Malaysia in a corruption-infested deal, are an eyesore.

They are grounded, with no prospects of ever returning to the skies for income generation as they depreciate at the Air Zimbabwe hangers at Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport.

There hardly can be honour to a leader who presides over a country whose heartbeat does not inspire confidence for a return to functionality. Save for the sleek well-oiled presidential motorcade, everything else conveys utter despondency.

Revelations that the entire public health delivery system has one cancer machine does not affirm the call of an upper-middle-income society by 2030. It is all vanity, given that Global Cancer Observatory data shows that Zimbabwe recorded 16 083 new cases of cancer and 10 676 deaths in 2020.

Appearing before the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Health and Child Care in March, the immediate past Healthy ministry permanent secretary Jasper Chimedza, revealed that the country only had one functional radiotherapy machine to cater for all the country's cervical, breast and prostate cancer patients.

Methinks you owe the citizenry an apology for the tragic death of a doctor who was based in Manicaland province, who lost his life for want of an ambulance to transfer him to Harare.

It is an open secret that many deaths are occurring in between the proverbial short distance from the lip and the cup, when it comes to the transportation of patients to referral hospitals.

Your Excellency, it is high time Zimbabwe held credible and conclusive harmonised polls. There ought to have come a moment of reckoning for the abandonment of electoral dividends. It is only through free, fair and verifiable elections that a bonafide winner emerges.

As I see it, for a leader who came to power through a military orchestrated power grab, the establishment of a functional democracy based on accountability, transparency and zero tolerance to graft ought to have been uppermost on your priorities.

From where I stand, the setting up of integrity committees which were initiated by the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission in September 2021 deserved your approval and support.

Its ideals ought to have been inculcated firstly in the Office of the President and Cabinet personnel, cascading down to all institutions of the State and individuals who run them. Methinks if that had been diligently observed, corruption and sham elections could have been a thing of the past.

Your Excellency, the falsity and duplicity of Sadc renders it complicit in electoral deceit. As I see it, it must be akin to the decadence that St Jerome, driven by his convictions denounced, "If truth causes offence, I would rather cause offence than truth be denied."