Mugabe must stay at home, do his job

For almost two months, Zimbabwe has been at a standstill because President Robert Mugabe was on holiday with his family, shuttling between Dubai and China.

As has become the norm, government business was crippled because the majority of Cabinet ministers took a cue from their boss and also went on holiday.

Mugabe does not allow his Cabinet to sit while he is away and the vice-presidents who alternate as acting presidents are mere lame ducks because they are not empowered to make any meaningful decisions.

The soon to be 93-year-old president returned home on Friday night but only for a few hours as he left for Ethiopia yesterday to attend the ongoing annual African Union summit.

This means that Mugabe would not do any meaningful work in January yet he is the captain of a ship that is sinking.

Zimbabwe is facing a multi-layered crisis that mainly emanates from a collapsing economy and the problems manifest themselves in serious cash shortages that have crippled the few remaining companies.

The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe has been struggling to provide exporters with foreign currency for raw materials since the introduction of bond notes late last year. Foreign currency has again become scarce.

Finance minister Patrick Chinamasa's 2017 budget tabled in December last year also exposed deepening divisions in Mugabe's Cabinet that point to a dysfunctional government.

The schisms were laid bare by the Ministry of Higher and Tertiary Education's unprecedented public criticism of Chinamasa's budget last week after it emerged that the minister wants salaries of staff at state universities to be cut by 50%.

However, the Higher Education ministry said the government had not taken a position to cut the salaries.

Last year, Chinamasa also found himself in a similar position when he made a rational proposal to suspend bonuses for civil servants until the government's financial position improved.

But the minister was humiliated after the government issued a statement disowning the proposal.

Two months after the civil servants were due to receive their 13th cheque for 2016, the government is yet to figure out how it will pay them and last week Public Service minister Prisca Mupfumira tabled a ludicrous offer to pay the workers with housing stands.

In short, these problems illustrate the sorry state of the nation and lack of leadership. They point to a dysfunctional government and a country that is on autopilot.

Mugabe does not seem to understand the severity of the problems facing the country, hence he sees nothing wrong with his globetrotting.

He brings nothing from these trips abroad serve for promises of Chinese support that never comes.

He doesn't seem to get it that the Chinese would not support a country that demonstrates time and again that it does not have a plan to help itself.

If he is not travelling, Mugabe invests his time in ensuring that he hangs on to power even without a plan to transform the economy.

There is no doubt that nothing will be done this year to fix the economy because of the fast approaching 2018 elections where Mugabe would seek yet another term.

But since he is the only one with the mandate to lead, our plea to the president is; please try to stay at home and attend to the fire that is consuming your household. Zimbabwe is crying out for leadership.