Zimbabwe leaders have more foreskin than foresight

By Tambanavo Chamanyawi

My 18-year-old cousin, Madafina, cannot wait to start her studies in Crop Science and Technology at Chinhoyi University of Science and Technology. She successfully registered three months ago paid the fees, upgraded her wardrobe and waited for the orientation day. However, that has not happened, and the opening day has been moved, from April 1 to the beginning of August. No explanation. Orientation has now been penciled for 1 May. In the meantime, she received a letter from the university that the fees had increased. She immediately topped up the fees by another $85 000.

Meanwhile, my little brother, a university graduate and a secondary school teacher, hasn’t been to his school in Karoi because his salary cannot pay his bus fare from Mberengwa. His O-level level students have never had a single History or Geography lesson since the beginning of the year, yet they have examinations in November.

My sister-in-law, Janet, who is a nurse somewhere at a council clinic in Harare has not been paid for three months. She only goes to work whenever she can. Chaos! Total chaos!

If what has been detailed above are not considered as clear signs of a failed state, then only a Tsikamutanda can exorcise Zimbabwe of the demons that are persecuting the Southern African country. Nothing is flowing smoothly. No teachers in schools. Demoralised doctors and nurses only visit their workplaces when they have nothing to do. Medications and ambulances are alien in hospitals. Basic human rights and even life is not guaranteed in Zimbabwe. Zimbabweans have come to terms with suffering, starvation and pain. Some even prefer to die in xenophobic attacks in South Africa than to wallow in poverty at home. It can’t be business as usual when the majority are starving to their skeletal selves while a few individuals are feasting every day and shuffling wades of US dollars. Vast mineral resources that should be enjoyed by citizens are fattening foreign bank accounts of few aging chaps superintending over the affairs of Zimbabwe.

I often wonder what these chaps discuss during their cabinet meetings. Do they even invest a second of their time in coming up with solutions to problems besieging our country or they are forever scavenging for the residual natural resources to loot before finally surrendering to the wills of the electorate? Come on! These chaps have more foreskin than foresight.

Shockingly the geriatrics leadership of Zimbabwe who liberated the country from colonial rule are committed to suck the nation dry with little regard for the future of the new generation. The greedy living ancestors are convinced that we infinitely owe them for bringing freedom. Their insistence on clinging to power at whatever cost, while plundering the nation’s resources on a grand scale is a mockery to the patriotic contributions of all those who participated in the liberation struggle. Ironically gains of the liberation struggle have continued to elude the new generation. Who were they fighting for? For the posterity or themselves and their children? Vari kudya vega vanhu ava, isu tichinzi timwire mvura sadza radyiwa navamwe. A spade is a spade not a big spoon. A 1976 black Rhodesian youth was in a better space than a 2020 university graduate who is selling tomatoes and airtime in Angwa street. There was a currency, economy, employment and good education in the 1970s. The same cannot be said about today’s Zimbabwe.

This generation owes the former gorillas nothing. They have been overcompensated for their participation in the liberation war. Most of them have been ministers for decades and Army Generals earning fat salary cheques. They received cash compensations, farms and loans which they never paid back. So, for how long we should keep on paying for the freedom that the majority are not even enjoying since they fled into diaspora. The young generation has been forced to surrender their future to the old at gunpoint in exchange for the freedom.  As to how the young people who form the bulk of Zimbabwe population continue to vote for aging candidates is too preposterous to merit even as a passing sneer. According to Zimbabwe Electoral Commission, as of March 2018, young people and women constituted 60% of registered voters. Young people make up 67% of Zimbabwe population. Why are the young people entrusting their bright futures to geriatrics who have exhausted their life spans?

This week, we lost a young and talented comedian, Clive Chigubu, to cancer. That it was detected early does not matter in Zimbabwe because medical equipment to give cancer patients a fighting chance is not important. What is important to Zanu PF politicians is to dole out money to their stooges like Douglas Mwonzora or buy swanky cars for unproductive chiefs or for that rag tag mercenary POLAD outfit. Clive has just said his final joke: Zimbabwe’s health system is a sad joke. This will not change anything. They just don’t care about us and are out of touch.

Information minister Monica Mutsvangwa recently came face to face with the grim reality of what ordinary Zimbabweans face every day. When her grand-daughter was involved in an accident which eventually took her life outside her farm in Selous (my sincere condolences), she called Mars Ambulance Service for her grand-daughter to be airlifted to an emergency health facility in the capital. She was told there was no helicopter or any other ambulance available.

This experience must have made her to appreciate the patriotic stance of journalists like Hopewell Chin’ono who are forever complaining about the lack of medical equipment like cancer machines. Improving health facilities and reasonably remunerating health personnel benefits everyone, including the Zanu PF elite.

The fight for good governance in Zimbabwe is not a party issue, but a national call for the benefit of everyone across political divides. A Zanu PF card has never spared anyone from the bitting poverty anchored on terrible governance by a club of incompetent characters who openly flaunt their loot to the impoverished population. What is more shocking is the citizen’s lack of action in face of wanton strangling of Zimbabwe, the only place we call home. Zimbabweans are the only species that remain out of action in face of danger to their survival. Even tiny birds will resist invasion of their nests to protect their off springs.

Can you imagine that they are building a five-star hospital in Mount Pleasant, fitted with several cancer machines, which ordinary tax payers have no access to. Service delivery is at the bottom of the list of their priorities. Their main preoccupation is to remain in political offices even at the expense of human lives. This is coupled with their unquenchable appetite to loot.

Instead of enacting the punitive patriotism law, they should be expending their energy in formulating policies that will improve the lives of Zimbabweans. No citizen will badmouth them if they deliver services to the people. They must get rid of the rot to earn praises and accolades. Efforts should be made to get rid of all malpractices, not people speaking out against looting. These charlatans in government need no law to compel citizens to praise them. They must be of good service to citizens, and everyone will shower them with kind words.

Smearing Zimbabweans who speak out against injustice and looting is like stitching up an ass to get rid of diarrhea. One would have expected the second Republic to attend to issues being raised by suffering and struggling masses instead of harassing them. Even retailers have abandoned the RTGS, which is an undisputed sign of a failed state. Finance minister Mthuli Ncube and Reserve Bank governor John Magudya are clearly clueless on how to deal with the national currency crisis. What is wrong with these characters? Do they have brains or bronze in between their ears? They must just abandon the worthless RGTS and adopt the green buck. Most government departments insist on foreign currency payment for their services, yet they pay civil servants in Bond notes which are not even worth the papers they are printed on. No amount of eloquent spinning by the government’s well-oiled propaganda machinery can obliterate such glaring facts. The normalisation of the abnormal is making everything worse.

So why should ED and his team request for another chance in 2023 after spectacularly collapsing the state? Can anyone assist me to understand how the ugliest woman could emerge winner from a beauty contest? In Australia, a cabinet minister will resign for omitting to pay a traffic fine in time. But Ngwena thinks he should be given a second presidential term even after eliminating all the residual fragments of sanity he inherited from the late Zimbabwe dictator Robert Mugabe. Why? Is he entitled to rule against the electorate’s will? Should we continue to debate about the obvious? Is there doubt in any Zimbabwean’s mind that ED failed us? In Zimbabwe a politician facing murder and corruption charges can still put his name up for re-election. That’s the absurdity of it all. This Dexter Nduna dude, is still an MP even after ZEC acknowledged that he was announced winner by mistake. As if that is noted enough mess, the chap is still an MP even after publicly boasting in Parliament about the large number of people he killed. This does not even happen in the land of the Taliban.

The Zanu PF regime doesn’t even seem to acknowledge that the nation has veered off the rail and heading to a fatal destination. Why should we continue to be passengers of a bus driving in a wrong direction and seemingly driven by a drunk driver? Don’t we deserve better than this? Why can’t we stop the bus, kick out the drunk driver and get back the bus to the right direction? Are we expecting a miracle?

Forget the yarn they are always weaving about sanctions. Even Chris Mutsvangwa, the information minister’s husband, publicly acknowledged sanctions claim was just a ruse.

Roads are still bad, no clean drinking water, hospitals don’t have enough medicines. Most hospital theatres are not working and thousands of pregnant women die while giving birth. All they can think of is to loot natural resources until there is nothing left to steal.  By their own admission, and quoted by a newspaper in a government-controlled stable, they are smuggling gold worth US$100 million out of Zimbabwe every month.

https://www.chronicle.co.zw/us100-million-gold-smuggled-out-of-zimbabwe/

It is sad that Zimbabweans have given their leaders a blank cheque to loot as much as they can without any repercussions.

The icing of the cake is, we have a vice-president, who also doubles up as the health minister but contemptuously calls doctors in government hospitals “skiridhi rebharaz” and a president who tells anyone who dares complain about appalling living conditions in our motherland, “Muka ubike doro!”

Surely, on what basis should President Emmerson Mnangagwa be considered for re-election next year when all indications are condemning him as a failure beyond redemption?

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