Reconstructing a broken nation.

I am not expert at matters of local and national government but I can tell if one or both are malfunctioning. It is easy to point this out anyone can do it. If you may, do that now. Traditionally, our chiefs used to converge with the kingdom elders to deliberate on matters of interest in particular those that affected people at large. Ruling back then was mainly to maintain an orderly society and the interests of every citizen were represented. I'm talking from the point of view of someone who learnt about his past mostly from oral tradition; through folklore and written history. The latter however, is laden with bias as it was mostly presented to me through people who observed my forerunners societies from a distance and even if they came too close, they always based their theses on pre-conceived ideas and their own assumptions.

A lot has happened since Zimbabweans took to governing themselves, good and bad. We have experienced both high and rock bottom years in our short life as an independent nation. We have also realized our strengths and weaknesses and now its time to get to move forward. However, for us to move forward, we need to adopt a holistic approach and improve on all the traits we have lately adopted. We were shown that we are not completely independent economically when the sanctions we were slapped with by the Euro-zone and the US crippled our economy. Presently, the tabloids have reported that the minister of finance's efforts to secure funding for the country have been thrown out of the window with our current debt standing at a staggering $11 billion, it is really up to us to again dig ourselves out of this pit and get going. To make terrain even steeper, our creditors have refused to forgive our debts. However the issue of huge spending has been a prevalent trait the entire Sub-Saharan region except that other countries have had a balance stemming from the support their economies got from domestic demand and foreign investment. However, their current accounts have not been sightly either. Foreign investment inflow in 2013 was mainly in the usual mining and oil and also non-extractive industries which is showing that there are improvements on the front. South Africa according to the World Bank report on Sub-Sahara Africa economic highlights had a higher than all growth economy growth of 6%. Other great things that have happened have been deceleration of inflation as well as increased remittances. In all this, the major issues have remained, unemployment and poverty have yet to be dealt with. The major setback being that in most sub-Saharan countries, wealth distribution is still uneven. Foreign investment yields revenue but mostly for investors who repatriate leaving only but a fraction of what was made to benefit locals. This is where Zimbabwe differs with many countries. However, the scene in Zimbabwe is similar except that instead of foreign investment, major cash cows are milked by politicians who have shamelessly stood aside while watching a government they are running starve to a financial death. Whatever happened to all that campaign rhetoric?

When there is no other option, the best way to begin is to bootstrap. As a country with something going on in the mines national and private, manufacturing industries, national and private and farming, there is somewhere to begin. If the mines increase their output, like Hwange Colliery Company is seeking to do, to increase its current output to about 500 000 tonnes per month, it will be a very good thing and perhaps some of that coal could be used to fire up the Bulawayo Thermal Power Station owned by the city of Bulawayo. If this power plant is resuscitated, it is going to be quite a benefit even to the Bulawayo industry where power disruptions due to the country's electricity supplier Zesa has failed to live up to the demand. Residents have been hugely impacted by the supplier's inability to provide for electricity and it has been chaos ever since with the load-shedding. To make matters worse, the top executives of this failing government parastatal have been making the most illogical decisions earning hefty salaries that have not matched up with their performance not even a single day. At one point, to attend to faults, the staff from this institution demanded bribes and other things alike. However, if the expenditure towards salaries of chief whips are shaved off, and realistically, they are paid according to performance of the company and their own, then things may stabilize a little bit. Since Zimbabwe has partnered a global giant of innovation, China, consulting with the Chinese may be the best thing to do so as to look at other ways of obtaining energy for use in homes and the industry such as solar.

What then is needed for local authorities to fully function without any hindrances? I think the best way is for government to relinquish some of the tight controls that it has when it comes to them. Local authorities should be given the executive powers to effect laws which are area specific. For example, the curricula used in schools should be monitored by ZIMSEC but created by lesser bodies that originate from the province of Matebeleland, Manicaland and so forth. This will help out even in grading, as compared to the scandalous affairs that have run a marathon at the one and only national body, ZIMSEC. What needs to be done in this regard is to establish a body, after dissolving ZIMSEC, one that will set the parameters in which to test pupils at all levels so as to maintain national uniformity and then oversea that the bodies that originate from each region of the country complies with their requirements. As for power production and water provision, that also should be entirely left in the hands of the local authorities for they know so well how to apportion their areas and supply adequately.

Currently, with the government in a de facto closure state, it is time for local authority men and women to go to work to come up with their own budgets and plans to satisfy those by way of tariffs collection and saving the available resources. For at this moment, it is as if there is no government because there is no solution to the problem being presented to the rest of the country and people who suffer most are those to whom local authorities pass on their laws. There is so much to marvel at the inflexibility of councils and municipalities when it comes to creative thinking, mostly because they are caught up in the web of bureaucracy.

Residents have to also play a participative role in the administration of their affairs. It honestly is not a great thing to live with a man or woman who runs a parastatal like ZESA and he gets to be paid too much money while we all live in darkness because of his gluttony for money. ZESA bosses have and live among us and we see them daily in their going in and going out, but for us to stop them and question their morality, we seem to be afraid because of the money aura they emit around them. Money ladies and gentlemen is but just what a person has and does not dignify villainy at all. It is men like these that have continuously perpetrated the destruction of local councils, municipalities, government ministries, schools and every other authority that represents the wealth of Zimbabwe. Corruption scandals have gone on for over three decades now and yet there has not been an effective way to counter that. The main concern our country should deal with is accountability at all levels in terms of control of resources that bring wealth to the nation and people at large. This has to also affect people in higher places such as Police Chiefs, ministers of different departments for it is tradition, that anyone who occupies a government office is superior to everyone else below him and otherwise. Still on the role of citizens, it is a very good thing that we do usually, looking out for each other. The friendships that are fostered in the neighborhoods are not found anywhere else. People actually live together in one big society where children are disciplinable by anyone adult. Lately, there has been so much separatism because of the hardships mostly. Many people have just been looking out for themselves mostly because of the scarcity of resources and money among other factors. On the progressive front, residents of cities like Bulawayo whose water supply is usually interrupted yearly by the lack of better water harvesting methods in the region and primarily low rainfall distribution in the region could participate in helping their city council and themselves by practicing water harvesting methods during the rainy season. These methods may help save a couple of gallons per season. Rain water can be collected from gutters during the rains and stored in plastic containers for later use as well as tanks and reservoirs made out of cement. It can be treated when it is being used or can be used for other tasks such as doing washing and cleaning. Again, water saving methods can be utilized in everyday lives by city dwelling people. Recycling water used in a household is one way and another is sparingly using water. The city councils have to offer incentives that are lucrative to get people to save water. They can slash their bills by half or more for those people who would have significantly reduced their household usage, just to draw more people to like the programme. Repairing leaky taps and pipes also helps. One of the major ways to tackle the water problem that has since plagued Bulawayo is the completion of the Zambezi Water Project. This will go a long way in ensuring a continuous water supply and will sure help spawn a lot water related projects that will help improve the economic well being of people.

This and so much more can be done and may help the country and us its people to get back on its feet, otherwise the foreign investment which is being talked about will not come soon. Part of the reason foreign investment will not be getting here any time soon is because of the reputation political power houses have earned themselves. They take whatever they please with no regards to how hard someone has worked for anything. The people who run them are such individuals who have it all but can not afford to spare a little bit to help alleviate the plight of the nation. It leaves a lot to be desired that a country that has so much academic wealth finds itself without adequate engineers supply, doctors and nurses among other professionals and the irony here lies in the fact that many of the government personnel who are claiming that the government is broke, afford to seek medical attention overseas. We may be respectful but real change and progress will begin once we all are involved in matters of national interest.

And this is just my opinion ladies!

Post election sentiments.

This comes a bit late but the scenario at play is still quite fresh to the people involved and affected. I am talking about the political arena of Zimbabwe, the major players, spectators and the ticks that feed of the unfolding events. With the victory of a party that had a lot of people crying foul over the victor which seemed to everybody to have come too easy. Rigging was the primary suspect tool that Zanu (PF) used and we do not know what else. Blessing-Miles Tendi, a professor of African studies at Oxford spelled out some of the causes that led to Mugabe's landslide 61% victory against Tsvangirai's 34%. Tendi says among the elements at play here is a theory of called preponderance of incumbency which means the advantage the ruling president has over the opposition because he/she has control over institutions such as the media which he uses to popularize his campaign. After the election, the much anticipated regime change turned into just but another pipe dream, a dwindling hope for people who had been dreaming about it since the turn of the millennium when the officials of the government suddenly went into full swing in their abuse of state power among other things. Since then, they have been having an orgy with state resources turning a blind eye to the decrepit state of the nation.

I must say I am extremely proud of the Zimbabwean DNA. Despite the cloud of gloom that descended and settled over our country, our resilience has kept us going. There was nothing wrong with the agrarian land reform except for the brutal way it was carried out. Some people argue that when the settlers were effecting a take-over from our forerunners, they were as brutal as the invaders as the takers-overs of white owned farms were wrongfully termed. However, that is another chapter for there were many elements at play that led to the loss of patience by the people who were expecting the land issue to be addressed. Nobody decried the invasion of African land, until the system established by the setters turned around to haunt them in the sense that the educated Africans, whom they had put into schools so as to exploit them used their knowledge to stage rebellions that spread across the continent like wildfire and soon, they were dethroned. Maybe it was a little too late which brings me to a pertinent issue in our continent's politics.

It seems to me as if the current breed of leaders are just vying to be what European colonialists were to people including them. Europeans established classes in African societies, the bottom peasants, the middle class- educated Africans and the top of the pyramid was occupied by them. This was in a century where industrialism was largely involved in economic prowess and progress. The Europeans owned the means of production, they owned the capital that was used to procure the means of production and they controlled the system that fueled economies in the colonies. These systems in turn derived from their mother countries. They also relied heavily on their mother countries and all the produce, raw materials and all the good things were shipped over to countries of their origin where they were processed and sent back to African colonies where poor Africans employed by the rich Europeans were to buy them, further making rich the same. I think the system of exploiting black finance is still large at play in the continent and overseas here in the developed world. Many poor brown skinned people buy exorbitantly priced apparel to keep up with stereotypes while buying from white owned businesses. It is such a sad situation where in Africa, foreign owned corporations run timber, mining and other huge operations expropriating profits while leaving the continent's nature damaged and irreparable. All this is fine with African governments because here is the issue: A reigning president is approached by a wealthy industrialist from the developed world, and he, having reverence for particularly 'white' business people, readily agrees to take whatever is placed in the plate to silence him because he has the power to stop this abuse of his country's resources. When this has been done, the industrialist's company moves in and begins digging, felling and doing all sorts of things to support their empire while the bribed government official flies to the mother country of the industrialist where he buys lavish cars, suits and furniture for his mansions and before he comes back, has medical check-ups and work done to him by foreign doctors. This is the reason why the continent will not progress while all this evil is going on.

So having established that the leaders of African countries are after the glory of the former colonial master and nothing at all about the emancipation of their own, save for a few blessed souls. There may have been fear for such a reincarnation if Morgan Tsvangirai had risen to power in Zimbabwe. Many people like me held a belief that his was a promise for a truly democratic Zimbabwe although I did not necessarily go with what a blind supporter would do, I supported the democratic principles embraced by the party he led, not the man necessarily and my peers saw this as a sign of hatred for the man. For the man, I hold nothing against and will not. The party's late response to strategize and gear up for elections may have been seen approaching during its tenure in the government of national unity established in February 2009. They did not do many things which they could have done to convince the electorate that they were up for the job but again, that may have been caused by the foul play by the opposition ministers and people who otherwise were key to their passing decisions that would have benefited the people. Another reason caused largely by years of Mugabe's demagogic rhetoric and the land reform, many people saw Tsvangirai run back and forth to western governments to consult and seek financial help and were a bit skeptical especially when Mugabe went on to say that the western governments were trying to install him as their puppet and Mr Tsvangirai failed to exonerate himself from those allegations quite fluently. That again is another fish to fry. The way I see it is, Tsvangirai had a promise of good political goods. His was a way that involves everyone in the running of a country, that's what democracy rests on, total involvement of people in that country in the affairs of the same. He met with an electorate that vacillated and was manipulated, beaten, killed and simply had not enough motivation to effect change. It seems we are comfortable in our thorny bed and the prospect of having to transfer to an eiderdown bed involves having to move and pricked further so we might as well lie there motionlessly.

Now, the irony of the situation in the country is indeed saddening as there has not been yet any developments on the government front to prove to people that the promises that bought them over are going to be fulfilled any time soon. The finance minister is expected to work miracles to come up with a feasible budget for the nation and the decline in revenue inflow is disturbing. Outflows majorly civil servant remuneration (about 70%) is gobbling up a large part of the little that is trickling in. While this is going on, there is nothing much being said about the money being obtained from sale of Zimbabwe's natural resource, diamonds which word has it that they have been hijacked by Zanu PF officials to enrich themselves while poking fun at the government's administrative duties. They deny any wrong doing but the question is, how can they afford to live lavishly if the government pays civil servants so measly? It's a case of former colonialists having returned in the form of rich black rulers. What a shame?