“My country is like
an empty but attractive
plastic packet marked in bold blue letters
fresh creamy milk
being blown by the wind
along the road
that leads to a rubbish dump
by the cemetery”-Julius Chingono
By Albert Gumbo
Our country needs a new civil servant; one who loves his job, people and country. He is the one who ends up being a member of a team that constitutes the finest civil service in the world. A bureaucrat par excellence, he is nevertheless mindful of the fact that he deals with human beings. Obsessed with standards, he is in love with rules and regulations, bylaws and legislation and passionate about providing solutions to the human beings in front of him. He is conscientious about record keeping and effective service delivery. He abhors corruption and reports it to the relevant authorities when it is thrust in his face. The day of the uncaring, unresponsive civil servant weighed down by criminally low wages, a negative and superior attitude towards his fellow citizens must come to an end.
The civil servant must be obsessed with ensuring that fellow citizens have birth certificates and other necessary documentation without which life is miserable for Africans. The civil servant must obsess about clinics not only being available but correctly stocked with the appropriate medicines. Water and sanitation must be taken for granted in terms of availability and the masses must be imbued with a culture of water resilience not because water is in short supply in a particular area but because even in a time of abundance they appreciate that it can be a finite resource. Duncan Green quotes the Indian economist Amartya Sen who writes, “individuals need capabilities-rights and the ability to exercise them.” Governments, and the civil servants that make them function, must be singularly focussed on this mission; to give individuals the capability and environment to thrive. This means our leadership must give the people the means to believe in themselves and not the idea and culture that their wellbeing depends on the largesse and good will of politicians. This thinking and practice must end. This means a government that consciously crafts and implements workable policies is the best ally for the people instead of one that gives food handouts at election time. It is also a government that will demand that its civil servants toe the line in service delivery without compromise.
I remember a time when our police force was considered second only to Scotland Yard, when our peace keeping forces were highly sought after and when our teachers, nurses and doctors represented the finest in their class on the continent and could hold their own on the global stage. I remember excellent sportsmen and women at the highest level of sport because we provided the facilities for them to soar.
How does a whole country fail to collect $15 billion worth of revenue from a single economic activity? How does a shareholder who attends quarterly board meetings for 7 years not know the companies he has invested in is haemorrhaging? How does a government glibly announce this state of affairs and heads do not roll as a consequence? How does an entire population not express its rage after this incredible dereliction of duty on the part of the state?
A regime that rages about how everything under the soil belongs to us “fails” to collect revenue from tightly controlled diamond mining, due to the state, that would have righted the sinking ship and life goes on is the most shocking economic event of Zimbabwe. It is not even an event because the collection did not take place! Has the state been captured by a predatory elite? Who are they? Who will hold them to account?
Why have concerned Zimbabweans, on the street and in cabinet, not publicly raged against this appalling leadership failure?
Internal democracy
“Nation above government, truth above power!”
Generally speaking, political parties across the African continent have suffered from the lack of open and honest communication with the result that many African countries have fallen prey to the whims of the leader in power. When the whims of said leader have been damaging to the fortunes of the country, the rest of the leadership has been mute to the point of criminal negligence. We have watched Zimbabwe decay and risen to applaud nonsensical speeches from the deck of a sinking ship while our children leapt to their death in to choppy foreign waters. This is unacceptable and a new generation of leaders needs to emerge.
