Corruption and Patronage must go - otherwise Indigenisation and JUICE won't make a difference

Both Zanu-PF and the MDC are swinging into election mode. For us the people of Zimbabwe we have leant the lesson that election time is empty promise season. Political parties will say anything and everything that they think will get our votes. However we now know that their promises count for nothing.

In the midst of all the flowery rhetoric and lofty promises being made, I for one continue to sorely miss what I consider to be the basic tenets of good governance in Zimbabwe. My premise is that to have good governance we must end political patronage and the corruption it gives rise to.

The fundamental principle of ending patronage, is to reduce the government to as few ministers as possible. I have earlier shown that the number of Zimbabwe's ministers is astronomical compared to the world's leading economies and largest countries. I have also illustrated how the lifestyle of ministers compared to ordinary people is simply unsustainable.

The only reason why we have an astronomical number of ministries is that both parties, Zanu-PF and the MDC, feel that their high ranking members have to be rewarded with senior posts upon the party making it into power. This has got nothing to do with the efficient administration of Zimbabwe but an unjustified feeling of entitlement among politicians.

I first made this point when the two parties signed the GPA. Then I characterised them as hyenas and leopards negotiating of the goat carcass that is the welfare of Zimbabwe's people. The moment the announced the sharing of ministries I immediately complained that the number was too much. To prove my point, the country's economy has struggled to recover under the weight of the bloated GPA government.

As long as government is bloated, no matter how many JUICEs and Indigennisations we have, Zimbabwe will never prosper. All the money meant to circulate in the economy will be quickly siphoned off into private pockets.

Coupled with the problem that our politicians want to show off by importing very, very expensive luxury goods, money siphoned into the private pockets of politicians is quickly taken out of the country leaving the country with nothing.

As long as the problem of corruption, patronage and unnecessary extravagance is not tackled, we will never ever have a 100 billion dollar economy.


On the MDC's part, the JUICE plan is not a plan that is meant to turn around the Zimbabwe economy but a plan that is meant to buy votes this coming elections and no more. It is not a plan meant to achieve success for Zimbabwe but a plan meant to win power for the MDC.

The people who came up with this plan were answering the question, 'what do we tell these people so that they vote for us?'

They were not answering the question, 'what do we do to develop Zimbabwe?'

What happens to the economy after they win power is not guaranteed and can never be guaranteed. The only thing guaranteed is that they will get a lot of prestige and use it to make money.

All the countries that wait for others to come and invest are poor.

On Zanu-PF's part talk of indigenisation is mostly cover for well connected politicians grabbing going concerns and running them down. True indigenisation would entail fostering the growth of new black owned enterprises. However the party has thrown spanners into the works of growing black owned companies like they once did with Econet. Anybody who is not politically connected to Zanu-PF is treated as a threat.

Foreign investment is already happening. We have had companies mining granite in Mutoko for years. In Chiyadzwa while the Chinese are the most publicised, their are four mining companies one of them having Italian roots. The platinum and gold sectors are bustling with investment.

Yet all these investments are count for nothing because money is being wasted in a huge bloated executive as well as rampant corruption and personalisation of national resources by politicians.

What does the existing foreign investment means for ordinary Zimbabweans. For Chiyadzwa villagers it has meant being kicked out of their homes like dogs to allow for top politicians to make money through demanding lucrative kickbacks and cutbacks from the so called foreign investors.

Right now we are sitting with a problem of billions of tones of iron ore reserves that have been given away for a song to an Indian company.

The other serious problem we have is simple plain ignorance in the top echelons of government. A patently ludicrous manifestation of this ignorance is when several senior cabinet ministers were made to sit shoeless in front of a school drop-out in the belief that pure refined diesel would then flow out of solid rock.

It is the same kind of ignorance that saw a so called professor, giving away our iron ore reserves for a song.

A few years back the entire country was made to run around planting jatropha, which was supposed to be turned into bio-diesel. While it is possible for various plant oils to be refined into diesel, one needs to do thorough research and carefully consider any intellectual property issues regarding the process before just jumping in on the deep end.

The MDC's JUICE plan is loaded on futuristic promises but empty on current action. They forget that we are not new to futuristic plans and are not as gullible anymore. Zanu-PF took us through a series of five year plans. Going by the promises made then Zimbabwe should have been a first world country by now.

We even had something called housing for all by 2000. Going by the promises made then every Zimbabwe would have been living in a mansion by year 2000. Yet all we ended up with was Operation Murambatsvina.

Good plans for providing houses did exist. One such plan was the Pay for Your House Scheme started by the Ministry of Construction. That was a very good plan. However it was soon torpedoed by rampant corruption is bigwigs diverted pool funds to build their own mansions.

Even progress that had already been made has been reversed by corruption. Right now as I write this the railway line that had been electrified between Harare and Gweru has been stripped bare of copper catenaries in one the saddest stories of infrastructure destruction.

If rumours are to be believed this was all the work of our self-centred and greedy politicians. Imagine the sheer stupidity of taking a refined product already in use and selling is as scrap which needs to be refined and tuned into a useful product all over again.

We have been listening to lofty plans for 30 years. We are being fed lofty plans now. But nothing is ever going to come of them unless the fundamental problem of patronage, gravy train seat allocation and government bloatware is addressed.

That doesn't need a plan. All it needs is a simple cabinet reshuffle.