Why does Mugabe keep ‘lazy’ ministers?

By Alex T Magaisa

President Mugabe surprises me. The Herald newspaper reports today, that he ‘slammed’ his Ministers yesterday, for being too lazy. It also reports that he chided them for travelling too much and for organising endless meetings without delivery. But three things stand out and demand scrutiny.

First, in terms of the Constitution, Ministers serve at his pleasure. He is the one who appoints them and has the power to fire them. They are accountable to him as President. Why does he keep lazy ministers? He must take responsibility for his team’s laziness as much as he relishes credit for success.

The simple fact is he has the constitutional power to stop it by getting rid of dead wood and appointing more competent people. It is only over a year since he appointed these men and women. They are his people and he can blame no one for poor delivery.

As we so often see in football management, the manager takes responsibility for his team. If he goes on and on blaming his players, whose selection he is responsible for, people will stop taking him seriously. When Brazil was humbled by Germany at the last World Cup, Scolari did not blame his players. He departed and took responsibility.

Second, since he has the constitutional power to hire and fire, why does he feel the need to talk about it in public when he can simply exercise it in the relevant arenas? Every week, he hosts a cabinet meeting – is this not where he should be chiding his lazy ministers and bringing them to account?

If he is going to make it a public issue, he might as well name and shame the lazy ones for our entertainment because that is the only purpose it serves. Otherwise all this public talk sounds like mere grandstanding to the public gallery. By now they simply dismiss his talk because they know mdhara anongotaura – he just talks. There is no action.

Third, he has the power to control the amount of travel and if its too much it means he is approving it. It is common practice that every minister who travels does so on the basis of Cabinet authority, which is given by his Office. If they are travelling too much it means they are getting authority to travel from his office.

It is this authority that is also the prerequisite for resources for travel. He can easily stop excessive travel by denying them authority and therrfore, resources, to travel. But his Office is granting the authority and is therefore complicit in the excessive travel.

Fourth, he must surely know why his Ministers and senior officials are fond of travel. It is the single most abused government facility under which the state is looted while everything appears legitimate. Government travel is used by officials as a money-spinning scheme.

When they travel, they get allowances. Civil servants fight to join the party because of the allowances they get for travel and subsistence.

He should know better. Wherever he goes, whether it’s a trip to the UN Summit in New York or to a religious ceremony at the Vatican, Mugabe himself always has a huge entourage. Most of those on the travelling party have absolutely no business on those trips.

They go on trips and disappear into some run down, cheap motel where they share a room in large groups, all in order to save on costs and keep their allowances.

Travel is therefore a lucrative industry in Government and if he doesn’t know it, then the 34 years in power have not taught him much about how this ancient and corrupt machinery operates. What they earn in low wages, they certainly make up in travel allowances.

But there is more. This circumstance is also a fertile source of patronage the oil that keeps the corrupt system working.

This is because since government travel is so lucrative and everyone wants to go on trips, the boss can control his subordinates by using travel as both a carrot and stick – it’s a carrot that you offer to attract them and a stick when you withdraw it.

Thus the more loyal ones get rewarded while the rebels are never on the travel list. In that manner, the boss is able to patronise his subordinates.

At the end of the day, President Mugabe is the ultimate boss. He has the power to fire Ministers that he considers to be lazy and inefficient. It’s not leadership to complain about them in public. So what? How many times has be done that before? And to what end?

How many Ministers has he fired for laziness and incompetence in his 34 years of service? If he is serious, he has to demonstrate it by firing those that he regards as lazy.

Dr Alex T Magaisa studied law at the University of Zimbabwe (LLB) and the University of Warwick (LLM & PhD) in Great Britain. He is a former adviser to the then Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai. Dr Magaisa has worked at the University Warwick, the University of Nottingham and is presently based at Kent Law School, the University of Kent. 

You can visit his blog: NewZimbabweConstitution.wordpress.com. You can email him on waMagaisa@yahoo.co.uk