By Sibanengi Dube
A government that ceases to provide water, electricity, medication and leadership to citizens has not only collapsed but decayed. This Zanu PF has stopped providing governance to Zimbabwe. The gorillas have surely breached their contract with citizens.
This government was at one moment described by the late former Zimbabwe Unity Movement (ZUM) president, Edgar Tekere, as being rotten before its death. This time the once rotten but living government has died.
Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government has almost terminated delivery of services to citizens. There are no meaningful attempts by the government whatsoever to bring back to sanity to Zimbabwe. Life is a curse in Harare. Even rights to life, safety and security are not guaranteed.
Just imagine that all Zimbabwean employees are on a slave’s wage except for chaps with access to public funds. The entire nation is unemployed because the few who are still clinging on to their jobs have to engage in callous deals to keep their heads above the water.
The paltry RTS$400 public servants salaries can no longer take them home. Basic food necessities like salt, sugar, milk, bread, meat, meal-mealie and rice have been elevated to superfluity status. They are beyond everyone’s reach except for members of the ruling elite and their friends.
Electricity is now a sanctuary for the opulent as it has become both scarce and expensive. Citizens will soon be billed for free and natural solar power provided by the sun. At this rate it won’t be surprising if the government changes laws to give themselves powers to bill citizens for borehole water. Major cities including Harare are without clean water to drink.
This is courtesy of the tug-of-war between the government and MDC run municipalities who are being punished for kicking out Zanu PF from town constituencies.
A crippling strike by nurses and doctors currently underway has sentenced Zimbabwean patients to inevitable death. There is no solution in sight since no one is in charge. The medical health professionals are requesting salary adjustments to cushion them against steep hikes in living expenses. How is such a legitimate and genuine request not understood by the government?
Schools are only operating due to private arrangements between teachers and parents. The government only steps into schools to issue suspension or dismissal threats whenever teachers request for salary adjustments.
The government’s only solution to requests for a solution by civil servants is dismissal. This is the challenge when one has a hammer only, everything starts looking like nails.
Roads criss-crossing Zimbabwe’s townships have now collapsed into gullies due to neglect. Everything is scarce in Zimbabwe except for corruption and abductions.
One wonders what exactly the rulers of this land are doing in their offices if they can’t invest a minute of their time in sourcing painkillers, thermometers and bandages. If this is not a priority to them, what then forms part of their precedence?
A father without capacity or willingness to provide shelter, food, security and guidance to his family would ordinarily cease unceremoniously to be the head of the family. The children will seek refuge in more stable families and the wife might even divorce such a bane and marry a more responsible man.
The government is not even in an auto-pilot mode anymore. Something on auto-pilot mode would move on its own, but this time the government is stagnant and sinking, that is if it has not sunk to the bottom already. The plummeting has now reached terrifying and choking levels.
Citizens ironically expect those who deliberately sunk Zimbabwe to such cosmological levels to ultimately bring the country back to the surface. This will not happen. The sinker has neither capacity nor willingness to do so. It is business as usual for the few sinkers when everything is unusual for 16 million Zimbabweans.
What cannot be missed is the fact that those in power do not seem to understand that they occupy public office at the pleasure of the electorate. The ruling elite is seemingly not obliged to deliver services to citizens. Overt looting of state resources is unquestionably the major business of the members of ruling elite.
It is only in Zimbabwe where three planes with their long wings, can disappear from a parastatal without any trace. The looting at NSSA, Airzim, Chiadzwa Gold mines and Command Agriculture purse by identified former or current cabinet ministers are symptoms of how everything has gone rascal in Zimbabwe in the full view of the citizens.
Exposed fuel cartels in Zimbabwe run by shady characters connected to ED serve to confirm that Zimbabwe was being held at ransom by a few individuals.
The loaded and tense situation in Zimbabwe in unsustainable. Citizens can no-longer afford the luxury of folding their hands as their destiny gets bleak by every minute. The Zimbabwe government has only two options: to shape up or ship out. This something of instant urgency.
Sibanengi Dube is a Zimbabwean journalist based in South Africa
