The ManicaPost
Shame Isaki : Post Correspondent
From time immemorial there has been an old adage which says that politics is a dirt game and many have come to accept this as an immortal truth but after studying both internal and international politics I have come to the conclusion that it’s not politics which is dirt, no, it’s not the game which is dirt, but actually it is the players who are dirt and in this case of politics it’s the politicians who are dirt, very dirt.
When one takes a closer look at what is happening in our country you will understand what I am trying to put across. We have movie-like manouvres and schemes in our politics and most if not all of them are self-serving, selfish and counter-productive. Everyone is fighting for their personal political space and unashamedly some claim to be “doing these things for the people”.
All of our politicians tell us that they are doing all this for Zimbabweans but at the end of the day what comes out is completely the opposite. I will expand on this some other time but today I want to address two issues that have become very topical; bond notes and demonstrations.
The Zim dollar era and it’s hardships is still haunting Zimbabweans to the extent that it has become very difficult for authorities, particularly the RBZ Governor, Dr John Mangudya, to convince the citizens to accept the introduction of bond notes as a stop-gap measure to ease the liquidity crisis the country is facing.
No one should begrudge the nation for being so pessimistic and skeptical about this measure because the kind of economic suffering we have gone through some of which has been as a result of glaring corrupt tendencies, sanctions and a toxic political environment, it then will take some great effort on the part of authorities to win back the trust and confidence of the people in whatever policy measure they want to introduce.
Just like in a marriage or say business relationship, the one who has betrayed trust must work hard to regain it, it’s that simple. It is very possible that the bond notes will go a very long way in easing the shortage of cash but government has a lot of courting and convincing to do and moreover bond notes on their own will not do the trick because our greatest enemies in this country are corruption, arrogance and a feeling or culture of political entitlement and these combined have brought us much misery.
The person who wants to succeed or make progress in life must also be willing to face or listen to the painful truth about his or her weaknesses but it seems in this country we don’t want to face our failures and weaknesses. Life is not like that, you can’t have both. Something has to give. You can’t have your cake and eat it too.
Now that specific dates have been given as to when the bond notes will be introduced some people have petitioned the Con-court to treat their case against bond notes as urgent but I don’t see their case succeeding because the issue of bond notes is as good as done and instead of wasting money on useless court processes they should be actually pulling resources together to pay for the t-shirts they got on credit.
Some are demonstrating against the bond notes among other things. While demonstrating is a constitutional right as it is a way of expressing oneself, it however ceases to be when people abuse this constitutional right to cause harm, abuse, pain and damage to other people who may not be involved.
We are always talking about democracy and I don’t think its democratic to burn state property, destroy private property and inconvenience others who want to go about their daily chores.
If demonstrations are now being used as a political weapon then a political response will always come from the authorities and at the end of the day it is a question of who has ‘superior power’ to tame the other and examples across the world show that such confrontational approach accelerates a nation’s disintegration and I don’t think we would want that to happen to our beautiful country.
We are too Christianized, civilized and educated to be engaging in self-destructive tendencies yet we can amicably engage one another in solving our challenges.
