THIS week I am in Botswana, a country which Jonathan Moyo once dismissively said had more goats that people. It has been a while since I last visited Gaborone and there were a number of visible construction activities which has gone on and a number of projects are still on-going.

Gaborone may be a town planning nightmare, but they are building good key roads which augur well for the future.  As with other countries in the region, there is a huge number of Zimbabweans who have made this country their home. Meeting with some old friends and family triggered the topic for this week.

From the safety of Botswana, I also look at some policies of my host South African government that I would definitely do differently.

Back in the 1980s, I remember Kamuzu Banda, during one of his visits to Zimbabwe, telling some Malawi-born community members in Rugare, Harare, that they should work hard; avoid conflict and be good, respectful guests of the local Zimbabwe government.

As someone who had very close friends and family in this community, I felt that the Ngwazi was quite condescending towards them. Surely they ought to be allowed to be assertive and aggressive like everyone else?

But many years later, I have warmed up to this advice and in retrospect I think there was some merit on the old man’s observation.

I am resident in South Africa and I am quite conscious that I am a guest in that country. I am always polite when I make observations on issues of governance in my host country. As guests, we can only give advice but we have to allow our hosts to make their own mistakes. After all, the Zimbabwean nation has also made a number of its own costly mistakes.

There is a huge proportion of Zimbabweans living in the diaspora who tend to be generally loud and overbearing. It is okay if we are in our own country, but when we do it in neighbouring countries, particularly in resource-poor communities, it can be interpreted as being rude. It has been even known to have caused a few riots against foreign nationals in South Africa.

I have had many gentle persuasive discussions with some colleagues of mine in the African National Congress around their policy of providing working adult black people with free RDP houses. For this observation, they have retorted that I was behaving like a spoilt middle class petit bourgeois forgetting history. They explain to me that apartheid was so brutal it dehumanised most Africans and left them without dignity. Providing people with free housing is, therefore, part of the restoration of that dignity.

Just in case you misunderstand my thrust, I am not against giving to the poor and philanthropy in general. I personally believe a 100% free house should only be given to the grandmothers who bore the brunt of apartheid, the physically challenged and the orphans.

Surely someone who is an able bodied adult, works, and earns R3,000 (US$430) can afford to pay R250 per month for ten years for the benefit of getting their accommodation? My problem with this arrangement is that we create a generation of people who expect the government to do free things for them.

I actually believe every able bodied individual should have at personal level some activity to help the less fortunate. I am really impressed with a company like Econet which is taking care of over 30,000 less fortunate children mainly through education across many areas. Education is good because it sets less fortunate children to be free to become what they dream of.

The principle of seedtime and harvest evolved from the ancient of days in the book of Genesis in the bible. It is anchored in Genesis 8:22 which says: "As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease." It is supported by what Paul of Tarsus said in 2 Thessalonians 3:10 that, for even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: "If a man will not work, he shall not eat."

The basis for this is that no-one should expect a free lunch on this earth. If you do not plant, surely you should not expect a harvest. There is nothing for mahala, somehow somewhere someone is paying for it.

In Zimbabwe, since 1980, we have had communities who have been receiving free seed and fertilizer. More than 30 years on, some are still expecting free seed and fertilizer. If it was just at the level of communal farmers, it would have been bearable. The problem is that we have professionals, business people and even Members of Parliament who are all queuing for freebies!

Essentially, these people are stealing money from the fiscus which should be going towards building hospitals, roads, schools, bridges, power stations to support economic growth, providing water and sanitation. My prayer is that we will be the last generation to expect a free lunch and we bequeath to the next generation that everything has to be worked for.

While giving free seed all the time is not recommended, it is even worse to give able bodied people free food. If we analyse what diaspora communities send back home, what the Zimbabwean government and donors give various communities, we will tend to notice that finished food is the bulk. It is actually cheaper and more fruitful to give sunflower seed than to give a bottle of sunflower oil.

I am a proponent of the policy that everyone who receives free seed should contribute a proportionate amount of their harvest to a grain bank that caters for the sick, orphans and the elderly. That way we create sustainability which releases our communities from the clutches of donor mentality.