Zimbabwe: the tragedy of the 'commoners'

Zimbabwe: the tragedy of the 'commoners'

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• Gono: Zimbabwe 's inflation to peak at 800%

• Patrick Mlambo: A 100 reasons why Gono should resign

• Gono's 'sleepless nights' over inflation

• Gono fighting a losing battle

• Gono, the Zimbabwean Napoleon

• Patrick Mlambo: The small minds in charge of our economy

• Chido Makunike: Overcoming the 'Messiah Complex'

By Tonderai Munakiri

WHEN we were growing up in the villages, one of our chores as “village boys” was to take turns to herd cattle for the whole village.

In the process it never occurred to us that we had a primary responsibility over the land, the water and all resources that the environment provided. We had no programs for rotating grazing lands, neither did we care about the environment that we herded our cattle.

Such was the tragedy of the common villager because our cattle died in their millions whenever we had a drought and sometimes in between good seasons. This was essentially because none of us cared about the future of the environment as well as the future of the cattle themselves.

The crisis that has been plaguing Zimbabwe in the last 8 years is a tragedy of the common Zimbabwean who has no political muscle or economic stamina to stave off poverty and disease. The current decay of the state has exposed three quarters of our people who have endured 8 years of inept and corrupt government. The tragedy has been that the majority of our people have not any patron relations with government officials and most of them have no sons or daughters that have skipped borders to remit home the green-buck or pound or the South African rand. Most of them have been condemned to a life of hopelessness, diseases and poverty. They have become the “wretched of the earth” because our society has lost its fabric to corruption and immorality.

For the past 8 years, Zimbabwe has been bleeding from massive corruption which has corrupted every sector of our society. Foreign currency hoarding and black marketeering have all constituted the norm for our society; every fabric of our society has become corrupt. Moral values have been eroded; a decay of the state is unfolding and is fast spreading its tentacles all around us. Garbage in city centers has become an eyesore and pot-holes have become a mainstay of our lives.

Our tragedy is that we have not taken responsibility/ownership over our problems. As a country, we have allowed the decay of the moral fiber to affect not only our body politic but the very fabric of our society. Some Zimbabweans have had to abandon the sinking ship by skipping borders or seeking "papers" to become citizens of other countries because we like to wish away the problems of our country.

The height of our problems was marked on Friday (May 12, 2006) when the inflation figure rose to a whooping 1000%. Surely Zimbabwe is not at war with itself or with any other nation. It should boggle the mind that a country that 20 years ago boasted the best infrastructure in Sothern Africa today has the worst owing to a deepening political and economic crisis. In addition, it disturbs the mind that a country that used to be a breadbasket of the continent, is today begging from its neighbors. Moreover, a country that used to be a member of every multilateral institution is today a pariah state with very few friends to turn to when hard times fall. The millions of graduates that the country churned out year in year out have suddenly skipped borders leaving Zimbabwe with one of its worst brain drain in living history.

Zimbabwe has become barren politically, socially and economically because we have watched our politicians and their cronies plunder whatever is left of our once beautiful country. We have allowed the politically connected (the Makwavararas of this world) to abuse tax-payers money with impunity, we have allowed politicians and their cronies (patron client relations) to steal the land that they purported to distribute to the impoverished black masses. Additionally, we have allowed state sponsored violence to reduce whatever was left of our hard-work through inhumane programs like “murambatsvina”. Government programs in the last 8 years have been devoid of any progressive and futuristic thinking. As a result, the twin menaces of poverty and disease have decimated our countrymen enmasse.

In the last 8 years, Mugabe has refused to take the blame for the country’s current mess. He has instead blamed his “war and development” cabinets for gross mismanagement, corruption and ineptitude. He has blamed the US, UK, the Commonwealth and everyone that disagrees with his violent land grab policy. Here is our own President refusing to take ownership over our rotting economy and deteriorating international relations.

Our tragedy as a country is that there is no political or economical ownership of our problems. Mugabe blames everyone around him except himself for Zimbabwe’s poor running in global politics and economics. Like the grazing lands that we neglected in my village, we have also neglected the problems of the country. All we do is just to pass the buck, blaming everyone around us for the poor state of the economy and for our poor political standing in global politics.

I think Zimbabweans should start to take responsibility for the problems currently plaguing our country. Zimbabweans like myself have been writing about the problems of the country without ever taking ownership of the problems. All we have been doing is blaming the government, blaming corruption, blaming the droughts without ever owning these problems.

It shall take “us” to restore the battered investor confidence, it shall take “us” to embrace good ethical principles in business to avoid a situation where we have “all become corrupt”, and it shall take cultural transformation vis-à-vis greediness and looting in our country. We have become a dog eat dog society, a society with little if any values. Everywhere one goes, there is a little black market of some sort, all efforts to fix the economy have hit a brick wall, and all efforts to remedy our problems have fallen apart because the values of our society have fundamentally been changed by a dog eat dog culture. Everyone of us tries to survive at the expense of something or someone; we have lost our “ubuntu” ladies and gentleman. It is high time we go back to the drawing table to get into an ethics class and fix our ethical short-comings. This is the only way that we can get rid of a culture of greed and looting which leaves the grazing land barren.
Tonderai Munakiri is a Zimbabwean based in South Africa
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