ONE of the results of thirty years of Zanu PF rule has been the dominance of patronage as the way to get on in the world, rather than through hard work. Patronage means we get things free from the powers above.

The land resettlement programme has been based on getting land free.

Every election is about getting free things from would be leaders. We get high positions through the favour of some important politician rather than through higher skills or harder work.

We can no longer plant our own food, for the simple reason that there are no seeds or fertilizer to buy at affordable prices.

We have been a starving nation for eight consecutive years, and we have been fed by our so-called enemies, the West.  Indeed we have become a nation of beggars.

Meanwhile we have been boasting about sovereignty. Let’s face it, beggars are not sovereign: they are dependants.

We need to look at patronage as a sweet, but poisonous drink.

It is destroying the nation, whilst we are all begging for more and more of it. We love getting things free.

We love to link up to powerful leaders, who are able to give us positions and property free of charge. We passively obey these leaders, even as they lead us through the toxic route of violence and crime. Through this poison we have lost our moral compass.

Through patronage, our parastatals have become milk cows for the powerful, and no longer serve the nation as they used to do.

Whether it is Air Zimbabwe, the National Railways of Zimbabwe, or the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority, mismanagement and abuse have led to their downfall.

When they failed to meet market demands, they relied on patronage from government to survive. 
At the same time, the patrons, personified in the Minister, had the power to intervene in decision-making, usually to the benefit of patronage, but at the expense of economic viability.

If Zimbabwe is to go forward, it will have to free itself from its addiction to this poison, patronage.  We may be drunk with the pleasures of patronage, but it will get us exactly where we are today — in disaster.

Through patronage we have incompetent people making important decisions which affect the whole nation negatively.

A good example was the absolute madness of printing more and more money, to the extent where we unashamedly increased the money supply by more than 400 000%, followed a few months by more than 2 million percent.

Anyone who has done first year economics can tell you that increasing the money supply by more than 10% is courting disaster, but we continued to do it over a period of seven years. Seven years of madness.

Meanwhile patronage continued apace, and those who wished to benefit from patronage, continued to flatter the powers above.

It is time to move away from patronage, and to look at developing a meritocracy. Zimbabwe is a highly-educated and highly-skilled nation.

Let us choose the best leaders for the job.

Let us choose the best managers for our parastatals and stop interference in decision making by ignoramuses intent on self-gratification rather than in the success of the enterprise.

Let us choose the best people to head our schools and hospitals rather than selecting through patronage.

We have the sad tragedy where millions of skilled Zimbabweans have left the country, and many of them are doing very well in other countries.

If they had had the opportunity to do well in Zimbabwe, they would have been able to create a more prosperous and better developed country than we have today.

Zimbabweans are a highly disciplined and hardworking nation. We have to rid ourselves of our addiction to patronage, which is turning us into a nation of beggars and prostitutes.  Instead we need to return to our dependence on discipline and hard work.

BY FAY CHUNG

Comments (1)

Show/Hide comments

Show/Hide comment form