Various noises always follow the appointment of ministers of government, with many analysts miffed by the recycling of old faces in the cabinet.
From The Editor’s Desk with Nevanji Madanhire
It has become apparent that ministries are created to give jobs to the boys. President Mugabe, in justifying his choices, clearly spelt this out saying the appointments were based on how long individuals had served him and the party.
But do ministers really matter as far as driving government business is concerned? It is apparent that ministers are simply the political faces of their ministries which are really run by technocrats.
Indeed the permanent secretaries in the ministries are the real chief executives and below them there is a highly educated cadre of civil servants. The civil service boasts some of the most highly educated people in the country.
Of course there have been one or two overbearing ministers who want to be seen to be personally driving their ministries, but this has not always worked.
Mugabe hinted at this recently when he talked about extroverted and introverted ministers, concluding that the blabbermouths were not necessarily the best deliverers of results.
The major challenge facing Mugabe and his government at the moment is that government institutions have got to work.
- Kasukuwere dares Mnangagwa
- Kasukuwere dares Mnangagwa
- Chiefs to supervise food aid distribution
- Graft 'bleeding' ZimStat
Keep Reading
In the past 20 years or so, government institutions have not been working efficiently. This sickness must have begun in the 1990s when civil servants began to be disillusioned with their lot.
During the economic structural adjustment programme of the 1990s, when government began to cut expenditure and the working conditions of civil servants deteriorated as equipment was not replaced, forcing them to work, often with literally nothing.
Workplaces became little prisons in which workers spent the biggest part of their lives. The situation worsened at the turn of the millennium due to the political and economic crises.
Uncertainty and insecurity that pervaded the civil service affected the workers’ performance.
Remuneration was inadequate and often workers across the board had to moonlight to survive. Some who have become ministers are known to have been selling tomatoes and cabbages in their offices. Government time was used to scrounge for survival.
Corruption set in as a result. It became impossible to get anything done for citizens without paying a bribe. Corruption in the police force became legendary, international surveys pointing to the ZRP as the most corrupt police force in the region.
As recently as last year, the Anti-Corruption Trust of Southern Africa said a recent assessment it carried out showed that corruption by the Zimbabwe Republic Police was worsening.
Corruption at border posts is still rampant, while the common people fear doing business with all government offices even if it’s their right to be served.
The new government should know that it can’t be business as usual in government offices any more. When people say the new government must deliver, they are saying the civil servants should raise their game; they have to make a step change.
It is no secret that our civil service is bloated; hence it gobbles 70% of government expenditure. It has been said that a huge percentage of public servants are in fact ghost workers who could have drained as much as US$17,5 million per month from State coffers between 2008 and 2011. Last year it was reported that 6 000 such workers had been fished out. A report by Ernest&Young said there were up to 70 000 ghost workers in the civil service.
The public service is always touted as a safe employer because it rarely ever fires employees. This must change because this feeling of certitude is responsible for the laziness and slovenliness we see among government employees.
There should be a culture change. The work of civil servants, like that of their counterparts in the private sector, should be results-driven. The situation where thousands of government workers are just passengers on the gravy train must come to an end.
The recommended skills audit should be implemented and any deadwood must be flushed out. Permanent secretaries must drive hard this culture change. It would be very helpful if the ministers chipped in with their political clout to impress upon the workers the importance of a results-oriented approach.
There should be zero tolerance on corruption. Now that Mugabe has unequivocally promised to review civil service remuneration, there should be little justification for taking backhanders.
There should be transparency in the way government workers deal with the public. Ministries should be able to put in place mechanism that ensure that government work is all done above board and should open up to public scrutiny.
Civil service efficiency can only be enhanced if government offices are depoliticised. In the past decade or so all government offices became highly politicised because of the political crisis. This led to the deployment into certain offices of some people whose duties were not to carry out government business but to monitor political dissent. This greatly undermined efficiency and entrenched corruption even further.
The man in the street should be able to trust the police. We should, once again, be able to tell our children to ask for directions from the police when they are lost in the city. We should once again be able to seek assistance from the police without paying for it in the form of a bribe. The first step in sprucing up the image of the police is to make sure our officers are clean; they should be given new apparel regularly. No one will trust a policeman in tattered clothes and unpolished shoes.
When our institutions begin to work, we can begin to talk about transparency and good governance. Addressing the Ghanaian parliament in July 2009, US President Barack Obama had this to say: “In the 21st century, capable, reliable and transparent institutions are the key to success — strong parliaments and honest police forces; independent judges and journalists; a vibrant private sector and civil society.
Those are the things that give life to democracy, because that is what matters in peoples’ lives.”
He also said: “… history offers a clear verdict: governments that respect the will of their own people are more prosperous, more stable, and more successful than governments that do not. This is about more than holding elections — it’s also about what happens between them.”
This is the single noise we should make to our new government, that it should respect our will whether the ministers have been recycled or not.
