The Civil Servants, like the rest of Zimbabweans, have been very patient; I am surprised it has taken them this long before saying enough is enough. It is nonsense for this government to say it does not have the money to pay Civil Servants a living wage when the politicians are squandering millions of dollars on questionable activities.
Tsvangirai MDC promised to government expenditure by reducing the size of government; before the 2008 elections he promised there would be 15 ministers, for example. How quickly he forgot. There are now five times as many ministers; counting the governors, ministers, Prime Minister, Deputy PMs, President and Deputy Presidents. What exactly is the Minister of National Healing supposed to doing and we have three Ministers sharing this portfolio for good measure! And, of course, each minister has an army of civil servants, drives ministerial car and is paid all manner of allowances!
Mugabe has fostered a new class and culture system on Zimbabwe; we have the ruling elite who are pampered and spoilt, they are to be denied nothing money can buy and they are, as a rule, a-law-unto-themselves. They constitute 10 to 20%. The rest, the ruled, are not entitled to any basic rights including the right to life itself and they are expected to make any sacrifice demanded of them in a fight for resources to meet their basic needs as contrast to buying luxuries for the ruling elite. So schools and hospitals for the ruled have closed for lack of funding and meanwhile the state has spent millions buying plasma TV for Judges, Mercedes Benz for Ministers, financing countless overseas trips for ministers, etc. The ruling elite have not been affected by the school closures since the send their children outside Zimbabwe for their education.
In Mugabe's Zimbabwe it is those who have political power and have pledged their loyalty to Mugabe who have been granted unfettered access to the nation's resources. In the last five years Mugabe has expanded his loyalty base by giving seized farms to more and more people and thus expand the "ruling elite" class. For most of the new "ruling elite" the farm is the only asset they have, take that away they, like the overwhelming majority in Zimbabwe today, will have absolutely nothing. It this fear of joining the dispossessed masses that Mugabe is hoping will spur the new farm owners to defend status quo and thus help him and his cronies who have commandeer and now own the lion's share of Zimbabwe wealth and resources keep their loot.
Mugabe and his cronies have seized the nation's wealth and resource but have failed to put it to good use through mismanagement and corruption. They took over the farms, factories, etc. not because they were the best farmers, etc. They took over the farms because of greed and because they had the political muscle to do as they pleased.
If Zimbabwe is ever to become a just and prosperous country then we must break this culture of greed and lawlessness. The nation's resources must be used for the good and benefit of all and not just a select few. All citizens must have an equal opportunity to keep resources like land and those who are going to use a given resource productively must considered first before those who will seat on it.
After years of unmitigated looting of the nation's wealth and resources there will be those who want the political system that allowed them to be favoured at the expense of all other to stay. Or at the very least, that they should be allowed to keep their loot. This can not and must not be allowed. First in the interest of common justice, the looters must be punished not rewarded for bring the whole nation into this sorry state of affairs. Allow these crooks to keep their ill got wealth and there will be no end to the mischieve they will fund! Secondly, more practically, the only chance the nation has for future prosperity is by making sure that the looted wealth is in the hands of those best able to use it to create even more wealth for the good of all.
A concerted Civil Servants strike will not by itself dismantle Mugabe’s dictatorship and bring sanity to the nation. Still, it is a tentative step in the right direction!
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