Labour
Minister tells the civil servant that no one will be laid off.
"As
far as I am concerned, there will not be a single job loss in government as
long as there is no disciplinary issue. Rationalisation means we might need to
move people from one station to another to plug gaps and consolidate
positions," said Labour minister Prisca Mupfumira. She will be forced to
eat her own words and this time she will not have long to wait to do so because
the government is broke!
The
civil service has always been bloated and with the national economy, with it
government revenue, shrinking faster than a deflating balloon government has no
choice but to off load many of its workers and reduce many of its services. We
all have to live within our means and that includes this government.
The
tragedy here is government is finally accepting the tough economic reality but
only the half of that reality. Zimbabwe’s economic meltdown was not caused by
the huge civil service wage bill alone; it contributed but only a tiny
fraction.
The
country’s economic meltdown was cause by mismanagement, corruption and
institutionalized lawlessness as exemplified by the obnoxious indigenisation
law and the vote rigging. For years the regime has refused to even acknowledge
these three cancerous problems and blamed the pathetic economic performance on
“evil sanctions imposed on us by the British and its Western allies”. So for
three and half decades the three cancers have been allowed the time and space
to fester and spread.
Minister
Mupfumira can say what she likes but since there is no money to pay the workers
the regime has the tough choice of retaining its bloated labour force and fail
to pay them, which the workers will not tolerate for long, or retrench some of
the workers. But since nothing has been done to remove the three cancerous
tumours killing the economy the regime will be forced to revisit the problem of
how to retain a bloated civil service on zero pay again and again.
This
is all part and parcel of President Mugabe’s ten point plan he announced two
weeks ago. He is desperately trying to resist change not knowing that change is
nature; you can manage change or it will manage you if you try to resist. Regime
change is long overdue and it is coming his ten point plan is meant to resist
change and to carry on as before; the plan is totally unworkable.
15 comments:
@ Belingwe
MDC were not just on the ground, they were in government and cabinet too and they had five years FIVE YEARS and still they failed to implement even one reform. Not one! So what that say about your real party?
I know you are in a panic over what ZSD are doing, they are challenge the electorate to question everything MDC or Zanu PF are saying and to think for themselves. People like you have always wanted the electorate to be a naive and gullible lot who follow like sheep. Of course you panic when the sheep start asking you searching questions!
MDC have lost a lot of supporters since the rigged 2013 elections and as more and more people understand what went on during the GNU.
As for Zanu PF rigging the next elections is going to be tough, really tough particularly now that Mai Mujuru has finally thrown her hat into the political ring.
The days of empty promises and slogans are drawing to an end.
This is not about ZSD but the Zimbabwe electorate, with each passing day a few more of them are learning to think for themselves. It is not ZSD who are the winners here but the voters and the nation. And that is exactly what ZSD wanted to see happen and so, in a way, ZSD are winning too!
@ Stewart Murewa
Remove the “hated and notorious sanctions”! Hated by whom; certainly not by Mugabe and his cronies because the sanctions have been the God send excuse for all the regime folly and economic failures. The like all excuses the allow one to take one’s eyes off the ball.
Instead of dealing with the real causes of the country’s economic problems like corruption Mugabe has swept them under the carpet because he had the sanctions as the excuse. Of course the problems have got worse and now they are overwhelming the nation.
In his ten-point plan in the State of the Nation Address Mugabe had no choice but to acknowledge that corruption was a problem but once again failed to take concrete measures to deal with this problem and any of the other teething problems. This was a ten-point plan for going nowhere!
You and for Zanu PF apologists and no one else is bothered about the sanctions. No one serious about solving the nation’s economic meltdown will concern themselves with imaginary problems when the real problems are there!
@ Nziramasanga
His conscience was fast asleep for years whilst his seat on the gravy train was secure it only woke up when his position was not so secure. Dabengwa is no different all Mai Mujuru, Simba Makoni and all the other Zanu PF bigwigs who only saw Mugabe as evil when they could not get their share of the loot!
THE International Monetary Fund (IMF) Wednesday issued a statement that effectively sold out President Robert Mugabe's plan to fire thousands of civil servants. - See more at: http://bulawayo24.com/News/National/73986#sthash.pTt8v57B.dpuf
This regime has done nothing about many of these reforms for donkey years and is doing something now when so many companies have been forced to close down, the nation economic is in total meltdown, etc.
We need to bite the bullet and demand the implementation of all the democratic reforms followed by the holding of free and fair elections. Only be getting a new government with a real mandate to govern can we be sure of decisive action being taken on time on all the many issues affecting the nation. The economic and political problems the nation is facing are very serious and urgent and we cannot afford any more of Zanu PF's time wasting tactics!
@ Kajau
“She may have sympathisers in MDC and her home area but elsewhere, people still remem-ber her uncouth response to Dr Joshua Nkomo's clarion call for the economic emancipation of the black folk in general and Strive Masiiwa in particular. Is that the calibre of leaders that Zimbabwe wants?” you say.
You are a hypocrite and like all hypocrites you have a forked tongue like a snake. Mai Mujuru has been in Zanu PF for donkey years and she was even promoted to be VP way after this Masiiwa incident and you never saw it fit to question neither her credentials nor those of Mugabe who promoted her until now.
Mai Mujuru’s re-entry into Zimbabwe’s political fray has rattled Mugabe and Zanu PF alright. The party has never felt so threatened; up to now the party has always felt confident as long as it was free to rig the elections. Now although it still holds the licence to rig the elections, thanks to MDC’s failure to implement any reforms, the party is really worry that all its vote rigging activities will be made public!
Chawakadya chamuka, Gushungo iweeee! The past is catching up with Mugabe and the tyrant does not know which way to turn now!
@ Patrick
Tendai Biti has grudgingly admitted that MDC's failure to implement even one reform was indeed idiotic of them. What he is failing to appreciate is the seriousness of it all.
If MDC had implemented the reforms Zimbabwe would have held its first FREE, FAIR and CREDIBLE elections and thus ended the country's culture of political violence and started the economic transformation at least assuming that the government to emerge out of the 2013 elec-tions would not have had sound economic policies.
But because MDC failed to implement any reforms the nation is still stuck with the incompetent, corrupt and ruthlessly oppressive Zanu PF regime. God only knows how long it is going to take before another chance comes along for the nation to finally implement the reforms and have the long awaited free and fair elections. God only knows what the total price is going to be in terms of lost economic opportunities and human suffering and deaths.
It is now two years since the rigged July 2013 elections and the economic cost to the nation is over $100 billion at least and with unemployment at 90% and 2 million living in abject poverty the human suffering and unnecessary deaths is heart breaking. Surely those responsible for such a crime have to be charged of the worse crime on the statute - treason!
The fact that these MDC idiots are contesting to hold high public office shows they really do not give a damn about the tragic misery and deaths their "callous acts of betrayal", as you said, have caused. It would be an act of betrayal if those who understand what MDC have done should fail to let the electorate know what vipers these MDC idiots are.
Mugabe and Zanu PF committed treason by rigging the elections and these thugs must be brought before a court of law to answer for this. Meanwhile these MDC idiots must resign from public life for their role in helping Zanu PF rig the elections, at the very least!
The biggest reason why Zanu PF is concerned about Mujuru’s entry onto the political fray is that the party will not be able to rig elections as freely as they had done with the sleepy MDC as their opponents. The threat of Mujuru doing a 1995 Margaret Dongo on Zanu PF is real especially now the economic situation causing untold hardships and the regime firing workers in their thou-sands.
In 1995 Dongo contested as a independent and lost the initial parliamentary election to a Zanu PF candidate but because she was familiar with the party's rigging machinery and had still had some friends inside Zanu PF, she was able to produce overwhelming evidence of how the vote was rigged. Zanu PF was forced to concede and agree to a rerun. Dongo won the rerun.
Mujuru still has a lot of supporters who are still imbedded in Zanu PF and a nationwide scandal of vote rigging will finish Mugabe and Zanu PF completely! On the other hand Zanu PF leaders know if the election was free and fair, they will lose.
@ Willard Manjoma
Tsvangirai and his MDC friends did not get even one reform implemented during the GNU; that is a historic fact.
MDC did not fail to implement even one reform because of Zanu PF “intransigence” as Tsvangirai would have us believe. They failed because they are corrupt - Mugabe bribed them to kick the reforms into the tall grass with gravy train lifestyles and, for Tsvangirai, the $4 million Highlands mansion. They also failed because they and incompetent – only first class idiots who have failed to see this was a honey trap. Their highflying lifestyles came to a sudden and bone breaking end on 31 July 2013 as Mugabe blatantly rigged the elections and kicked the MDC idiots off the gravy train! This too is a historic fact.
I am only pointing the historic facts here and, even more significantly, pointing out that Tsvangirai’s proposed solution is just another ill thought out plan with more holes than Swiss cheese. It will be very foolish for this nation to once again follow this corrupt and incompetent village idiot.
If pointing out historic facts and warning the nation of the danger they are letting them-selves into means I “hate Tsvangirai” then so be it.
I have offered a solution: first we must understand that the only reforms that will guar-antee free and fair elections are the reforms in the 2008 GPA. We must insist on these reforms and not allow ourselves be short changed.
Second, we must pressure Mugabe and Zanu PF to understand that they have failed and must step down to allow the implementation of all the reforms above. The economic meltdown is exerting a lot of pressure on the regime but this has not been complimented with the political pressure because the majority of the people out there have no clue what they want.
There are a lot of sheep out there who will still follow an idiot like Tsvangirai and Mugabe is smart enough to exploit this and prolong his stay in power. Indeed there are now CIO doing everything they can to prop up Tsvangirai and MDC because as long as Tsvangirai continues to sow his idiotic ideas and giving the people false hope Zanu PF’s continued rule is assured.
@ belingwe
Are you saying the only people competent enough to comprehend Zimbabwe's political problems are those in the country and, to take your argument to its logical end, they minute they cross the country's borders they minds switch off completely? Mugabe and Tsvangirai have always remained in the country, discounting their globe-trotting, and yet that has not stopped the country sinking into this mess. You really come up with some foolish things!
@ Nkomo
I agree with everything you said except the bit about splitting the nation. Why are you breaking up the country?
@ Patrick
The greatest challenge here has been how to remove Mugabe from the top job. As the late Ed-dison Zvobgo once said of Mugabe that once he got the relay-baton he run up into the moun-tains with it instead of passing it on to others. Zanu PF as a party did not have the leaders with the vision and resolve to tackle this problem of how to ensure the ground rules are laid for smooth transfer of power and that no one is above the law during the party’s formative stage. It is a lot easier to nip the problem in the bud rather than allow the seed to mature and scatter. Still as soon as it became clear that Mugabe was heading for the mountain with the baton the party should have acted decisively to stop this.
What the party did then and is doing to this day is appease Mugabe by allowing him to continue as leader regardless his track record of corruption, incompetence and brutal oppression. The party and by extension the nation, since this is a de facto one-party state, has been trying its best to solve the country’s worsening political and economic problems caused by Mugabe’s failed leadership without tackling the problems at the root source.
As you have correctly pointed out Mugabe is a “control freak” he has fcuked up everything and yet we have all pretended not to see that and showered him with praise at every turn. Mugabe and his Zanu PF dictatorship are the elephant in the room we must admit that and deal with it!
@ Mara
What has sanctions to do with denying the people their basic freedoms and rights including the right to a meaningful vote and the right to life?
@ Mara
Sanctions were imposed by the West and it is for them to decide whether to remove them or not. What we can deal with is the corruption, mismanagement, the lawlessness, etc. There are found in every other country and society yes but they have not become rampant as has happened here. We have failed to do anything to root out these evils because the people have been denied their basic freedoms and rights including the right to have a meaningful say in who rules the country.
Mugabe and Zanu PF have imposed their no regime change ethos on the nation that is the issue here. We demand free, fair and credible elections and we will have free, fair and credible elections!
@Koni
How can Mai Mujuru be a breath of fresh air, the woman rakes of corruption and incompetence. Please name one thing she has accomplished during her 34 years in power?
If the nation fails to get the democratic reforms implemented, and given the level of con-fusion in the opposition and from the so-called analysts like you this is very likely; then the nation’s plan B is Mai Mujuru and her People First.
With no reforms Zimbabwe’s political waters will be muddy, which is exactly what Mugabe and Zanu PF want; as former members of Zanu PF Mai Mujuru, Mutasa, Gumbo and the rest will be familiar with Mugabe’s vote rigging dirty tricks. Mugabe will have cheated and bamboozled the sleepy and incompetent Tsvangirai and his MDC friends with the usual ease, he will find doing the same with Mai Mujuru, et al easier said than done!
Come 2018 the nation will have a thief to catch a thief in the People First. But if People First were to win the elections we will have the same problems of corruption, incompetence and lawlessness because Mai Mujuru and her friends are school in Zanu PF’s corrupt and incompetent ways.
Mai Mujuru a breath of fresh air, how naïve some people can be!
@ Tafara Shumba
This is excellent stuff Tafara, your grasp of the political facts is impressive. Where others struggle to see beyond the tip of their nose you can see to the horizon. I hope you are going to write more articles and enlighten us all!
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