“Uncle, why do we eat matzah (unleavened bread) and maror (bitter herbs)?” This is the question Moses’ nephew asked him on the night of the very first Passover. The story underlines a time honoured Jewish tradition, not just that people including children have the right to ask questions but that they should be encouraged to do so.
Zimbabwe’s hierarchical and patriarchal society any man, much less a woman or child, asking any question is frowned upon. Those in positions of power and authority view the questioning as a challenge to their authority especially when they are not sure or worse, are lying. So they silence everyone under the pretext of demanding respect and/or unity.
Zimbabwe is in this political and economic mess because time and time again the nation has blundered from pillar to post because the nation has pursued ill-conceived policies which could have been easily avoided if we did not stifle meaningful debate. If Zimbabwe opened up and allowed children to question adults as freely Moses was question by his nephew then here are samples of what a fly on the wall would have heard in the Chamisa and Mnangagwa household.
Mnangagwa Household.
Nephew: Uncle ED, did you rig the elections?
ED: No, the elections were peaceful, free, fair and credible. The most peaceful elections ever; since Zimbabwe’s independence.
Nephew: Why did Zanu PF deny the 2 to 3 million Zimbabweans in the diaspora the vote?
ED: We could not arrange the logistics for them to vote but will do so next time.
Nephew: My friends are saying government denied those in the diaspora the vote because Zanu PF feared that many of them would not vote for the party. Tell me it is not true!
ED: Zanu PF did not have many supporters in the diaspora before last November’s coup but that changed since the coup.
Nephew: ZEC failed to release a verified voters’ roll although this is a legal requirement. Was it because of logistic problems too?
ED: I will see to it that it does not happen again.
Nephew: Election results show some usual voting patterns of two or more polling stations have exactly the same total number of ballots cast and exactly the same number of votes cast for the individual candidate suggesting these were bussed voters. Do you agree that close inspection of the voters’ roll would have exposed such vote rigging shenanigans as multiple voting? The voters’ roll was the smoking gun.
ED: Not at all!
Nephew: Why have the British said the electoral playing field was not level?
ED: I am not sure why.
Nephew: You want the people of Zimbabwe to trust you to deliver economic recovery and yet you cannot deliver the very first thing the nation need a legitimate and accountable government!
Chamisa Household.
Nephew: Everyone agrees with you that the elections were rigged. Is this the first time Zanu PF has rigged elections?
Chamisa: No, Zanu PF has rigged elections ever since the party got into power in 1980.
Nephew: If you knew that Zanu PF was going to rig these elections then why did you participate?
Chamisa: We thought MDC Alliance has stringent measures to stop Zanu PF rigging the elections.
Nephew: You gambled and lost since none of your measured worked. Is it true that you participated in these elections even though ZEC had failed to release a verified voters’ roll?
Chamisa: We made a mistake.
Nephew: MDC took part in the 2013 elections although ZEC had again failed to release a verified voters’ roll.
Chamisa: That was a mistake too!
Nephew: MDC have five years during the GNU to implement the reforms designed to stop Zanu PF rigging the elections and you failed to get even one reform implement.
Chamisa: We sold-out big time!
Nephew: What Zimbabwe has been dying for is someone to implement the democratic reforms to ensure free, fair and credible elections. The nation will be very foolish to entrust you and your MDC Alliance friends to carry out this task.
CONCLUSION
As much as both Zanu PF leaders and MDC leaders would want to cast themselves as the Moses figure who led the nation out of white colonial oppression / Zanu PF tyrannical rule, respectively, into the Promised Land of freedom, justice and economic prosperity. Neither of them can ever be Moses.
Moses’s Passover marked the start of the long journey out of Egypt to the Promised Land. “You eat matzah (unleavened bread) because it is the bread of haste, and maror (bitter herbs) because it is the bread of haste and the bitter herbs are to remind you of the bitterness of slavery.” Moses told his Nephew and the children of Israel.
We removed the white colonial oppressors but only to have then replaced by corrupt black tyrants; our Passover was from the frying pan into the fire! Whilst the nation has had many golden opportunities to end the Zanu PF dictatorship it was none other than the opposition leaders who have sold-out and wasted them all; we are still stuck in the fire!
Whilst our journey from slavery to the freedom, liberty and economic prosperity is not a physical and mental one as that by the Jews; ours is a mental one. The one mental quality we can borrow from the Jews is the willingness to accept that none of us have all the answers and hence why we must be open to field questions from all leaders, followers, women, children, everyone!
7 comments:
"Kudzidza hakuperi!" (We learn something new all the time!) so goes the Shona adage. There is pure wisdom in that! Sadly, wisdom is one of those virtues that are easily forget and are only retained by being put into regular practice and, like riding a bicycle, each one has to learn for themselves. Just because you father or mother was wise does not necessarily mean you too will be wise!
38 years of Zanu PF tyrannical rule have taught us the bad habits of intolerance of all other views. Zanu PF thugs are the Mr and Ms "Know It All" we have learned to be silent and defer to them and we have copied their example and now the country is a nation of people who believe they are wiser than King Solomon himself!
Promote any Zimbabwean into an position of power and influence and immediately they stop listening to all around them because they are the only source of wisdom.
Even when historic events have proven that the likes of Mnangagwa was wrong, he will never admit it. The closest Mnangagwa has ever come to admitting that Zanu PF has been a failure is doing so with a broad brush, nothing specific, and quickly move on. "Let bye gone be bye gone. Let us not dwell in the past!" He does not want to talk about what happened just a few months ago leading to the rigged 30 July 2018 elections and yet he will talk for hours on end about his heroic exploits during the liberation war, over 40 years ago!
The custom of allowing people to ask questions with an open mind that one can learn something from the questioning is a good thing and we must resurrect it the day the nation breaks the chain of bondage imposed on us all by the Zanu PF autocracy!
@ Ndlovu
"Couldn't agree more it's people like you that make me proud to be Zimbabwean otherwise it's embarrassing to be one."
It is a great pity that we have allowed a few individual like Mugabe and Mnangagwa to ride roughshod over us all denying us our freedom, human rights, self-respect hopes and dreams!
Writing on Twitter, Mangwana said:"As a public employee, I am going to unblock most of the people that I had been blocked in my previous role. I hope we can all focus on issues about our country & avoid personal attacks & inappropriate language. Let's all start on a clean slate as I am now wearing a different hat".
Earlier this year, a federal judge in the United States ruled that it is unconstitutional for US President Donald Trump to block critics on his Twitter feed following a lawsuit by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, as well as seven other plaintiffs who had been blocked on Twitter by Trump.
Nick should get Herald, Chronicle, ZBC, etc. to air alternative points of view after all these are all public institutions and not Zanu PF person properties. He will be booted out of his post in no time, if he tried!
@ Jealousy Dutiro
"While most citizens would be honoured to serve their country in Parliament, Nelson Chamisa only has haughty disdain for one of the most important positions in Zimbabwe. There is only one rational explanation for such a behaviour: A pathological disorder, making him slowly but surely delusional."
I agree that Chamisa suffers from delusions but he is nothing compared to Mnangagwa whose delusion of seeing himself as a "great leader" are behind his rigging the elections.
Zimbabwe is in this economic and political mess because of the decades of corrupt and tyrannical rule by Zanu PF. The party has rigged the elections to stay in power regardless of the people's democratic wish. The nation is today standing right on the very edge of the precipice after decades of Zanu PF misrule and by rigging these elections Mnangagwa has condemned the nation to suffer the consequences of the same misrule with the real danger of the nation tumbling down even deeper into the abyss.
It is shocking that you should condemn Chamisa for his delusion or be it misleading to the naïve and gullible Zimbabweans but say nothing about Mnangagwa's delusions whose consequences are putting the lives of hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans at risk and worse to follow if the regime is allowed to stay in power!
Long-suffering Zimbabweans have expressed disappointment in the government's latest economic stabilisation measures that were announced on Monday, adding that they feared that things could take a turn for the worse in the country.
In a bid to mitigate rising prices and the acute shortages of foreign currency in the country, authorities announced a raft of new measures then, which they hoped would go a long way in halting the local economy from declining further.
Zimbabwe's economic recovery will depend on the nation reviving its agricultural sector, industries, commerce, etc. The nation's wealth is measured by what it produces and not what it consumes; we are not going to spend our way from being the poorest nation in Africa to "a middle income nation by 2030" as President Mnangagwa claims.
By rigging the elections, President Mnangagwa has just confirmed to the world that Zimbabwe is still a pariah state ruled by vote rigging and ruthless thugs. Investors, lenders, etc. are going to continue to shy away from investing in the country depriving the nation of the much needed foreign investments to kick start the comatose economy.
When the British told the Zanu PF junta that they had rigged the elections that was a loaded message - "You are illegitimate and will not get any international assistance!" President Mnangagwa can pretend he can soldier on but without an meaningful economic recovery the regime will be fighting a lost battle!
SABLE Chemicals Industries (Sable), Zimbabwe's only manufacturer of ammonium nitrate (AN), has produced just about half of its target output in the first eight months of the year, an official has said.
Allen Manhanga, Sable's production executive, told delegates attending the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries annual congress last week that the company had only managed to produce 34 000 tonnes of top-dressing fertiliser against a target of 65 000, a variance of 52%, weighed down by a shortage of foreign currency.
"So it means that as a primary producer, we only got $3 million, but other players who include the importers have got $90 million. In 2017, the total that we got as Sable was $2 million against the whopping $130 million that was availed to the industry," he said.
"The reason is because often times we leave it until late and then towards the end of the year we find we don't have enough fertiliser. The money is then availed to importers to close that gap."
For anyone familiar with the gross mismanagement and rampant corruption in Zimbabwe this is altogether a very familiar story one has heard thousands of times!
One would not be at all surprise that Zanu PF made the money available early in the year when no one needed the fertilizer because the party was giving it away as part of its vote buying package. Most of the rural farmers who were given the fertilizer will not have proper storage facilities and so a significant amount was wasted.
An investigation of why more money was allocated to importers when local producers were denied the foreign currency will reveal that there was corruption!
Zimbabwe will never address the teething problems of mismanagement, corruption, etc. without first resolving the problem of rigged elections which has allowed corrupt and incompetent public officials to remain in power regardless of their pathetic record of failure and criminal waste of resources!
The government is undertaking a raft of State enterprise reforms under which 16 entities will be privatised, 13 parastatals merged while two others will be liquidated, State Enterprises Restructuring Agency (Sera) executive director Edgar Nyoni has said.
Speaking at the 2018 Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries annual congress (CZI) held in Bulawayo last week, the Sera executive director revealed that the major overhaul of the country's 107 State-owned enterprises and parastatals will also see five public entities being incorporated into parent ministries as departments.
"The reality on the ground shows that most State enterprises are operating sub-optimally hence posting financial losses and their contribution to the GDP has drastically declined to around 15 percent.
"The major challenges that are cited for this dismal performance include noncompliance to good corporate governance practices, huge debt overhang, undercapitalisation, poor debt recovery strategies, flight of skilled manpower and unsustainable salary, allowance and benefit packages," said Nyoni.
He added that the inability of commercial State enterprises to generate profitable returns was a fiscal risk to the government.
"This risk comes in the form of explicit contingent liabilities as well as transfers from the government to State enterprises
Under the State enterprise reform exercise, NetOne, TelOne, POSB, IDBZ and Agribank will be partially privatised along with subsidiaries of the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) which include Zim Glass, Allied Insurance, Surface Investments, Zimbabwe Grain Bag, Ginhole Investments, Chemplex Corporation, Deven Engineering and G & W Minerals.
In a bid to do away with duplication, the government will merge Zarnet, Powertel and Africom to create one company while the Postal and Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe (Potraz) and the Broadcasting Authority of Zimbabwe (Baz) will be combined to create one telecommunications regulator.
No doubt the chefs will snap up these companies for a song only to sell off the company's asserts for whatever they can and walk away!
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