Zimbabwean politicians appear to be completely out of touch with the reality that the citizens of this country are among the poorest in the region and the continent. Landscape with Tangai Chipangura
The whole lot, right from the highest political office to the backbencher in Parliament, is determined to bleed this country to death – completely oblivious of the fact that it they continue on this path, there soon will be nothing to go after, but each other.
Reports last week that every single one of our political leaders, from the President, the Prime Minister, their deputies, Cabinet ministers and their deputies – right down to the laziest MP – are set to received massive packages before the end of their tenure are as shocking as they are unbelievable.
And wait a bit – it is not as if they are prepared to retire from politics to give other Zimbabweans a chance to serve this country. These avaricious men and women are already in a stampede for an extension of their terms of office, even in the face of stark evidence they have done nothing during their time.
They have held meetings, ostensibly to discuss whether or not they should be rewarded for the five years they have pretended to serve the people of this country, and they have all agreed to give each other golden handshakes.
So all of them are going to get houses in plush suburbs, huge sums of money, residential stands, luxury cars et cetera before the end of this coalition government in about three months’ time.
Reports say President Robert Mugabe, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, Vice-President Joice Mujuru and Deputy Prime Ministers Arthur Mutambara and Thokozani Khupe will get plump exit packages running into hundreds of thousands of dollars, houses, fleets of luxury cars and many other freebies.
Ministers will get relatively lower cash packages, but will also take with them luxury vehicles, houses and residential stands in affluent suburbs etc.
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MPs, including those that spent most of their time sleeping in the House and others that hardly pitched up for debate, will also be rewarded handsomely in a scheme that is set to cost our empty Treasury several million dollars.
This is all money that these people are going to stash into their pockets – and use some of it to bribe the poor voter to return them into office so that they reap the same loot after another five years.
Our politicians – the men and women who make decisions in Cabinet not to employ nurses to look after the health of the citizens of Zimbabwe – make a lot of noise complaining that they are not being paid as well as their counterparts in rich countries – as if they live and make their money there. It does not matter that the majority people of this country are living in abject poverty.
They have been in power for the past five years and they have done nothing about the debilitating unemployment in this country. They have been busy growing personal wealth – often bragging openly about it – through daylight robbery and plunder of national assets. Their greed has dislocated this country.
And in their boundless greed, they have the audacity to seek re-election, claiming they have worked hard and that the masses that have toiled for their deep pockets have not done enough to pull up themselves by their bootstraps – never mind most of us never had the straps, nor the boots.
While members of the executive could get away with the pretence of full-time employment by government, our MPs really have no leg to stand on in their wild claims for pension-like golden handshakes. MPs have no moral grounds to demand rewards of this magnitude.They not done anything spectacular in law-making, constituency service (several stole money meant for constituency development) or watching what government has been doing for the people around the country.
They ought to appreciate that the purpose for their being put in those offices is more for answering a public call for duty rather than a narrow expectation of primitive accumulation.
The accepted belief that an MP is there to serve the people has disappeared, replaced by the most common spectacle where needy people are elected to become MPs and in no time they transform into obscenely rich neck-less,obese individuals.
Zimbabwean leaders have chosen to embrace a carnivorous system that will continue to impoverish citizens of this country Our rulers are increasingly treating our country as a resource to be used up and then discarded once it falls apart.
They are so filled with “patriotism” they want to remain in power- at any cost – so that they vampirically continue to bleed our country dry.
