“Let us depoliticise debate on the economy so that we will be able to listen to each other . . . otherwise if we politicise debate we will end up trading insults and losing the gist of the matter.” – said Patrick Chinamasa in Parliament recently.
PAINONA WITH TAPIWA NYANDORO
A few days later the Minister of Finance and Economic Development expressed his exasperation to Parliament thus, his Cabinet colleague, Professor Jonathan Moyo, the Minister of Media, Information and Broadcasting Services (MIBS) echoed his words.
Embarrassed by the wanton looting in State-owned enterprises by none other than their boards of directors or trustees, and expressing the Head of State’s displeasure at activities that should attract the death sentence as they are akin to sabotage, given His Excellency’s Look East Policy, the MIBS Minister said: “Government is now in the midst of exploring ways of coming up with a depoliticised and comprehensive fact-finding mechanism beyond asking managers of 78 parastatals and State enterprises or 92 local councils to tell their own stories or provide their own self serving narratives”.
It is therefore clearly not just debate in Parliament that must be de-politicised, but literally every facet of Zimbabwean life except for politics itself. Regrettably, politicking is natural. The Church is infested with it and so are Boardrooms not to mention families. Even in political parties intra-party politics has to be toned down.
A little politics may be healthy; too much is toxic if not fatal. The question Zimbabwe needs to answer is how to reduce politics to health and constructive levels?
Ironically, as the two Ministers joined hands in calling for reducing politics in statecraft, and as the Deputy Minister of MIBS congratulated the Press on its “unearthing” of corruption in State-owned enterprises and other quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisations (QUANGOS), the Vice President Joice Mujuru, according to a State-funded daily, brought it back squarely into the arena, warning that the collective ventilation the media has given corruption may be politically stage managed!
Disturbingly though, this would imply that the powers that be have known of the plunder of public funds and assets for some time, as indeed alleged by an ex Minister of State Enterprises in the Government of National Unity, but did nothing about it!
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That immortal Watergate question: “What did the President (or his Minister) know and when did he know about it?” becomes a moot point.
Apart from the adoption of the right principles and values, one key strategy of reducing politics in national economic management and governance is to strengthen public institutions such as political parties, the Press, the police, the National Prosecuting Authority, the Attorney General’s Office, Treasury, the Judiciary, the Auditor and Accounting Generals’ Offices, the National Procurement Board, parastatal boards, Local Government authorities, Parliament, and by no means least the rest of the civil service, the intelligence organisation included.
These institutions must be adequately funded from the fiscus if they are to execute their mandates well. If need be therefore, they must be reduced in number or size, so that quality is not only maintained, but enhanced.
And this reduction in numbers must be done scientifically on a strategic basis, with critical organisations such as Parliament, the Judiciary, the NPA and the police, which uphold the rule of law, besides playing an oversight role on the Executive, on the top of the list.
Faced with poor service delivery to the public and dwindling inadequate resources, the Zimbabwean government has tended to create new costly bureaucratic entities or enlarge existing ones. China, on the other hand, is doing the opposite. The new Chinese leadership is restructuring its bureaucracy. It is trimming Cabinet whilst merging ministries. The rational is that “larger, but fewer ministries will boost efficiency and address popular concerns about how the bureaucracy works.” The Zimbabwean government should follow the advice.
Some institutions have to go, others pruned whilst the really essential ones must be adequately funded and manned. The key guiding principles in the exercise must be integrity, discipline, clarity and trust.
There is ample evidence that in both major political parties discipline has collapsed, constitutions and procedures are not clear and trust and integrity have vanished. Political parties are key institutions that chart the economic trajectory of the nation.
The source of their funding, however, can drive them into crime and corruption, organised crime’s hands and or foreign agents. It is important that this loophole or weakness must be addressed as soon as possible.
If need be, the funding of political parties from the fiscus must be raised, in exchange for full disclosure on maters financial.
Before disbursement of public funds to a political party, its prior year audited accounts, its projections for the current year and its projected budgets for the coming year must be tabled in Parliament for approval. Parties must be compelled to live within their means, and the applications of funds they raise must be open to public scrutiny and subject to audit against approved budgets. A qualified Audit should lead to funding sanctions from Treasury.
And discipline too, not to mention integrity and trust has vanished from the parastatal and QUANGOS sector. The same story is repeated in local government, if not central government as well.
Apart from poor financing, absence of role clarity seems to be a problem. The accounting officers, that is the permanent secretaries, must be held accountable for failure in policy implementation, if not its adequacy, by the policymakers, the ministers.
Ministers by their nature are political animals. If allowed, they will abuse the permanent secretaries role with disastrous consequences.
