Freed women convicts granted a Presidential pardon couldn’t be more excited at the prospect of walking out of Chikurubi Female Prison this week — until they were brought down to earth.
As they were checking out, there was a reality check — that is, an occasion on which one is reminded of the nature of things in the real world — from Zimbabwe Prisons and Correctional Services spokesperson Chief Superintendent Elizabeth Banda (so I heard).
Banda strongly advised them to collect condoms as they eagerly walked out of jail after years of forced sexual abstinence for legal reasons by virtue of them being in prison.
She said: “You don’t have to die soon after being freed after you have survived all these years in jail.” Prison hadn’t killed them, but Aids would take them if they behaved recklessly. Reality check entails attitude adjustment and/or behaviour modification.
There is need to consider matters realistically and honestly. You stop living in fantasyland and deal with things as they really are, not as you would like them to be.
In the same way, power can also blind people to reality. The government is currently facing its own reality check. It’s now clear that life in Zimbabwe is not the cakewalk that Zanu PF promised before and after the July 31, 2013 general election. The civil service pay rise is still to see the light of day seven months later. As if that is not bad enough, the much-vaunted ZimAsset could be stillborn because of raging corruption. The reality of corruption is there for all to see. The corruption is overwhelmingly undeniable; it is nothing short of scandalously outrageous.
This makes sanctions talk hypocritical in the eyes of many. People are increasingly attributing the collapse of service delivery — whether health, education, etc — and the semi-comatose state of the economy to corruption and less and less to sanctions, going by the millions being stolen from various State-owned and private firms especially by politically-connected company executives.
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Can we afford that scale of corruption if the sanctions are hurting the economy so much? Why bring another burden upon ourselves? Is that fair or forgivable? Even if Western sanctions were to be lifted today, would it really make a difference if the internal sanctions — that is what endemic corruption amounts to — remain? People are eating and breathing the corruption scandals and no one — in their wisdom or lack of it — should make light of this.
We haven’t heard Local Government minister Ignatius Chombo read the riot act following an authoritative report in this newspaper last week that cases of cancer of the liver have shot up four times because of the contaminated water people are being made to drink while most of the money they are paying as rates to Harare City Council is being lavished on the obscene salaries of top management — whom Chombo has shielded — and the little that remains is not enough to purchase water-purifying chemicals.
Isn’t this much more of an emergency than ordering council to resurface roads leading to the venue of President Robert Mugabe’s daughter Bona’s wedding, an essentially private function? Does this sound like a people’s government? People need to have their rights respected, first, as Zimbabweans, and, second, as taxpayers, fullstop.
We need to ask straight, commonsensical questions, not cloak this unfairness and injustice in Mahoso-style intellectual bombast against the West and sanctions. It’s time to deal with realities rather than dreams and deflections. People must not get caught up in their ways that they forget the basic things about the real world. Have they not heard of crisis of conscience? Can their hearts remind them what their minds have forgotten?
It should be about doing the greatest good to the greatest number, not for a wedding reception for a mere 1 000 people lasting less than a day. But all we have been getting is the power side — not human side — of politics, which gives fertile ground for corruption to thrive.
Dealing with corruption is not optional, but obligatory for those with a moral and patriotic sense, and that includes the media.
So, with all due respect, the President also needs a reality check about his handling of corruption. There has been equivocation. He has taken an indefinite stance on the issue instead of an unambiguous position of getting to the bottom of it all, thereby incubating and worsening the problem.
If only he could unleash the passion he has against the West with equal vigour in the anti-corruption fight, then Zimbabwe would be the fairest place to be on Earth and very much at peace with itself.
He could take a leaf from Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta who this week said his government would partner with global anti-graft body Transparent International in the fight against corruption which has retarded development in that country. This comes barely two months after Kenyatta launched a website where the public can report incidents of corruption directly to him, allowing anonymous uploads to protect whistleblowers. Said Kenyatta: “Let us fight real corruption
. . . What Transparent International believes in is what I believe in; what you want to root out is what I also want to root out.” Despite Kenyatta having issues with the West over his re-election last year and current prosecution by the International Criminal Court on crimes against humanity charges, he is still guided by fact-mindedness and even-handedness.
Let’s get this reality: Democracy and freedom does not exist where there is no even-handedness. High-level endemic corruption has imprisoned Zimbabwe. [email protected]
