EVENTS currently gripping Zimbabwe made me reminisce scenes of rage that engulfed and almost destroyed French soccer in 2002, when soccer adherents felt hard done by their nation’s technical team.
guest column: LEARNMORE ZUZE
Some will remember how soccer fans in France went on a rampage after their country, then reigning champions, failed to progress to the presumably easy next round of the grand tournament.
Soccer, being a kind of religion to some, evokes strong emotions. At the centre of the anger was the injured football maestro, Zinedine Zidane, whom the French coaches had, against all reason, insisted on fielding in the tough finals.
The man, visibly tired, struggled all the way and was a pale shadow of the colossal figure that had single-handedly destroyed Brazil only four years back.
The French bench, by carrying him to the finals in Japan, had gone against sane advice from soccer analysts.
Zidane is a soccer legend whose influence the French media then captured as follows: “In his absence, the French team looks ordinary, but in his presence, it becomes an extraordinary force.”
The enraged fans protested that instead of pursuing a populist route that ultimately cost the nation, the technical team should have simply done the honourable thing by resting the player; they should have left him out and the nation would have known what to expect.
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People lampooned the technical team, holding placards inscribed: “You should have done the honourable thing.”
That statement (on doing the honourable thing) struck me profoundly with its philosophy laden with sense.
Some of the troubles endured in life, even at personal level, have much to do with failure to do the honourable thing.
And doing the honourable thing, it would appear, is not a strength of many. It is certainly not a strength of the government of Zimbabwe.
A closer look at the Zimbabwean government’s modus operandi over time reveals a knack for populism and costly disregard for proper decision-making.
Government’s populist tendencies, in the short term, achieve the fancied objective of shaming “detractors”, but ultimately puts a leash on the very government when things turn sour, the land reform programme being one example.
The current health personnel strike is just another example of a humongous tragedy that could have been avoided.
Since last week, a shocking number of women have died in labour, as the strike progresses.
Accident victims, who would have otherwise survived, are dying and many people in urgent need of medical care have lost lives because of one thing: failure to do the honourable thing by the national leadership.
Was it so difficult to announce that the government, temporarily, lacked capacity to award bonuses?
It was abundantly clear from the outset that the financially hamstrung administration was incapable of paying bonuses, a fact twice highlighted by the lone voice in the person of Finance minister Patrick Chinamasa.
His pleas, nonetheless, fell on deaf ears. The honourable thing was to be truthful that the State was presently unable to honour the 13th cheque.
Gloomily, the country’s major referral hospitals have become dungeons of death owing to the strike that has seen critical patients going unattended for days.
Government’s insistence on paying the 2016 bonuses was surely bound to paralyse the country’s health sector at some time. It’s a catastrophe of unmitigated proportions.
But, at the centre of it, squarely lies the government’s failure to do the right thing. Government opted for the populist path, declaring that bonus payments couldn’t be put in abeyance despite clear incapacity.
That government continued to promise to pay civil servants bonuses every year, without taking cognisance of the situation on the ground, was surely going to take the country where it is today.
A rational leadership would have long realised that the economic paralysis gripping Zimbabwe was simply prohibitive of bonuses.
The decision to postpone made all the sense in the world. Only irrationality would have argued with this plain truth.
The government, each month, has struggled to pay salaries of its employees on time and one wonders how bonuses, of all the things, could become a possibility in the face of the unrelenting economic crisis.
There was no need trying to appease civil servants with near-impossibility under the circumstances. The man who held the national purse, Chinamasa, had long seen this, but this is the tragedy of populism.
This is exactly where populism takes a nation: Uncontrolled rage and innocent deaths become the unintended or is it intended consequences.
Frank talk would not have broken any friendship and that was the simple resolution needed by government to get things going.
The economic environment in Zimbabwe is extremely repulsive to spending on non-essential things. Many private organisations have actually introduced pay cuts with the result that workers have remained content. What’s important at the moment is a source of livelihood.
It naturally defies logic that an administration struggling under the weight of an assortment of challenges can declare ability to pay bonuses.
It is natural that when promised something, people have a right to expect it and this is it: Civil servants now want their promised amounts. Can the government live to its promise?
It is sad that innocent souls are dying daily and perhaps more sad is the fact that the country’s leadership, as usual, is least affected by the challenges as they seek medical help from outside the borders.
Learnmore Zuze is a law officer and writes in his own capacity. E-mail: [email protected]
