By Moses Matenga
DEAR President Emmerson Mnangagwa.
Your Excellency, compliments of the new season.
As I write to you, Your Excellency, my mind remains fixed on a popular Christmas play titled “How the Grinch stole Christmas” and one quote caught my attention.
A quote by Jim Carey, who plays the Despicable Green Monster in the 2000 movie caught my attention.
“We did our worst and that’s all that matters,” he said.
Your Excellency, the quote, to me, suggests how fittingly your government sums up the year given sequential tragic efforts by your administration that just worsen the lives of ordinary people and suggests that you care less about the crises they face everyday.
Your Excellency, people are struggling to lighten up the festive season, something they used to do with much ease back then and you do not seem to have a solution to that.
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There are long queues at almost all the banks as people struggle to access money for the festive season.
The civil servants, whom you gave a 13th cheque in foreign currency appear to be the most affected as they try to get their hands on the elusive United States dollar.
We cannot ignore the queues at bus termini where people struggle to board buses and to travel to their villages where their kith and kin await them.
The same people struggle even to go to their respective homes in cities and towns and we can only wonder where the Zupco buses you officially launch time and again are.
Your Excellency, we can talk of the economic challenges until we turn blue in the face but it is your government’s ignorance of the people’s plight that gives impetus to thoughts that you either lead a group of party spoilers who do not want people to enjoy the festive season, or just a greedy lot who line up their pockets without regard to the rest of the people.
Your Excellency, your government is the proverbial Grinch stealing our Christmas and general merry-making as Zimbabweans.
Of course, COVID-19 has made things worse, with the fourth wave wreaking havoc but the main killjoy has been the paltry salaries you have religiously given to civil servants.
What we see are sombre faces queuing for the foreign currency without much success.
The faces tell a story that you are leading a nation of disgruntled civil servants, who feel there is nothing for them anymore under your leadership.
Instead of dealing with their problems, you take a cheap escape route by accusing them of working with the West to effect regime change.
Their issue has nothing to do with regime change, just like the character made famous by Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist, they are simply hungry and asking for more.
You can give them, but your government has turned out to be mean-spirited and devoid of sympathy.
Your Excellency, I cannot emphasise the grim situation people find themselves in under your leadership but a new low came last week via your Vice-President Constantino Chiwenga.
We are accustomed to your hilarious and pernicious attacks on the opposition, particularly the MDC Alliance, but Chiwenga’s tongue-lashing of Chief Murinye, accompanied by your deafening silence is worrisome.
Your Excellency, you cannot silence everyone in a democracy.
As the curtain comes down on what has been a tough year in all measure, what we can only think of is the vicious attacks meted against the nurses, the teachers, the doctors, war veterans, civic society and the populace by a government that has no idea how to help its people survive the current pandemic.
Your Excellency, this raises a red flag, particularly as we go towards the by-elections in the first quarter of 2022 and the harmonised elections the following year.
In November 2017 we thought you were a pragmatist — you still can if you apply yourself — but you are missing the last opportunity to regain the respect people had for you.
- Moses Matenga is a journalist. He writes here in his personal capacity.
