Nothing to celebrate here

via Nothing to celebrate here – The Zimbabwean 16 April 2015 by Tawanda Majoni

The government-controlled media has been running a somewhat sinister independence anniversary slogan, “sofarsogood”. We might have come so far, after 35 years of independence, but there is certainly nothing so good about where we are coming from and where we are now.

What is so good about a government that is totally dependent on the goodwill and charity of mainly western countries for more than 90 percent of the medicines at our referral hospitals?

Under our constitution, government is obligated to promote the welfare of the people, health included. Yet it cannot cater for basic things like hospital drugs. As we speak, all the government-controlled hospitals are stocked witth than 40 percent of essential drugs and the situation is getting worse by the day.

What this means is that we are a sick nation, and there is nothing so good about sickness.

No wonder President Robert Mugabe and his wife are spending fortunes – much of it being the misappropriated (stolen actually) money paid to Treasury by hapless taxpayers – to get treatment in Singapore. And someone has the audacity to say it is so good when the head of a country is away looking for treatment abroad more than half the time – when he should be getting it locally.

Whoever came up with that slogan should have consulted the president first. He would easily have told the uncouth spin-doctor that there is nothing enjoyable about Zimbabwe. That is why he recently spent more than a month on holiday in the Far East rather than at home – as indeed he has done annually for many years now.

Civil servants are struggling to get their salaries, sewage is flowing on the streets and rubbish mounds are growing bigger and higher by the day. Around 90 percent of employable adults are now out in the streets because companies are dying like flies. Pensioners cannot access their money, basic goods are beyond the reach of many and no-one seems to be concerned with fixing the ailing economy.

We have gone back to the dark ages because there is no power in the houses, on farms or at the few remaining factories. More and more Zimbabweans are trekking off into the diaspora because there is no hope at home. This is the reality that even a UFO from Mars knows. Nothing so good about it, clearly!

Thousands of people have died of cholera and hundreds more have perished in politically motivated violence orchestrated mainly by Zanu (PF). Almost every election that we have known since independence has not been free or fair. There is a big problem of legitimacy of government.

We are led by a 91-year-old man who sometimes mistakenly denounces his own party and has confided in others that he is ruling under duress. We have a president who is obsessed with witchcraft rather than statecraft and tumbles at the airport, much to the embarrassment of everyone – except of course those who think that things are so good so far.

If there is anything so good so far, it is only for a small rich elite that has grown fat at the expense of the majority. These are the people who stole diamonds from Marange and forgot to leave something for the toiling masses. These are the people who got all the prime farms during the fast track land redistribution exercise.

Things can only be so good for those that have grabbed the game conservancies and reaped the benefits without ever dropping a bead of sweat. They are the privileged ones with the capacity to send their children abroad to study as our own educational institutions collapse. They can go on expensive holidays when the average person can’t even put bread on the table. These are the only people who can see anything good about Zimbabwe 35 years after Independence. – To comment on this article, please contact majonitt@gmail.com