Source: Policy flip-flop costing Zim dearly – DailyNews Live
Eddie Zvinonzwa 3 August 2017
HARARE – During the Mashonaland West youth interface rally last Saturday,
Mugabe ordered the reinstatement of around 2 000 youth and gender officers
who had been struck off the government payroll – as part of austerity
measures – ostensibly because Cabinet had not sanctioned the move.
For a government struggling to pay its workforce on time, this might have
been suicidal as it will certainly worsen the position of empty State
coffers.
Mugabe’s pronouncement – hugely populist in nature – is nothing new for
those who are aware of the 93-year-old’s policy gymnastics over the years.
Perhaps in the Saturday statement, Mugabe was playing to the gallery
after seeing the huge numbers the youth had mobilised for the
nonagenarian’s Chinhoyi rally. ” . . . I hear that some youths who were
working for government have been fired . . . Our economy is recovering,
is that the time we should be dismissing our youths? How can they say we
have no money now . . . please reinstate those youths, we never, never
agreed on that. The issue of firing those youths was never agreed. Where
is the ministry of Finance and Labour, please stop it,” Mugabe said then.
Economy recovering? Really? I don’t want to doubt that Mugabe is living in
his own world, which must be farther than Pluto at around 2,7 billion
miles from the planet Earth.
Just a walk across the streets of the major cities in the evening would
prove how far detached from reality the country’s chief executive is.
Policy contradictions have always proved to be one of the core causes of
Zimbabwe’s problems in the country’s 37-year history.
This is not the first time Finance minister Patrick Chinamasa has had his
otherwise sober interventions undone by his boss. Following his
announcement that government would suspend civil service bonus payments
for 2016 and 2017, translating to savings of around $180 million per
annum, Mugabe also overturned that, claiming Cabinet had not been
consulted.
Chinamasa’s decision appeared pragmatic and was the appropriate response
to a dwindling revenue base pitted against a bloated civil service with a
huge wage bill. On the other hand, Mugabe is driven by political
expediency and his position dovetails with his Youth minister and nephew
Patrick Zhuwao’s, that he would protect the “green bombers” – the majority
of whom were drawn from the controversial national youth service programme
introduced by the late Zanu PF political commissar Border Gezi.
Essentially, the “green bombers” have for long been working as Mugabe’s
storm troopers, together with war veterans. The so-called youth officers
were mostly idle but serve as extensions of the ruling party’s
commissariat department.
Following the spectacular fallout between Mugabe and the war veterans last
year, the youths have come in as a timely replacement Finance minister in
the Inclusive Government and current opposition People’s Democratic Party
(PDP) leader Tendai Biti has complained about how the estimated 75 000
ghost workers – continuously kept on the government’s payroll – had
pulverised the national purse. Of the 75 000 ghost workers – unearthed in
a comprehensive payroll and skills audit done by Ernst & Young India on
behalf of the Public Service ministry in 2011 – 6 861 were employed by one
ministry in a single day.
With Zanu PF already in election mode, Mugabe knows the green bombers will
come in handy. The majority of them have been part and parcel of the
notorious bases established in the run-up to the 2008 presidential poll
run-off.
State-owned companies have been struggling over the years, with the bulk
of them on the brink of going under as a result of a combination of poor
management, corruption and poor corporate governance.
It is at the least startling that youths are demanding posts on those
dying parastatals, ostensibly to enhance their leadership skills. If
anything, these companies are desirous of new partners, who will come with
fresh capital injections not just bodies who will float in their corridors
without adding anything in terms of turnaround strategies.
Zimbabweans know Mugabe now. They know he can sacrifice anything for
power. The green bombers, who for the most part are idle and only serve as
extensions of the ruling party’s commissariat department working on
Mugabe’s power retention schemes.
Mugabe does not care what Zimbabwe will be like in 20-30 years as long he
remains firmly rooted in power until doomsday.
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