Ministers expected to fulfil people’s dreams

IN his charge to Ministers before the first Cabinet meeting of the year on Tuesday, President Mnangagwa made it clear that he wants to see commitment, innovation and results, with the major thrust being the economic development of Zimbabwe in the broadest sense of that concept.

Zimbabwe has a National Development Strategy, which brings together, and ties together, a wide range of programmes, policies and plans, that fulfil the double objective of pushing economic development, that is making the country richer, but at the same time spreads the benefits to the entire population, so that no one and no place is left behind.

It is quite possible to concentrate on increasing wealth and gross national product, but have most people left behind and not benefiting.

The colonial regimes had this as a central policy, a richer country, but the huge majority of indigenous inhabitants getting the crumbs, if there were any.

All successful countries have done a lot more to make sure that the whole nation can advance together, although some have been more enthusiastic than others and in modern times there is a tendency in some parts of the world to ignore the poor, and even blame the poor for being poor.

Zimbabwe wants to be among those who see the need for the mass forward movement, but still allowing the extremely able to be able to benefit from their skills, innovation and investment.

But even here there is that background pressure that if you want to become rich you should be doing so by creating production and creating jobs, rather than shuffling paper or earning income from wreckage.

There is a huge difference between the rich person who simply takes a slice of the profits when they create new businesses and new wealth, and those who become rich by manipulating markets or shuffling shares, activities that do not create new wealth.

The National Development Strategy is very strong on goals, and on linking these goals.

For example, extra output in mining, agriculture and manufacturing, noble goals in themselves, also require programmes that train those involved and which can finance farm inputs and new businesses and business growth. Everything has to fit together to work.

The strategy does not go into a lot of detail over operational methods. Ministries are expected to work these out in detail, along with the private sector and others involved, and are able to change them when needed.

No one is expected to follow some line that obviously does not work, but instead is expected to apply creative and innovative thought to finding a route that does work to reach the goal.

In many cases new ways can be opened during the lifetime of a plan, and these must be tested and if they work adopted.

In other words the strategy is fairly firm when it comes to what results are needed, but very flexible when it comes to achieving those results. The test is success.

The needed results are, as President Mnangagwa noted, basically the promises the Government was making when it was seeking support in elections.

And as he also noted it would be dishonest to ignore those promises when in office, when the whole point of being voted into office was to make sure the results were obtained.

This pressure on ministries continued yesterday, when Vice President Kembo Mohadi addressed the Ministers and Deputy Ministers in what is known as the social services cluster, a fairly large slice of the national government that includes the education ministries, the whole youth development programme, the special programmes that develop small businesses and communities and others that are not normally thought of as “social services”, but when you think what a service is to society you can understand the title.

One major factor that ties the lot together is that they deal with a lot of people, and that they employ easily the largest slice of State workers, although are lighter on the budgets for infrastructure. They are the “people ministries”, the ones we deal with most often and use most often.

The Presidium has decided to group ministries in clusters to ensure that their related services link properly, and that they work together. There are several obvious links.

For example, while all Zimbabwean children need to go through the schools run by or overseen by the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education, they then need to go further after school to earn a living and contribute to Zimbabwe.

Some will continue in the colleges and universities under the Ministry of Higher and Tertiary Education, Innovation Science and Technology, and the changes in that ministry now mean they will also learn the practical side as well as the theory.

But many will not be able to get into these tertiary institutions, but still deserve training and support, so the youth development programmes and vocational colleges need to be there, need to be expanded and need to be relevant.

And then, regardless of what sort of training or qualification you have, you have to move into earning a living, and that means for most becoming self-employed and starting businesses, so there is a need for support there from several ministries.

When you think about it, the need for efficient links between these ministries is obvious, with high levels of collaboration rather than competition.

In other areas there will need to be co-operation. Teachers are more likely than anyone else to notice family problems, that need referral to social workers.

At the same time social workers will find children out of school who need to be included in the BEAM and other programmes so they can end a cycle of family poverty. This requires civil servants fairly low down the scales talking to each other.

These are just some of the multitude of examples. What VP Mohadi was stressing was the need to make sure that full co-operation was involved, that blame games and passing citizens with problems from office to office was stopped, and that the myriad of social needs of Zimbabweans were met.

In the end the Government needs to solve problems, not create problems, and this particular cluster of ministries does deal with every Zimbabwean at some stage of their lives and needs to move them forward, and not ignore them.

Zimbabwe is not what is referred to as a “nanny state”. There are basic rights, that are enforced, and there are laws against what most people see as social ills.

But most Government programmes and policies are there to open doors, create opportunities so that each person can move forward and many of these doors are controlled by this social services cluster, which thus needs to make sure that they are open, and that more doors are continually opened so everyone can move forward, together.