Welcome back Mr President, please sit down, thank you

JANUARY was a bad month for you, Mr President, wasn’t it? You were supposed to be on holiday for all the four weeks of it, but the call of duty was too pressing for you to enjoy your annual respite.

You lost very close allies and at one time your deputy got too tired to continue acting in your place; so you had to hurry back.

Besides your close allies, Covid-19 claimed more people in a single month than it had claimed since its inception early last year killing, a staggering 70 people in a single day at its peak.

But why was January so bad? Was it because of some conspiracy by your detractors, or even God, to deny you rest? Or, was it a result of your own acts of commission and omission?

What did you do or not do in November and December when you knew the festive season was nigh and there would be loads of movement across our borders both by land and air?

South Africa had already acknowledged, just as the festive season commenced, the existence of a more vicious variant of the coronavirus that spread faster and threatened to undo all the strides you had made to contain the spread of the original strain.

Miscalculation

NOW with the benefit of hindsight, you know you must have acted fast to close the borders with South Africa completely, but you allowed thousands of Zimbabweans living there to flock up here for the holidays.

You ought to have anticipated the mess at the borders, particularly the Beitbridge border post — about the busiest in Africa — and seen how it would be a super spreader of the virus considering that at any one time there would be people intending to travel to every nook and cranny of the country who very likely carried the virus.

But people may forgive you for that saying you were trying to be the people’s President who would not deny his people the yearly chance to bring goodies to their relatives and enjoy Christmas with them.

But now the country is in a right mess and the buck stops with you. And what can be done now besides promising people the rollout of vaccines that some countries have produced and come over here at a huge cost?

But that’s fine, and thank you for your effort and the efforts of all those in the world that will make the vaccination of your people possible.

It is hoped though that in your rush to have people vaccinated you’ll not approve vaccines, whose efficacy has not been proved on our people.

Mr President, it seems Covid-19 is not the only little problem that you have to deal with as you try to settle down in your office.

Wetlands headache

THE rains have been good, and that’s reason to celebrate in anticipation of a bumper harvest and the effect it will have on our economy. But the rains have also been too good in some instances.

ousands of people have been left homeless in urban areas as their homes have been destroyed by flooding. It seems over the years your government and the one that preceded it had allowed land-hungry people to build homes in wetlands.

I know you’ll attempt to absolve your guilt on this issue and blame opposition-run councils for the mess. But everyone knows the land barons that parcelled out land to these people, all without exception, belong to the ruling party of which you are patron.

Why did your government over the years neglect to stop this? We know there have been halfhearted attempts to destroy some houses built in unsuitable areas. But these sporadic razing of houses have been done as a vindictive way of levelling scores rather than through the dictates of town planning.

Why is that people who have clearly indicated that they have the wherewithal to build their own homes continue to be denied land?

If you take a look at most of the houses that have been flooded and also the houses that have been razed by municipalities, you will see just how much money has been invested in them. Why are these people denied legitimate land on which to develop their homes?

It is common cause that any city at all will have a growing population and the growing population will need land for housing.

Regular population censuses have shown the rate at which urban populations are ballooning; why have successive Zanu PF governments, of which you have been a part for more than 40 years now, neglected this fact.

For goodness’s sake Mr President, acquire land around urban areas and give it to people so they can legitimately build their own homes, using their own means.

Blunt sword

MR President, Hopewell Chin’ono has happened and he has exploded in your face. What started as an innocuous revelation of corruption in high places has ballooned into an international brouhaha that threatens to undermine the very efforts at governance you have made since you took over the throne from Robert Mugabe.

Your first reaction to his and other journalists’ exposés of corruption was commendable; you had the culprits arrested and arraigned before the courts and you fired those found guilty.

But you seemed to backtrack in your fight against corruption. e country acknowledges the existence of the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission and the other outfit in your office. But corruption seems to have worsened in spite of them.

Daily the country reads of corruption in high places, but it seems only the anchovies are caught in the net, while the sharks are let out of the trap. Recently the Transparency International Corruption Perception Index has put the country in a very bad position. True, this is just a perception index, but it means a lot; it means there are lots of things expected of you that you have not done.

To effectively fight corruption, one needs to be merciless; the Chinese execute corrupt officials. at may be an extreme example, but when people are fingered in corruption and they are in your government, or worse, in your household, you have to be seen to be fighting them.

What has happened after the initial arrests — those of former Health minister Obadiah Moyo and others — has been nothing short of catastrophic. And your detractors have seen this and are harping on it daily. Your softly approach to corruption, through your “catch-and-release” modus operandi has become your Achilles heel. It continues to worsen the perception of corruption in the country.

It should be telling that songs have been composed by young Zimbabweans describing corruption in the country and have become international hits. Chin’ono’s recently released Dem Loot performance has catapulted him to international stardom, deepening the perception of the country as a bastion of corruption.

is is not good for anybody. e message is clear: you should not only be fighting corruption; you must be seen to be fighting corruption.

Damning paranoia

YOU have since created heroes where there were no heroes. A few people who wish to practice their democratic right to demonstrate have to be allowed to; but so deep is your government’s paranoia that any such act is seen as insurrection.

ere are ways to deal with demonstrations — even violent ones — that do not always involve violently arresting and incarcerating people and keeping them locked up with diehard criminals in lice-infested and ill-ventilated cells in the time of Covid-19.

is could perhaps have been useful if Zimbabwe were an island, but the world is now a village in which what happens in one household is known in all others in a jiffy. And the world as we know it is always sympathetic to the underdog.

e Chin’ono debacle has done harm to your image in more ways than one. You’re now increasingly being compared to your worlddespised predecessor Mugabe and the country’s image among the Commonwealth of Nations lies in tatters. And those totally harmless girls your police have decided to convert into jailbirds are not doing that image any favour. You ought to just have seen what really they are — attention seekers — and left them to their harmless monkey tricks.

Now they have become the razor edge the world is using to tear at your heart. ey are probably deriving pleasure from their constant brush with police but the damage this is doing to the country may well turn out to be irreparable.

eir nuisance value, some would argue, has morphed into international stardom thanks to your handcuff-happy police.

People shout obscenities at the police all the time as a way of hitting back at authority. It’s like in a football match, players insult the referee throughout the match and so do fans. But referees don’t produce red cards each time they feel insulted. Jails would be always full if police arrested everyone who hailed an insult at them.

“You have since created heroes where there were no heroes. A few people who wish to practice their democratic right to demonstrate have to be allowed to; but so deep is your government’s paranoia that any such act is seen as insurrection . . .”