It is all too obvious that the outfit that the president put together in September last year to spearhead government has no clue as to how to fix rising unemployment offset by plummeting industrial performance.
Add to this worsening hunger and a receding donor presence, then you know the cabinet has spikes on its pillow; it can’t steal any sleep if it is serious about delivering on the promises Zanu (PF) made before and after the elections.
I try very much to be optimistic even under extreme adversity, but, frankly, I doubt that the current cabinet will deliver the milk to our doorsteps. This is because President Mugabe is serially a bad choice maker when it comes to who works with him. The team he chose in September is no different from the dead wood that we have seen in almost all the governments he has run since independence.
To annotate my point, I will never understand how a serious head of state could retain a person like Webster Shamu in cabinet, especially when you consider the rot at ZBC. From 2009 to late 2013, a period spanning more than four years, Shamu, as Information Minister, was the superintendent of all public media houses.
The gory details that have emerged about ZBC’s messy management over the years puts Shamu in the glare. Just how he left Happison Muchechetere to help himself to the ZBC coffers like an insatiable gourmand, and an anaemic board to preside over the public broadcaster, begs a big question. Where was he all that time? From where I stand, there are three possibilities. Shamu was either plain incompetent, conspired with the board or simply didn’t care. Yet President Mugabe retained him in cabinet and commissioned him to a different ministry.
In a properly working democracy, Shamu would have been brought to book, told to explain why he let things get so bad at ZBC, and then fired. What do you expect Shamu to do at his new ministry of Information and Communications Technology, which I think is more technical and taxing? And what does Mugabe hope to get from him besides the usual bootlicking?
The signs are already there. Just last week, Parliament had to send an SOS to Nelson Chamisa, who reluctantly headed the same ministry under the coalition government after being stripped of some of his powers – but managed to acquit himself well. Government wants Chamisa to help with the sourcing of computers as he used to do when he ran the ministry, all under Shamu’s nose. What, then is the Zanu chief organiser doing? Is it not telling that colleagues in parliament and government are already seeing the gap left by Chamisa?
But, of course, Shamu is not alone. It beats me how a person like Patrick Chinamasa is made Finance Minister. Whereas Tendai Biti, during his time at the same ministry, allocated modest amounts to the President’s Office yet it managed to work, that figure shot through the sky when Chinamasa took over. Could that be the reason why Mugabe loves guys like Chinamasa?
And then you have Obert Mpofu who presided over all the shenanigans in the mining industry and has forced Walter Chidhakwa, the current mining minister, to sweat it out dealing with the cry-baby companies that were busy looting the Marange gems and now want more fields to rape. Mpofu is a classic example of how to turn legends into voids.
He went to that ministry when all hope of economic recovery hinged on our diamonds, and left when all the gems had been airlifted out of the country, with hardly anything to show for his corpulent presence at the ministry. And Mugabe, for reasons best known to himself, seems convinced that Mpofu will help Zim Asset come to fruition by allocating him the transport portfolio.
I am also disturbed to note that Mugabe has pulled Dzikamai Mavhaire from a molehole in Masvingo and given him the energy portfolio. I am not convinced Mavhaire knows more about energy outside the flickering light bulbs at his house.
I could have gone on, because there is much dead wood in that cabinet. From where I stand, progressive performers in the current cabinet are minimal. I know also that most of the people are chosen because there is balancing of sorts that need to be done, not that those who make it into cabinet are good performers.
Cabinet is for President Mugabe a theatre for rent seekers, not runners of government. – To comment on this article, please contact majonitt@gmail.com
Post published in: Analysis