Schools will be closing this week after slightly more than one month of uninterrupted learning for our children. Notwithstanding a shortage of drugs, hospitals and clinics are open as nurses and doctors try to provide a service to the sick. Other government departments, slowly, have started to function again as
clerks, journeymen, drivers and all kinds of civil servants respond to
the call by the new government to return to their workstations and get
Zimbabwe running again.
We hope the lesson is not lost on those who have played Lord over us
all these years, President Robert Mugabe and his Zanu (PF) party – that
honesty is not only good morals, it is also good business!
Civil servants still earn a pittance. The Consumer Council of Zimbabwe
puts the cost of basic goods and services per month for an average
family of six people at above US$370, more than three times the US$100
allowance that every government worker receives per month.
Immediately after his appointment, Education Minister David Coltart met
striking teachers and openly told them that the government was broke.
That he would need time to approach aid agencies for help to pay them,
but that until such a time more funds were secured teachers would have
to call off their strike and return to classrooms in the interests of
the children – the future of our nation.
Coltart did not threaten to send the CIO after the leaders of the
Zimbabwe Teachers Association (ZIMTA) and the Progressive Teachers
Union of Zimbabwe (PTUZ) if they did not call off the strike. He did
not opt for cheap blackmail against teachers by accusing them of being
sellouts on the pay of Britain in its plot to re-colonise Zimbabwe.
Coltart merely told the truth and it worked!
Likewise, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and Finance Minister Tendai
Biti have been open with civil servants and all Zimbabweans, readily
admitting to the sorry state of government finances.
This openness has helped to inspire a nation to make more sacrifices in
the hope that tomorrow will be better than today. And we hope that as
Mugabe and company learn anew what a little honest can achieve,
Tsvangirai, Arthur Mutambara and their MDC formations are also taking
note of the lessons of this moment in our country's history.
For it is easier now to be generous with the truth because it is Zanu
(PF) that will get blamed. But we know that the longer Tsvangirai and
his team spend aboard the gravy train the greater will be the
temptation to be economic with the truth, massage it, deny it or as the
past few years have shown us, kill and persecute those who insist on
telling the truth.
We do not seek a government of angels. We merely seek a government of
honest men and women who may make mistakes, but who we can always say
we know where they stand on matters that affect our interests as a
people.