By Wisdom Mumera
According to Buenoda Mesquitaetal (2003) a major dilemma in democratic policy-making is that bad policies can be good politics and good policies can be bad politics.
In Zimbabwe, politicians have eternally been caught in the throes of juggling two different balls.
The ball of selfish agrandisement through bad policies that are actually good politics or national development, which requires a morsel of self-sacrifice, as it can be bad politics.
The former has always won.
No party or politician wants to sacrifice their chances on the pious altar of pushing for the right things.
Already we have headlines about Free Education and multiple signed deals in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea.
The mustachioned Alexander Lukashenko, all frizzly in summer wear and poodles, was just here and the future is bright for us. Reportedly.
Like the incarnate Garden devil all politicians have some curious way of explaining how the mundane and mandatory is difficult while their pilfering ways remain easy.
How did US$5 million evaporate from Cottco and the entire management plus MP Wadyajena are clean as whistles?
How has the 100MW Gwanda solar project become bogged down in endless court cases.
What’s so legal about laying up solar panels?
The country has diamonds but surprisingly the money from that end hasn’t been enough to turn things around.
Now lithium is rumoured to be the catalyst for the change that diamonds failed to achieve.
Beware Of The Blind Visionary
The narrative is a chugging circle of grandiose visions fuelled by drama and no substance.
Nothing but rhetoric underlies the many visions sold.
The opposition has jumped onto the bullet train but there is no explanation for how the dreamland will be achieved.
There are verses though.
Change is coming but it’s not your task to question how lest the practical action of thinking becomes an unreligious intifada against faith in the leader.
At the end of the buzzing energy of elections the voter is left with a litany of promises and an echoing chamber of no achievements by the winners.