Siphakeme .Mnindwa
Stephen Mpofu
Perspective
Ah! Ah! Ah . . .
Harare City Council, just a stone’s throw away from the nose and scanning eye of the headquarters of our government and now trending under the trade name “rotten” also shared by sections of workers at Zimbabwe’s second largest city, Bulawayo.
It surely makes every right-thinking person wonder if worse is not happening in councils away in the sticks and if thoroughgoing surveillances should not take place out there to flash out any rot perpetrated away from the range of the eye of Local Government Ministry in our capital city.
In fact, do ministry officials in Harare who surely rub shoulders with top workers in the city council there not smell the rot in the council under their nose for action to have been taken long, long ago before the corruption now being talked about in public spilled out of the bin, or are their noses and ears congested or are city council officials now being lambasted for the alleged ill deeds buddies of some ministry gurus?
But surely, should our State President be expected to scan local authorities in order to ferret out workers whose ill deeds tarnish the image of our Government and above that of our country abroad with potential investors remaining too close with their hard-earned money instead of planting it in our country for potential, handsome dividends?
That one city council executive earns a five-figure salary in a city suffering serious want in service deliveries surely makes any right-thinking person wonder if not worse happens in that council with ministry officials who surely must know every nitty-gritty of what goes on in council under their very eyes and noses.
Bulawayo City Council, where some officials have been arrested for alleged ill-deeds, deserves a commission of enquiry such as that which opened a can of worms in the city of Harare to flush out any more worms wriggling under cover of darkness.
As of now, who knows for sure without surveillance by commissions of enquiries if the exposed rottenness by some Bulawayo and Harare City Council employees is not the order of things crippling operations in smaller councils around the country to the peril of our President’s philosophy: ‘Nyika inovakwa nevene vayo/Ilizwe lakhiwa ngabaninilo/ A country is built (developed) by its owners’.
Therefore in this communicologist’s humble opinion, Members of Parliament out there in the countryside should not only work to retain support for their tenure in the August House but must also ensure that councils in their constituencies deliver on developmental issues and not grow pot-bellies by corruption.
The independence that Zimbabweans won from racist white colonial rule in 1980 should not be translated by corrupt workers anywhere in our country to mean independence from strict government rules against misdeeds.
To round it all up, Zimbabweans should shun corruption in every sector of our society as abominable and the devil’s work.
That way our Zimbabwean society will surely be regarded as a shining star in the global village, for all to emulate.
