as it is, this is tolerable. One can understand their motivations. What is unbearable is when we find ourselves in submission to inexplicably foolish regulations — regulations that line nobody’s pockets but make everyone’s life a little less pleasant.

Please don’t shoot
Driving past the new Defence College I was struck by the excellent workmanship. It is a beautiful construction; these Chinese ‘colonisers’ are quite charitable. I was on my way to Bindura.

A few miles down the road you come to toll-gates of modest appearance. A dollar from you they demand.
Having parted with my filthy dollar bill I noticed something quite peculiar as I drove off. A police officer was standing with a rifle in hand.

One has come to expect police officers to be armed. It was not the combination of man and rifle that I found odd.
I was struck by the absurdity of having an armed police officer at a dollar-per-car toll-gate. Let us imagine I had driven off at high speed, hoping to keep my dollar.

Presumably the gun is for such circumstances? Would the good officer have shot me — or anyone else for that matter — for a dollar?

Can pedestrians cross?
Pedestrian crossings are a beautiful thing. The idea behind a pedestrian crossing is that traffic is not heavy and pedestrians are equally not heavy. As such, one cannot justify imposing a traffic light. Instead, we impose a pedestrian crossing and teach our drivers to extend courtesy to pedestrians whenever they so meet.

The assumption in marking such a crossing is the pedestrian and motorist will meet only occasionally.

This foundation is simple. It is difficult to imagine what manner of incompetence persuaded the dunces at Harare City Council to put in place a pedestrian crossing on the mother of all busy streets in Harare. There is a dangerous pedestrian crossing in Robert Mugabe Road by Cleveland House, just by Copacabana.

Every passing minute at least 30 people attempt to cross the road. They have the right of way. The problem is motorists do not stop and rightly so. There are just so many people crossing that road that if motorists gave way, as they should, then traffic would just not move.

This presents a very dangerous situation. A pedestrian believes they have the right of way. A motorist assumes the pedestrian will be “reasonable” enough to let him drive past. It is a recipe for disaster.

But there is a wider issue here. By violating the basic rules of setting up pedestrian crossings, the imbecile who signed off on those markings is creating a cultural problem. We are teaching drivers that pedestrian crossings do not matter. In this particular case motorists have no choice but to violate the law and in giving them a legitimate reason to do so we strip the pedestrian crossing of its power.

If anyone has been struck by a vehicle at that particular crossing I am confident one could bring a successful action against the City, it is certainly failing in its duty of care.

Please sign here
You can’t talk of meaningless procedural rituals without thinking of government buildings. I suffered the misfortune of entering Mkwati building a few days ago. No ID no ENTRY, a clumsily handwritten note on the door read.

After throwing a quick glance at my ID the security person looked away hand pointing to a visitors log. Name, address, ID number, time in and person you’re visiting. The book wanted to know.

I resent this kind of time wasting. It is completely unhelpful because the guards, though taking quite some pleasure from delaying you, do not take the affair seriously. I could have filled out my name as Mbuya Bona and given my address as Binga and nobody would have known.

Surely a large building like Mkwati can afford a computer (US$1 000), a fast scanner (US$800) and some rudimentary logging software (US$10 000). Simply scanning a document would take 10 seconds and would make life a little bit more tolerable. They could share the software among all such government buildings instead of this nonsense of writing names into counter books.

It is the small things that come together to make life better. Instead of waiting for billions of dollars to effect major structural changes we can start off with the smaller things. Even the scriptures state that he who is faithful with little will be faithful with much. If we cannot beautify the smaller things what hope do we have in the weightier issues of life?

I passed through the MDC-T HQ at Harvest House a few weeks back. The “party of excellence’’ also has a counter book into which a guard dutifully prints the names of the many visitors who come in and out. The foyer was quite dark, the lights clearly not working. I had to retreat after stepping into a filthy toilet.

These may seem like trivial matters but surely your environment speaks of who you are. If the MDC-T can tolerate filth in their own HQ why would anyone be foolish enough to believe Tsvangirai loses sleep over the litter that covers our streets?

Five subjects minimum
I giggled myself sore reading Petina Gappah’s recent piece on the Makandiwa-Angel phenomenon — Your God is a God of Silver and Gold. It was a playful and beautifully written piece that ended with some sobering observations.

She points out that our society places a near draconian emphasis on education to the point where even a mere messenger’s job requires 5 O-levels (with Mathematics and English, thank you).

While I applaud our impressive literacy credentials, I do find this approach problematic.
We are importing wooden furniture not because there is no locally produced furniture but because what we are producing is of poor quality. The workmanship is poor, the designs unimaginative.

What is my point? Education is not an end in itself. What do not need a 100 percent pass rate (though this would be welcome). We need useful citizens. We have emphasised bookish education, forcing maids, gardeners and messengers to devote useful energy into getting an “education” that will not bear any real fruit.

Basic literacy and arithmetic competence is enough as a bare minimum for those who are challenged. We need to stop mindlessly championing 5 O-levels to gardeners as though this is an answer to their poverty. It is not.

Some might find it controversial to suggest that some minds are not suited to bookish education but this is the reality of it. Instead of forcing a not so bookishly clever 16-year-old to re-sit his O-levels a dozen times I would much prefer to see him learning how to make something useful.

A good look at our rural areas will make my point. The mud hut is a damning indictment of the failure of our education system. After teaching our people to read and write, to sit exams and to get a good secondary school education we have not taught them to make anything that can change the way they live. They remain trapped in huts made of mud, sticks and straw. Their education has not given them the capacity to change this.

A good education is one that brings about a change in the way we live. A messenger who once upon a time read and memorised factorisation procedures just to pass an exam is still just a messenger. He produces nothing.

Ndatenda, ndini muchembere wenyu Amai Jukwa.

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