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A lorry carrying passengers to a funeral in Chisumbanje burst into flames on collision with an ethanol fuel tanker, killing 22 people on the spot

WILLIAM Shakespeare in Richrad III says, “Fear not, my lord, we will not stand to prate; Talkers are no good doers: be assured, we come to use our hands and not our tongues.”
In the July 31 harmonised elections, these reassuring words were translated into political party manifestos and they made a difference when voters chose which political party to trust to take charge of governance affairs for the next five years.

Politicians promised the ordinary person on the street that they would talk the talk and walk the talk. One of them had a Shona phrase, “Kutaura nokuita”.

However, the problem with catchy phrases is that a good number of them have a shelf life. Like chewing gum, they lose that sweetness and taste after a while, and like fashion they soon lose the glitz and glamour.

“Walking the talk” and “man or woman on the street” are elementary English language words whose simplicity cannot be underestimated, but which are also so misused and misunderstood. The truth of the matter is that they are now clichés.

So often you hear statements like, “Make sure that the way you do it or express it will be understood by an ordinary person on the street”. You ask, who this ordinary person on the street is, especially when we are talking about national issues.

The dictionary defines him or her as an average person. But when we look at the socio-political and economic landscape, who is an average person?

In line with Shakespeare’s observation can we conclude that “talkers are no good doers: be assured, we come to use our hands and not our tongues.”

“Walk the talk” originates from the viewpoint that “talk is cheap”. The same website where I got this definition says when you don’t walk the talk, then you are “all mouth and no trousers”, probably close to what Information, Media and Broadcasting Services Minister Professor Jonathan Moyo called the “open zip, open mouth and shut mind” syndrome.

As an observer, the question is why should we cheapen our talk by not walking it? Is it because we do not take ourselves seriously?
Zimbabweans have been commended for maintaining peace in the run-up, during and after the elections, but when will we come together as Team Zimbabwe to tackle the many challenges that face the nation? When others are for “peace, unity and development”, why should others have retrogressive mindsets that would want Zimbabwe to slide back into chaos?

Why should we also come up with policies, that are copied by other nations, but which we never implement, and if we do, we do it haphazardly and/or on an ad hoc basis?

There are many examples where we do not walk the talk. We religiously conduct parliamentary polls. Parliament, as one of the arms of Government has the responsibility of enacting laws. But are all citizens and outsiders who want to do business with us upholding those laws without fear or favour?

A good example is the carnage on our roads. When will we walk the talk with regard to the road accidents that are claiming thousands of lives and maiming thousands more? Do we put value (in monetary terms) on these accidents, and how they are bleeding the fiscus, making it impossible for Government to channel adequate resources for social services?

When is enough, enough – considering that we have laws in place and we also have a professional police force that should ensure that all those found on the wrong side of the law are brought to book?

Has ownership of motor vehicles become a curse and not a blessing? Once again, why are so many people perishing on our roads?
I know that mechanisms are being put in place to address the problem, but will we see them implemented to the full or it will just be for the coming festive season – “all mouth and no trousers”?

Then we have this cancer called corruption, which threatens to eat us away. We have acknowledged that it is a problem and that if something radical is not done to address it, as a nation, we won’t progress. Are we serious or its “all mouth and no trousers” again?
They say that a stitch in time serves nine, but is it mere talk? Before those pot holes and the mounds of garbage all over the country became an eyesore, there was a starting point.

We saw it, but told ourselves that it was someone else’s problem. Those responsible for addressing the problem probably had other pressing issues to attend to. But seeing how the problems have gotten out of hand, it means that we decided not to act on time until it was too late.
It is the same with vandalism of public property. When we saw people possessed with a spirit of “uprooting, tearing down and destroying”, it was as though there were no laws in place to safeguard these properties. Most of us could not be bothered. After all, it was Government and/or council property.

We mourn about inadequate power and energy supply, but the vandalism of street lights and traffic lights makes one think twice about mindsets that think that it is okay to destroy public facilities because they want to benefit by selling whatever they would have destroyed and stolen.

Harare’s western suburbs are a good example where street lights were vandalised and it’s all darkness now, even when the power utility is trying its best to provide power.

Someone did not walk the talk – “all mouth and no trousers”?
Before we got to a position where illegal structures have to be demolished, we had local authorities that saw the first structures being set up, but they looked the other way.

When nothing was done to the first offender, more people erected their structures, until there are so many.
The end result is that valuable time and funding now have to be set aside to deal with problems that should have been dealt with before they became this humongous.

To most people, it is as if the law is non-existent or it is a toothless bulldog because they see it taking action when the problem is too big to handle. In the process, we court unnecessary attention from those who are always keen to see what Zimbabwe is doing and saying.
This is an attitude we can least afford when we are part of an interconnected world.

The mounds of garbage, drivers’ conduct on the roads, the traffic accidents, the illegal structures, the vandalism, the action and/or inaction are now in full view of the whole world.

They don’t have to come here to be first hand witnesses. Technology is an enabler.
Thus in today’s open societies, it is very easy to become one’s worst enemy by not walking the talk and also not talking the talk.