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Cuthbert Dube

Reflections with Isdore Guvamombe
BACK in the village in the land of milk, honey and dust of Guruve, success should be 10 percent ability, and 90 percent sweat and when it is vise-versa, then the sun might as well rise from the west and set in the east.
In the village, a bag that says it will not stop taking more, and a traditional doctor who says he would not leave anything behind are both sure to suffer, for the unquenchable thirst for more breeds corruption and very, very, early demise.

This villager, has been following the salarygate or whatever names it is given in the media with much amusement.

The village autochthons, who hardly have a cent in their non-porous pockets, are equally shocked and have described pockets of those chief executives as basket pockets.

The village soothsayer decided to call them Thief Executives!

Of course, there are those with reverse shocking salaries, the true sons and daughters of Zimbabwe.

There are a few good ones who earned much less than what drivers at some parastatals earned.

These are patriots and masters of good corporate governance, who placed the country’s interests ahead of personal interests.

I know of one chief executive who earned less than US$4 000 and had one allowance, just a housing allowance of US$1 000. Nothing else!
Believing the stories of the high salaries to be true — which they must be — some salaries are too high that those earning them are so brazenly shameless to the point that their story could easily send chickens laughing throughout the village.

These men and women, our brothers and sisters who left the village yonder for the city to seek fortune and found themselves at the helm of some companies, have strangely developed this appetite for thievery to a point where their basket pockets cannot handle the fluidity of cash.

Do village elders not say, there is no way you can pour water into a basket and expect the water to remain?

The thief executives are a shame to the entire ancestry lineage where there are too many poor people sleeping on empty stomachs.

Of course, it has become accepted in urban areas that one’s financial problems cannot stop the mega bucks from enjoying good life, good meals and expensive whisky?

A sheep does not lament the death of a goat’s kid, so they say!

Of course, in the village, they say character is always corrupted by prosperity. A man can be perfect for decades; but he may become corrupt in less than a day.

But you see, in the village again, laws are useless when men are pure, unenforceable when men are corrupt.

The level of corruption displayed in some parastatals surely calls for the Government to start by arresting, prosecuting and jailing board members who agreed to give these thief executives those obscene salaries.

If two ride on a horse, one must ride behind? Who was behind these huge salaries? What did the board members receive as kickbacks is the million cattle question? The people of Zimbabwe have gone a long way.

They have suffered a lot over man-made calamities starting from politics to corruption and the future of Zimbabwe lies in the ability of the current Government to deal decisively with corruption.

During the political stalemate, the ordinary people of Zimbabwe found themselves hard-pressed by political and sanctions-induced economic hardship.

Day after day, they suffered, going to work on empty stomachs and in some instances the ordinary workers subsidised companies they worked for.

The companies could to afford even bus fare and meals but the people still came to work. Others footed to work. They had no option, they stood by their country. They “died” for this country.

Soon before the inclusive Government, when the then acting Minister of Finance, Cde Patrick Chinamasa, the ironman of Manicaland, introduced multi-currency system, things started working and lives started improving.

Thereafter when the inclusive Government came into being, the political stability that came with it was supposed to even ease hardships for the people.

However, this villager is not scared to say in terms of governance, the inclusive Government was the worst.

It took away focus from real corporate governance issues and concentrated on power games and the corrupt ones took advantage and started crafting deals that have plunged their country into the corruption of this magnitude.

Checks and balances were not done as new Cabinet ministers — some of them who came straight from the streets to become ministers overnight with zero knowledge of governance — were easily taken for a ride and out-manoeuvred by these thief executives.

It is only now that the single government has picked up the spoor and opened a Pandora’s box.

That having been done, this country must set an example of how corruption can be dealt with. This is a grand opportunity to deal with deterrence effect with this kind of corruption.

The people of Zimbabwe are keenly waiting to see how far the corruption saga will go. In the courts of social justice the people are giving high sentences, as high as the salaries and the level of corruption.

The ordinary villager who sleeps on an empty stomach, the poor civil servant who paid through the nose to join a medical aid society and the soothsayer, the ageless autochthon of knowledge and wisdom await, the day when sentence will be passed.

Back in the village, punishment is the greatest teacher and its magnitude is very deterrent.