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COLLECTIVE IN FAILURE?

01/06/2017 08:17:00 By Vusi Kunene

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“As I see it, the failure of the State to invest in the mass education of people in favour of wasting resources on the military, is indicative enough of the leadership kwashiorkor afflicting the nation.”

I could not say this as clearly as Vusi Sibisi told it in an edition of this publication of May 29, 2017. That we have leadership kwashiorkor answered the question that I was grappling with on why there is so much failure in our government.
When the prime minister mentioned that there is collective responsibility in his Cabinet I was happy. I was happy because I thought Cabinet ministers would correct each other and assist each other in their duties. I never thought it would be collective responsibility in failure.

It seems that all the ministries are affected by a similar plague which is failure in their responsibility. I don’t want to think we are demanding too much from them.
What has our military achieved with all the money given to it? Other than a few instances of disturbing smugglers (and most of the time they do not bring them to book) what else is our army doing? Sibisi mentioned that the money should at least be used to educate Swazis.

This is true but my worry is that the very same money will be abused by those who are to distribute it. Think of the scholarships awarded to people who do not qualify and I do not want to get into the issue of nepotism.
What would be the justification of giving money to a Ministry Health that operates like ours? A ministry that fails to prioritise the health of the nation is not worth the name. First it demanded that people must carry identity cards to be treated because they wanted to deal with the problem of the abuse of drugs.
The next thing we saw nurses demonstrating because there were no drugs and medication in hospitals. I then thought maybe the not treating of the people because they are not carrying identity cards was just a cover for the lack of drugs and medication. I wondered when the ministry realised that it was running short of drugs because it had not paid its suppliers.

I shudder to think that people lost their lives because of lack of drugs and medication. There is nothing wrong though and its business as usual for our leaders.
In the article my thinking was also triggered by the fact that we are rich in mineral resources. It is worrying to see that we have nothing to show for our natural resources. I had forgotten that we had a Ministry of Natural Resources in this kingdom.
This is one ministry I feel we do not need if we have natural resources and not getting any revenue from them. We have heard of the police going into Malolotja because people were looting natural resources from the country. Why are we, as a country, not using those natural resources when we have a ministry that should be looking into those issues?

If we were benefitting from the natural resources, who knows, maybe the Ministry of Health would not have failed to pay its suppliers. That leads me to the confusion taking place at Lufafa. In less than a year the company awarded to do the mining is already embroiled in scandals. Does government screen the people it engages? To me it seems it was the same thing with Salgaocar at Ngwenya. What is wrong with the Ministry of Natural Resources? Where are they missing it because they have all the time and resources to do their job?
The least said about the ministry that allows expatriates to be employed at the expense of its own poor and unemployed citizens the better.

There is a lot which is wrong with the Ministry of Home Affairs.
That they renew permits for people who are not supposed to have them is a dereliction of their duty. This is the very same ministry that has cost Swazis a lot by failing to provide travelling documents.
I still do not know the reason why the ministry ran short of them. But my conscience tells me that someone in this ministry did not do his/her job and that person is still in office and enjoying his/her salary yet the whole country was held to ransom by his/her incompetency.

And we hear nothing from government on this and it seems all is normal.
It is this silence from government when things go wrong that makes me wonder if the leader of government cares about the people of the country or it’s the leadership kwashiorkor. The concept of collective responsibility means that if one of us fails, we are all failing. What then are the others saying to each other when one ministry does not perform?