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SELF-CREATED CRISIS

29/11/2018 04:06:00 By vusi Kunene

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I feel sorry for the current Cabinet ministers because they have been assigned a very hard assignment of having to pull the country out of the self-created economic crisis.

I wonder if the prime minister will be in a position to lead the team to salvage this country from the doldrums. I know the prime minister was an MD of a financial institution before, but that institution was on its feet and operating and the people there were willing to pull together in the same direction. He also led a telecommunication institution that he found already operating. Unlike the government he is leading, that is not willing to pull in the same direction. Or let me say the previous government was the one that purposely created this economic crisis.

The prime minister has just introduced some strategies that he hopes will assist the country in getting it out of the crisis that was self-created but I pity him. What he is doing is like pouring water in a bucket with a big hole and hopes to use the water after an hour. Introducing such measures when the very government he is leading is not willing to save will not help him.

Think of the report that government has to pay E40 million for trying to make sure that external exams were written this year. Instead of negotiating with teachers so that they understand the situation, government decided to show its power by using the police and renting vehicles for them. This was a complete waste of resources and I am sure this is money that would have gone a long way in helping the country develop.

I am worried because the very same people who are in government today are the same people who were there when the crisis started. If the principal secretaries, whom we are told run the different ministries, were there when the crisis was created, what will change now with the current Cabinet. The very same people who failed to save money, but instead squandered it, are still there, yet we expect change.

Changing the tyres will not make the engine of the car stop have smoke issues. The engine should be attended to but unfortunately only a few have the power and authority to change the engine. For us to come out of this crisis there should be a complete overhaul of the whole government machinery.

There have been suggestions that have been given to government to assist it salvage the crisis but those were ignored. One of those was from the International Monetary Fund, which mentioned sometime in the past that the government wage bill was unsustainable and must be reduced. What did we do as a country?

We told the IMF to go jump and continued recruiting more soldiers and police than teachers. We wanted to have enough police to show the power our government has over civil servants and indeed police officers were made teachers in schools. The result was abuse of school children and a huge bill that government has to pay.

The erstwhile head of government is on record having said that nothing could convince him that dagga should be legalised. This was despite the fact that we were being told that this could assist our economy. But because of not being willing to accept advice even after studies had been conducted, government refused to accept that. I read the other day that Lesotho was now having millions being invested in that country because it legalised dagga for medicinal purposes.

There were people who advised the former prime minister including the principal secretary in his office but we never heard anyone come out to say they advised the prime minister. So my assumption is that they were in agreement with him. If such people are still in office, do we really expect to move out of the economic crisis?

Professor Patrick Lumumba said China had been poor just recently but it was now one of the leading economies in the world. What did that country do right? Lumumba continued to say it is because Chinese people chose leaders who realised that they were in a crisis and had a vision. They knew what had to be done. So the Chinese first got rid of the dead wood in government and replaced them with people who had a vision and knew how to achieve it. The way their government was operating was changed and they have the results today.

If we still have the same people in office who created the crisis, can they suddenly change? The current Cabinet will not help us much because the money we are supposed to save is still being given away.

Forty million Emalangeni for exams only is way too much taking into account that there was never a problem with exams in the past. But the people who are not willing to negotiate with teachers are still in office and will do whatever to show teachers they have the power. The whole country will, therefore, suffer.