GOVT NOT FAIR TO PSAS

Unless something short of a miracle happened over the weekend, the Kingdom of Eswatini will this morning wake up to possibly the mother of all strikes in recent memory when public service associations (PSAs) take to the streets to demand Cost-of-Living-Adjustments for the past three successive years.

And seemingly with the nation resigned to this stand-off and protest action by civil servants, the lingering question is whether or not government has been an honest party in efforts towards resolving the impasse. As I see it, government has been disastrous in its handling of the negotiations with the PSAs by essentially seeking refuge from its cash-flow challenges as a genuine reason for refusing to award the Cost-of-Living- Adjustments (CoLA) to civil servants. After all the cash-flow challenges, indeed if there are any, did not just happen on their own but are a manifestation of reckless spending and imprudent management of the fiscus over the years. Therefore, the narrative ought to change when addressing this self-made problem which will not disappear anytime soon because it is mothered by a feudalistic political system devoid of any checks and balances.

Spending

While the new Cabinet has tried to curtail spending by putting a moratorium on hiring within the civil service – often to the detriment of essential services – its strategic road map has failed to address reckless spending and huge cash outflows from the Treasury that are the major failing points. Even assuming the kingdom to be a magnet to foreign direct investors, the tax revenue generated there would not necessarily solve the cash-flow problem and make government liquid again. Reckless spending and cash outflows to finance uneconomical hedonistic and vanity ventures, not to speak of the unsustainably expensive lifestyle of the elites, would continue unabated owing to the concomitant moral and ethical deficits in leadership.

Proof

The proof of this is that in the past three years when civil servants were denied CoLA there never were life-changing adjustments in how the nation’s tax Emalangeni are spent. Wasteful recurrent expenditure on areas with no returns to the taxpayer has not only been maintained but is increasing at the rate of procreation. The same applies to funding projects with no economic value whatsoever but in turn require continuous injection of operating capital, adding to the wastage. Not a single national anniversary has been suspended in that period but huge amounts of resources have been poured in the commemoration of these events even when some of them are meaningless to the larger body of emaSwati.

The least said about the First World vision the better because some of the projects being undertaken are driven by this objective. Just how shiny and expensive buildings will translate to First World status come 2022 is mystifying. Yet the majority of emaSwati are prisoners to a vicious cycle of poverty and disease with which they are expected to crawl into the promised First World. Paradoxically, in the midst of the impasse between government and the PSAs it emerges that one of the vanity projects, the International Convention Centre and Five-Star Hotel would fixture bathrooms that cost E275 000 per unit. It is a certainty that this information would not have come out if it was not for the fact that government wanted to borrow money to fund this absurdity.

This is sheer madness that requires institutionalisation in a normal society especially given the backdrop that the E78 million budgeted for this could probably deliver decent low-cost houses for all the residents of the nation’s sprawling oldest township of Msunduza who live in real and not multi-million Emalangeni emadlokolo that even animals frown upon. This does not speak to a government that is honest to its workforce and indeed the governed. It also turns out that government is reluctant to implement outcomes of the Royal Commission on the remuneration of politicians and public officials ostensibly owing to reduced benefits in some instances.

Hostile

A hostile and militant Prime Minister Ambrose Mandvulo Dlamini did not help matters when he came out of the shell with guns blazing, once more underscoring how insensitive government is on matters affecting what are essentially second class citizens. That is the measure of what this political system can do to an individual it has entrusted with power and authority. That is what the political system is capable of - eating away the consciences and principles of those it entrust with leadership roles and reduce them to scarecrows to terrify the people into submission.

Government’s comical and puerile posture on this matter was also ventilated in Parliament when lawmakers chastised its spin-doctor, Percy Simelane, for his irresponsible statements when responding to PSAs. Simelane’s retorts are synonymous with those who keep on accusing the leadership of the PSAs of pursuing political objectives. Anyone who is not intellectually disabled understands that the very act of existence is political and, therefore, it is impossible, indeed irrational, for a sane person to divorce himself/herself from politics. After all government’s refusal to give what is due to its workers can be traced to political decision-making, in this instance suicidal political decisions.

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