GOOD day President Emmerson Mnangagwa. Your Excellency, I reckon dissatisfaction with your Presidency has grown beyond belief. As corruption, electoral chicanery, electricity outages and the collapsed economy continue unabated, citizenry is sinking into despondency given government’s flagrant dissipation of resources.
No wonder the youth is resorting to drug abuse for want of employment opportunities.
As I see it, the furore that was caused in early January by the gazetted tuition fee hike in government schools, set in United States dollars, was yet another confirmation of the deepening discontent with your Presidency.
No sooner had the announcement of the increase in tuition fees was made than parents and guardians erupted in dissatisfaction. It was no consolation for them that the fees could be paid in local currency at the prevailing exchange rate on the date of payment.
Verily, the parent of a child at Macheke Government Primary School, Mashonaland East province, described your government as inconsiderate. “This government is inconsiderate. It is just after making money. I think the government must review the tuition fees because we are already paying a lot of money at the schools,” she grieved.
Her sentiments were echoed by yet another parent, Tatenda Chekai, whose child attends Chancellor Junior School in Mutare, in Manicaland province. He accused government of milking parents of their hard earned money through the fees hike.
“We have since paid the tuition fees. There is nothing we can do because at the end of the day, it is my child who will be disadvantaged. It is however, unfair for government to increase the fees because of the current economic situation. The increase is retrogressive and not expected of our government,” lamented Chekai.
Responding in similar vein, Amalgamated Rural Teachers Union of Zimbabwe president Obert Masaraure called on citizenry to stage bus stop protests every Monday calling for free education. He condemned the government-gazetted fee hike as retrogressive and unconstitutional.
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Your Excellency, believe it or not, verily, citizenry is over-burdened. They are sunk into despondency. Life has become a grind. It is a chore to provide for the family. My sworn perspective is that dissatisfaction with your Presidency has grown beyond belief.
Granted, based on the outcry over the fee hike, your government has shown itself to be altogether out of touch with reality when it gazetted tuition fees in State schools in United States dollars. It is so dispiriting to the extent that citizenry has sunk into despondency.
Considering the effects of hyperinflation and the local currency collapse, life for the citizenry has been reduced to penury. One does not need to be an economics fundi to know that troubled times are upon the nation.
It was an act of last resort that in January, headmasters at government schools across the country felt compelled to put their employer, the Public Service Commission, on notice to press for hard currency salaries.
They complained that the local currency component of their salaries had been severely depreciated by inflation. In a statement issued in January as schools were readying for the opening of the first term, Munyaradzi Majoni of the Zimbabwe National Union of School Heads said, “The local currency component was eroding their benefits because it was being affected by inflation.”
Your Excellency, amid the reality that the entire public service delivery system is in dire straits, the assertion by Delrone Sauramba in The Sunday Mail of July 29, 2018, under the headline, “Why ED is the man for the job,” sprang to my mind.
Sauramba said you were the right candidate for the Presidency. His support for you was absolute.
He asserted, “If we are to measure President Emmerson Mnangagwa's performance without bias, we have to measure his achievements since he ascended to the highest office in the land. On the economic front, Zimbabwe has been a hive of activity since the day ED declared that Zimbabwe was open for business,” stated Sauramba.
Your Excellency, notwithstanding that your military-orchestrated ascendancy to the Presidency was still its infancy, Sauramba was determined to rate you highly. He charged that the international community had warmed to Zimbabwe all because of your said diplomatic forays.
“It can only be disingenuous to fail to appreciate that Zimbabwe is on an entirely new trajectory,” noted Sauramba. He took a dig at people who were critical of your ascendancy, charging that people had gone on and on about how ED was in government for the past 38 years. Yet he was not the President.
“On July 30, 2018, President ED Mnangagwa will get a fresh mandate from the people of Zimbabwe. He will be measured by this full term, and knowing ED the way I think I do, he will sign off with a sterling performance. The new Zimbabwe is upon us. Captain ED is steering the ship from troubled waters and needs our support,” pleaded Sauramba.
Sauramba was not the only one who hit the ground running to garland you. Even some State universities, among them the country's oldest institution of higher learning, the University of Zimbabwe, the Great Zimbabwe University and a third one stampeded to confer honorary doctorate degrees on you.
Yet, henceforth your ascendancy to the Presidency, the country rapidly became disconsolate. Apparently, the said diplomatic forays have been nothing but motion without production. With Zimbabwe now rendered a godforsaken country, exodus into the diaspora is the viable option.
Apparently, the said Zimbabwe is open for business declaration has no hype activity to its credit, not even a token one. There was neither aroma nor fragrance of a new Zimbabwe that Sauramba declared. Consequently, dissatisfaction with your Presidency grew beyond belief.
Methinks the sanctions imposed on you by the United States were in tandem with the citizenry dissatisfaction over your Presidency. Verily, your first term was a dissipation of civility. Your Excellency, citizenry has sunk into despondency.
