7 things for Mnangagwa to do in 2021

Economist and member of the President’s Advisory Council, Eddie Cross, has listed seven things that he feels President Emmerson Mnangagwa should do this year to remain focused and steer the country to achieve its vision to become an upper middle income country by 2030.

1-First is your health, Mr President, your position puts enormous pressure on you and this year will be no different. You need to be physically in good shape and that depends on two main things – what you eat and physical exercise. As we get older we need to pay even more attention to these. In our Men’s Fellowship at Church we had a talk last year about how to prepare for old age, our speaker started out by saying that number one was our health. If we did not have that, pensions and all the rest, does not matter. You cannot do justice to your job as our President if you neglect your health.

2-Second, organise your Office or get someone to do it for you. If you do not have people to protect you from the non-essential and time wasting activities, they will swamp you and prevent you from making the key decisions, which is your primary responsibility. I have been a CEO in a major organisation and I know the value of a gate keeper and someone who will manage me and my schedule. Almost like having your mother working for you in the front office, someone with your best interests at heart. If fact, I would go beyond that and say that sometimes I wonder who is doing this for you because I have observed you being involved in activities that are really a waste of your time. This can be deliberate.

3-Thirdly security and stability. I fear in this realm I may well be talking to a man who knows much more about this subject than myself. However, I put it on the list because if we do not have these, very little else will work. A political leader always has enemies and people who might want his job. As a CEO I was always astonished at how many people thought they could do a better job than I. In politics this factor is magnified tenfold. In your first two and half years at the helm of this Country you have given us both and not just in the physical realm but also in financial and fiscal terms. I know it was your personal decision to introduce the currency auction and I am sure you appreciate how transformative that decision has been.

4-Fourthly, do not be afraid to take time to reflect on your situation and the position of the country as a whole. If you do not have time for this sort of activity, you are too busy. It is easy to fill your days with activity and yet achieve very little. Some of your most productive time will be when you are alone and can put your feet on the desk. Your country needs you to think things through so that your judgements are soundly based. And when you have made a decision make sure you get the right people to follow through. So often I have seen decent decisions (like the decision to unbundle Fidelity Printers and reorganise the gold sector) only to see the decision messed up by secondary activity that defeats the objective you had in mind.

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