Now, this is where we have a problem, Hon. Speaker Sir. You cannot have command agriculture, command economy, command currency – everything you want to command. There is a problem in commanding certain things. The economy does not respect commandments of politicians or policy makers. It respects commandments of the market, of course with the necessary State intervention. But now, the problem we have is that we have what we call economic dirigisme. Economic dirigisme is whereby the Government is so bent on controlling and intervening in the economy. It is drunk with the stupor of intervention; that is the problem we have, because you find that right now, we want to come in to control, we want to come in to limit. It will not work. We must move away from a dirigiste mindset so that we begin to allow our people to work hard and earn a living without all those controls, without all those limitations.
Last but not least, Minister, I would have expected, as we discussed, through you Hon. Speaker Sir, if you had brought an amendment to say, we are going to make it compulsory for everyone including ZIMRA, including ZINARA, to have swipe machines and point-of-sale machines, I would say this is a progressive amendment. Let us amend our laws to make it legally compulsory for us to use point-of-sale machines. Even for a barber, for a hairdresser, let us have a point-of-sale machine. Why? By doing so you are legislating e-commerce, by doing so you are legislating e-transactions, by doing so you are legislating plastic money. Now, we do not have a sufficient mechanism to make sure that we have a plastic money platform that is supported at law, so that everyone is made to be on that platform. Even lobola will be paid e-lobola. That is the progressive thing to be done so that we are able to put everything on line.
Having said that, I want to say, already our hands are functus officio. Our hands are tied because the Minister has already a merit and what we are supposed to simply do is to endorse a marriage that is already there. In fact, he has two children in the family and he is coming to us to say, can you allow me a wife. We have nothing to say because there is evidence of some marital transaction that has taken place, these two children. Thank you Hon. Speaker Sir – [HON. MEMBERS: Inaudible interjections.] –
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