Remember, this is the speech which was given during the year when a Vice President of this country went to a police station to release suspects that had been arrested for corruption. Therefore, the expectations of a nation is that when the Head of State comes to give his speech, he will touch on these things because they are pertinent; they are important things, when an Acting Head of State would go to a police station to release suspects that are under investigation by the police and then no further action is taken. Those things are expected.
You expect the Head of State to speak to issues like, very important people in this nation are not getting allowances that they are supposed to be getting; the chiefs, our traditional leaders. This speech by the President was given at a time when traditional leaders had their allowances in about seven/eight months’ arrears. Therefore, you expected those kinds of things to be addressed.
You expect the speech of the Head of State to speak to the concerns pertaining to the state of welfare of the population in the country; looking at the poverty levels; school dropout levels; accessibility of higher and tertiary education, life expectancy levels, wage levels and all those challenges that are bedeviling this nation. We can continue to talk about HIV/AIDS but that is not the only ill that is bedeviling this nation. We have got so many ills. We have become a nation of problems. If we are going to declare a national disaster Hon. Speaker, I think everything is a national disaster in this country. We have to declare everything a national disaster. So, in the face of all these challenges, it is important that we note that these challenges are a function of the challenges that we are facing in our economy. All these challenges that we are talking about are merely symptoms. What Hon. Maridadi was outlining here is that there are symptoms of a sick economy that needs to be healed.
Therefore, we expected that when the Head of State was going to speak, he would have spoken to issues like lack of capital inflows in this country. Why is it that we do not have capital, always crying about no foreign currency and no US$ which is our adopted currency? We should be speaking to the bad and inconsistent policies that investors have been complaining about in this nation and say how do we deal with them. We expected issues of low confidence in the economy – how do we deal with issues of low economy and low confidence that is in the economy. We expected the Head of State to talk to the decaying infrastructure in the country as what Hon. Gabbuza was saying.
When in a nation you begin to become a nation where there are cases and complains about natural things that you cannot change, it is a sign that you have got serious problems. When you see a nation complaining about rainfall that it is destroying our infrastructure, it is a sign that mapererwa. You have got no ideas of how you can redress the challenges that you are facing as a nation. We expected a genuine and honest Head of State to speak about a bloated Cabinet that is always facing a huge rate of turn-over which is consuming a huge chunk of our fiscus.
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