My fourth wish is that we as a Nation must strive in 2020 to agree on where we are going as a country. The Bible says that a ‘house divided cannot stand’ and that ‘a nation without vision will perish’. At present we are stuck with both problems and we must accept that unless we get to grips with this issue we will not make real progress and maintain our stability. When the ANC met nearly a 100 years ago to agree on the ‘Freedom Charter’, they laid the foundation for the subsequent struggle and rise to power. We need to meet together as a nation State and agree on where we want to be in a 100 years and how we are going to get there.
Then we need a binding social contract to guide policy and government and to lay down the fundamental principles which we will all adhere to and live by. This is part of African culture and tradition and is also the very foundation on which a successful State is developed. Consensus in national life is very powerful and should not be that difficult to secure if we all work at it and our leaders accept its need. Making decisions at a national level in our different silos of interest and authority is simply not working. The danger of moving into the future without a road map is that we will get lost, if we are not lost already.
My fifth wish is that we get to grips with how we manage our local authorities. What we are doing now is just not working. Would any of us select the sort of Councillor that is in charge today if the City was our company? The answer is no, never in a month of Sundays – it is just beyond most of them. The City or Town is a vital part of the State and in many ways what goes on there is more important than Parliament or Central Government. We need to be able to elect independent and professional men and women to the Councils. The situation in most urban areas has now reached crisis proportions in respect to service delivery.
Finally, our leadership must recognise that no Nation can make its way in the world of today without good education and health services. We spend a lot of money on both, but performance is deteriorating and fast. If we do not get this right we put all our futures, not just the next generation, at risk. We need to change the way we fund both systems and learn from other Nations that are doing a much better job of delivery. We do not have to invent solutions – they are already in the market place of ideas. We need a system that will pay our professionals what they are worth, determined by their value to our society and not determined by some bureaucrat in an office in Harare.
Am I crazy to expect such fundamental changes from Father Christmas? Does our leadership really have the best interests of our people at heart? I have to believe that both are true. I go back to Obama when he was speaking to young people in America ‘Can we do this? Yes, we can!’ I have no doubt we can find ourselves in 2020 and then map out a way out of this morass into a decent future for everyone.
Eddie Cross
Harare, 8th December 2019
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