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Stanely Mushava
Political language, when amplified out of proportion, is a vastly diverting instrument for neglecting responsibilities, disempowering the masses, immobilising progress and broadening the reach of poverty. Working masses in both the corporate and public sector have been reduced to poverty. Their unrequited toil oils the mills of capital. Instead of their dues, they are fed politically overblown speeches that have no bearing on the problems on the ground.
Even though tokens of their labour line up the treasure chest, implements of capital wedge workers out of the affluent radius. Their lot is to be fed excuse after excuse, ism after ism, as if eloquent debates will nourish their families or actualise their aspirations.
An incriminating memo recently appeared in the Press demonstrating how ZBC CEO Happison Muchechetere got away with presiding over a cocktail of failures, chiefly poor performance and breakdown of labour relations at the corporation, by invoking politics as a generic scapegoat.
Mr Muchechetere’s tenure concurred with a precipitate downward variation of ZBC from the country’s flagship media outlet to an outmoded corporation which fell short of its service billing, quality programming, business competence and international best practice.
As a reward for mediocrity, the CEO laughed his way to the bank for a monthly salary and allowances totalling US$40 000 while workers went for six months without a salary. Apparently, Mr Muchechetere never lost sleep over these indiscretions because there was an immediate template to resort to, that is, blaming everything on politics.
The political framing stratagem which many leaders resort to has been fashioned into a far-reaching poetic licence to invalidate conscience for convenience, throw out of the window and gratify one’s own whims, whatever the values at stake.
In his “State of Affairs at ZBC” report, the CEO ascribed the underperformance and maladministration of the corporation to “multi-dimensional political machinations at play”, citing, among other things, larger national politics, an adverse macro-economic environment and absence of Government funding.
In his appraisal of the report, Secretary for Information, Media and Broadcasting Services Mr George Charamba, short-circuited “a management which coughs up so many excuses when things have already gone bad”.
The latest revelation that top management at Premier Service Medical Aid Society group CEO Mr Cuthbert Dube was earning a basic salary of US$230 000 as at 2012 while the society was not paying service providers equates to picking a corpse’s pocket, considering the obscene luxury was appropriated on the peril of customers’ lives.
The tragedy, however, is that the elites have adapted language to suit top brass interests in corporate and legal disciplines for too long such that what passes for legal is not necessarily ethical or moral but prevails at the end of the day.
While attention has revolved exclusively around the two sagas, they are just a miniature of a broader elitist conspiracy with the intersecting domains of self-interest and political semantics.
Irish satirist Jonathan Swift characterises the manipulation of language as “Wit without knowledge being a sort of cream, which gathers in a night to the top, and by a skilful hand may be soon whipped into froth; but once scummed away, what appears underneath will be fit for nothing but to be thrown to the hogs.”
The value of corporate and political discourse inheres not in the ability to cord together mind-staggering jawbreakers but in guaranteeing perceptible improvements in one’s sphere of mandate. Zimbabweans do not stand to benefit from semantic and quasi-ideological attritions which do not avail them their dues as workers and citizens, namely, social justice and better economic prospects.
Should Zimbabweans crave rambling political semantics without tangible outcomes, more libraries and debate centres can be built to that effect. The Greeks have an antique model called the Areopagus where idlers often convened to for nothing else besides talk.
However, for those mandated with improving the interests of workers and prospects of citizens talk is never enough. The country needs to troubleshoot its leadership deficit whereby leaders are more interested in musical turns of phrases more than results and delivery.
Our elites are blighted with Aristotle’s inventory of base attributes, including making profit in petty and disgraceful ways, out of the poor and helpless, exerting themselves less than they are capable and soliciting assistance from those who are worse off.
When individuals allocate themselves perks beyond the means of the company, not only are workers reduced to crumbs and indignity but the nation which is the target recipient of the service is short supplied.
A change of taste is long overdue whereby leaders will turn away from political lexicons and pay unsparing attention to their service manuals.
Online Reporter