Visionary boards key

Tafara Shumba
The appointment of politicians as board members of Zesa Holdings and its nine subsidiaries has attracted a vicious public backlash. The appointments were equated to corruption meant to benefit ZANU-PF officials who failed to make it into Government.Others said the appointments border on nepotism, cronyism and political patronage. The attacks go on and on with some beseeching the relevant Parliamentary Portfolio Committee to interrogate the educational and professional backgrounds of the new board members.

While politicians are also citizens who are entitled to privileges to serve in such national boards, their appointment must be based on nothing but the requisite skills and experience.

In other countries, there are nominating and corporate governance committees that supervise such appointments.

Accusations that the appointments are based on nepotism and other bad -isms are informed by several factors.

One such factor is that every new minister appoints a new board to replace an existing one without necessarily looking at its performance. In most cases that minister calls up people he has been working with in previous postings.

The other factor is that some of the appointees have no track record to justify their appointments. Some have done badly in their previous assignments. In the case of Zesa Holdings, some of the politicians failed to run their constituencies and as a result, were rejected by the electorate.

When Cde Dzikamai Mavhaire took over at the Ministry of Energy and Power Development, he dissolved all boards of the nine parastatals under his ministry.

He said he was not happy with their work. It is yet to be seen how he is going to remove an under-performing board teeming with politicians without courting political consequences.

Hopefully the board members will measure up to the task to avoid putting the minister in a difficult situation.

The appointment of new boards conjures up the issue of “salarygate” where some boards winked at bosses of parastatals awarding themselves obscene salaries despite their non-delivery. These entities have been making losses due to corruption and poor corporate governance. The board members themselves helped in destroying the entities, with some board members raking in a staggering US$1 million in allowances in just a year.

It tainted Zanu-PF as most of the board members and chief executive officers were assumed to be party functionaries. It is going to be worse for the party if these newly-appointed ZANU-PF politicians mess up in these boards.

With an expectant nation waiting for the full implementation of the Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation (Zim-Asset), it should not be business as usual for strategic parastatals like Zesa. It’s not time to put a square peg in a round hole. Board members should provide entrepreneurial vision to these parastatals.

Board members of Zesa Holdings must be conscious of the fact that electricity is one of the key drivers of the economy. The successful implementation of each of the four strategic clusters of Zim-Asset depends on the provision of reliable electricity. Thus, the board members of Zesa Holdings have the tallest task in the process of implementing the economic blueprint.

As a matter of priority, Zesa must address the challenge of reduction in electricity generation as it has both direct and indirect effects on the economy. The electricity deficit is significantly hurting the manufacturing, agriculture and mining sectors due to unexpected power outages and load shedding.

In some cases, companies have resorted to the use of high voltage diesel generators during power outages. In Uganda, tax on diesel used for commercial generators is waived.
Electricity shortage has dented productivity of companies whose production capacity has already declined to slightly above 30 percent. Strangely, with this low industrial capacity utilisation, Zesa is still failing to cope with electricity demand. It will be a disaster if the capacity utilisation increases.

The board must make sure that Zesa meets the national demand of electricity. The power utility company is currently generating around 1200 megawatts against the national peak demand of 2200MW. The nation imports some electricity from Mozambique and Zambia to cover up the deficit. The board must raise the generation capacity of the existing power stations to their optimum.

The Herbert Murerwa-led board has an obligation to expand existing power stations which of course needs money.

Zesa is owed more than US$500 million which if it were recouped could go a long way in increasing power generation.

We hope the board will prove the critics wrong.