By Nick Mangwana
Zimbabwe has reached a national debt
crisis tipping point. People are owing money for everything from electricity
that hardly "comes" to local authority taxes as well as water and
other council utilities. Debt collection
is now one of the most lucrative industries in the country. But then the crisis
does not end there. It's now pervading
every part of the nation.
There are people that can afford to pay their debts but simply choose not to
because it is simply not wired into them that when one borrows they have to pay
back. The writer recalls an incident that happened many years ago in one mining
township. There was a woman that had a poultry project on their yard. She would
sell chickens on credit to the mine workers and at the end of the month she
would go to the work place on the payday to collect her dues. These were the
days when people were paid their wages in labelled envelops. One day this woman went to collect her dues one of her
customers who actually lived in the same neighbourhood gave a chain of social
challenges as a reason why he could not afford to pay her this time around. She was a reasonable woman
and deferred to the next month. That same evening she saw the same person she
had excused coming from one her business competitors holding another live
chicken for that evening's meal. She immediately intercepted him and the
wrestled for the control of that chicken and she took it and put it in with the
rest in her fowl run. What irked her was the philosophy of someone
incurring debt with one person but fails to pay that debt. Instead of
prioritising the repayment of that debt they choose to go and borrow from
someone else because they had defaulted on their current obligation.
Unfortunately this the same mentality in the Zimbabwean people many years
later. This type of mindset cannot be blamed on harsh economic times. It can
only be explained by a culture of debt defaulting. This has nothing with someone not having
capacity to pay. It has more to do with
someone lacking commitment to pay.
Unfortunately in this group there is the political elite that has a spirit of
entitlement. They borrow from the financial institutions but when it comes to
paying their dues, they play politics. They have a culture of impunity and even
the banks themselves cannot dare to issue recovery writs against them. Their
lifestyles do not suggest that they are indigent. They have a spirit of entitlement and
impunity. You can imagine them saying to the banker in their heads, "What
are you gonna do about it?". This type of behaviour is not good for the
country and it affects the ability of financial institutions to loan to the
next person.
The tragedy of this mindset is that
is also taken from people's personal lives and is carried into their State
functions. This same political elite takes their penchant for not
paying personal debts to work where they
don't prioritise the payment of national
debts by commissioning more spending
sprees not occasioned by affordability.
The devil of spending what one does not have as well as having skewed
priorities has to be confronted. Like most truths, it does not make comfortable
reading.
For how can a country that is
struggling with a debt overhang of
nearly $10 billion never run fails to avail top of the range vehicles to its
top officials and other highly publicised questionable use of public funds?
Isn't really down to prioritise again.
It is iniquitous to be in debt and
continue to pile debt upon debt which is only used to finance recurring
expenditure especially a voracious appetite for consumer goods and luxuries. It is equally iniquitous to saddle one's
grandchildren with this burden for generations to come. The country should
bequeath a legacy of prosperity and not
a legacy of debt which is a posterity of liability. The nation cannot continue to duck responsibility. Sanctions have been very deleterious to our
economy. They continue to cause havoc but we are also responsible for the
situation the nation finds itself in. We have to ask ourselves who we can
borrow from now when we have exhausted any credit limit and yet defaulting from
our payments. If most of the decisions made
were about survival nobody blame a nation for choosing survival over debt
repayment. But any claim that this is the dilemma facing the nation will sound
hollow when the opposition tabloids are full
is clear that Zimbabweans do not
prioritise debt repayment. Some have exhausted their credit worthy among
friends. There is a general feeling that
Zimbabweans are bad debtors. It is now wired in the psyche of the nation to
ignore one's obligations whilst going to accumulate more with very little
prospect of paying. This has nothing to do with the difficult state of the
Zimbabwean economy because even those who seem to be doing ok in the Diaspora
seem to suffer from the same social malady. So the argument that people choose
survival over their reputation does not wash. The saying that , to get rid of someone, lend
them money used to ring so true among
our lot. Now, you lend them money which
they don't repay and they still come back for more. They are perfecting the art
of smooth talking. But that can only be a bane of the nation. But what causes people not to prioritise
paying their debts?
It is a social injustice for a nation
to borrow, individuals fritters that money away and everyone's child and grand
child is saddled with that debt. The
nation cannot be called to austere whilst a few are profligate.
One of the problems in Zimbabwe or
among Zimbabweans is measuring success by the amount of visible material
possessions. Even those who are known to
be stealing do not want to steal and stash the money away for future generations.
No. That does not bring emotional utility. It you got it, you got to flaunt it.
Flawed as the idea might be, if one is flaunting their money then that is fine.
But if one is flaunting money they cannot repay then the priorities are skewed
here.
When a nation is called upon to
austere it is not a call on the poor to forgo their sadza and veggie meals from
two to one. It is a call on those that eat in Michelin Star restaurants on the
back of a public purse (debt) to hold back. It is call to go back to those
years soon after independence when minsters were running around in Datsun
Bluebird. Yes, reader you got that one right. That used to be an official car.
Not these days of top of the range this and top of the range that whilst the
nation groans.
The nation is completely disfigured
by greedy and unbridled materialism. Everyone
should face to their debts head on. and
the State should also face its debts head on.
Both for the State and individuals,
there is also such a thing called living within one's means. If it's not seen, it does not mean you don't have it. There is one prominent businessman who was
asked what he needed an 18 bed roomed house for and he realised he just could
not answer that question. He came up with something like he built that house
knowing that one day he would think of converting it in a hotel. Today's young
people would have added (LOL) at the end of that statement because it is
laughable indeed. And of course a few months after shooting that video the
nation learnt about his mounting debt
problems.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
No comments:
Post a Comment