Zimbabwe Needs A Listening Leadership

by Nick Mangwana

Whatever words we may use, all party comrades who are in government, we members of Zanu PF deployed you there. We then asked you to serve the whole country. This is your commission from us the members. Now,  using that power to deploy which we could all not exercise every time as a body polity, we gave it to the President to act on our behalf. He picks some from among those we chose to work with. The only only problem is when you get that Cabinet post you grow big heads. You don’t listen. You start to display attention span of a gnat.  Minster learn to listen.

If you want to know you are succeeding in your mission to serve this country, listen to this country. If you don’t trust what everyone else out there is saying, minister listen to us in the party. For we come from a good place. We can stand back and see things unlike those in the eye of the storm. We sometimes have a bird’s eye point of view. You either make us victims or beneficiaries of your ego. So before you get that big head and oversized balls there is one thing; you always have to listen.

You have no skill or objectivity to measure your own performance. We do. We don’t feel you and if we do we fear you for your pronouncements are either against your colleagues or self-promotional therefore more about you than about us. We fear you always take our country to the brink.  Comrade Minster learn to listen to other voice.

Your narrative should reflect public perspective and not your narrow opinion. Your focus should be to serve public need and not some parochial narcissistic endeavour. It is the voice of the average citizen that should be important. You don’t come and tell us that you are serving the President whenever we ask you where you are taking us. No, you are getting it wrong. The President appointed you to serve us, at his pleasure. Unless you are minister for Presidential Affairs? You serve us minister so please don’t bring the good name of the President into disrepute.

If you are not discerning enough to realise that your self-aggrandisement is damaging our interests, then you are not fit for purpose. Reconnect with us for you are not taking us along with you in your vision. How can we ride along when your vision is about you and not us? You cannot turn the whole country into your escorts as much as you might actually feel. If you really want to hear us the minister give yourself to your own silence. We have to repeat; this is not about you. There is too much “I” in your statements. You are part of a team now. “We” gives a sense of collective responsibly and shared ownership. Even my President hardly ever say, “I” for it is not about him. It is about Zimbabwe. When you say “we” even though we are not at the decision table, we find ourselves in the vision and we surely take ownership of the dream. For in it we are fully represented. But you minster, you make us victims of your political process. Not part of it.

It takes courage to sit down and listen. The Frank One has seen every government appointed by His Excellency since 1980. This one is by far the most garrulous. In fact, henceforth if nothing changes it will be referred to as the Vuvuzela Cabinet. Why Vuvuzela? You may ask.

Well the Vuvuzela has a monotone. It is deafening but produces no entertainment or substantive value. It is just a high sounding nothing. The Urban definition of a Vuvuzela is “A cheap mind-numbing torture device that ruins football matches and serves no purpose”. This is an apt definition. For when you start shouting incoherently at each other we know the torture which is numbing our minds has started. And we shall not dance for there is no tune, code or rhyme nor harmony. It is just  hollow sounds. And before we forget; there is discord. Just like that policy discord on many issues. Stem. Policy discord on engaging IMF, Policy discord on STEM. Policy discord Empowerment …and the list unremittingly goes on. So when your pronouncements come ministers, we want to hear some tune, some code and some harmony. If we don’t get that, you are Vuvuzelas. And we will encourage the public to call all loud mouthed ministers who are refusing to listen Vuvuzelas.

A Government that listens does not stop the people from asking it questions. The people can ask themselves or through their parliamentary representatives. When you want MPs to give you what we call “through pass” questions in football parlance, you are not a listening minister. For those are not our questions. Those are your questions. We are not here to massage or stroke your egos. If you are a listening minister, you would like to know what we think and therefore let us express ourselves either directly or through our representatives.

When you label anyone who asks difficult questions either a “sell-out”, a “spy” or “mhandu” it means minister you are not serving us but your ego. Those are just scare tactics of shallow-heads, minister. You just have to learn to listen and you will stop seeing threats and shadows everywhere.  There should always be a social dialogue between you minister and us minions. That could be through our columns, our letters to the editors, our Facebook status, our chiefs, face to face with us, through our parliamentarians and other media but in all that minster, your job is to listen. We want you in our communities. Not to tell us about yourself and your ideas and how learned you are. But to listen to us, about how jobless people are, what we ate or did not eat last night, about that school fees we are failing to pay and those quails we want to keep. When you listen only then can you help to solve our problems.

When you talk, you only expressing the little you know and the much you don’t. When you listen, you learn more of what you don’t know.