Integrity and honesty best bet for Swaziland

Cabinet ministers and MPs picture in Parliament in this fic photo.

What will it take to get this country moving forward again? What will it take to get our economy performing once again?

What will it take to get our state institutions and our social fabric restored to the former glory? Indeed what will it take to get Swazis to believe in themselves again and to trust the political leadership?

These questions and many others like them have colonised the mind of every Swazi as we seek ways and means to improve our lot. However, there’s a general consensus that where we are at is in fact not the place we’re ought to be. There’s no doubt about that one not least because if our economy is performing at less than 0.3 % a year when the population is growing at 10 times that figure this can only mean we are headed for disaster very quickly. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure that one out but it does take a visionary to see a disaster before it strikes.

Swazis are looking up to the political leadership not only to provide answers to the huge number of existing problems, but they also look up to the same establishment to provide possible answers to problems which have yet to arrive.

There is no debate that the well-oiled and functioning Swaziland that we used to know before has now fundamentally degenerated to a beast whose traits are hard to discern even to those who have been the architects of its making.  It’s as though the country has been robbed of its life-giving soul and in its place a cold vacuum in which despair and confusion now reigns. I would not have preferred to call this a national malady of biblical proportions which undoubtedly has been wrought by lack of focused leadership.  But I cannot think of another expression which can best describe the painful situation in which we find ourselves in. 

It is easy to deal with what I call cosmetic problems to a situation, because one can tweak here and there and the whole thing would be up and running again in no time. But it becomes a gargantuan task to deal with problems that have degenerated so badly that they have become structural and fundamental in nature, which is exactly the situation we face today.

On our way to achieving the first world vision, I think we need to start with the basics. We need to first probe the ambiguities of past political actions with relentless insight. We need to spend more time ‘sharpening the axe’ before we cut down the tree. I think it was Abraham Lincoln who said when given a task to cut down a tree he would spend over half the time allotted to him sharpening his axe, and the rest cutting.

That is what we need to do as a country – sharpen the axe before we start cutting it. By sharpening the axe I mean to say that we need to get our fundamentals right once again. We need to get the whole supporting infrastructure which constitutes the basis for a properly functioning country restored.

By this I refer to the economy in particular, the Judiciary, state institutions which are crumbling, social programmes and Parliament all of which must be restored to what they ought to be, or at the very least, to where they used to be. Without addressing these many problems confronting this country it would be like chopping down a tree with an extremely blunt axe.

Everyone knows what happens when one chops down a tree with a blunt axe. It takes a lot of wasted energy and time; it causes unnecessary frustration and one is likely to give up even before the tree is felled. The question then that needs to be asked in this instance is this:  should we blame the tree for refusing to fall down or the axe for refusing to chop the tree effectively? Obviously this is a no-brainer and I would be insulting your intelligence if I asked you to give me an answer.

Resources

In my opinion and most probably in yours too, the economy should be the number one priority because it is the economy that ultimately determines if we have the national resources to fund our desired national programmes. When an economy like ours is growing at less than, or at par with, the inflation rate, it means we are going backwards in real terms; what with the increasing number of school leavers who would be looking for jobs.

As if that’s not enough inflation is eating its way through the national savings stock like there’s no tomorrow thereby robbing every one of us of the very little disposable incomes we have. Meanwhile, government programmes depend on the revenues generated from the economy through taxation (without representation, if I might add). The domino effect and the repercussions of a poorly-performing economy are huge by any standard.    

     
Next to the economy in terms of importance is to get government institutions performing in the manner they were originally intended. Again here, it does not take a rocket scientist to figure out how. We have been complaining about the lack of direct investment for the past few years as if we don’t know that investors will only come to this country the minute we get our house in order.

Unpredictable

There is no investor in the world who would put his hard-earned money into a country which is socially and politically unpredictable. Note, I didn’t use the word ‘unstable’. Investors prefer a place where they can generally predict the consequences of their investment decisions, they like a place where if they take a matter to court the independence of the due process of law will not be in doubt. It is for this reason that I beg that we get a new perspective when it comes to our state institutions because our economic breakthrough may well depend on them.

If for one reason or the other we have to discount everything I have said today, we cannot afford to downplay the issue of integrity and honesty. We can blame the axe for being blunt all we want and even blame the sun for being too hot and get away with it. But we cannot run away from the issues of integrity and honesty because both speak to us personally as individuals and corporately as a nation. If we have men and women with no integrity and honesty in the seats of power His Majesty’s vision of a first world will remain just that, a vision.

To leave here and walk towards the trappings of a 21st century we need leaders with integrity and honesty, leaders who would be honest to themselves and to the nation. I mean leaders who’d think twice before they yield to the temptation of abusing their political office for self-gain or to settle personal scores; I mean leaders who’d know that they owe their privilege of office to the masses as much as the appointing authority. Appointees are appointed for the benefit of the masses and not despite the masses. The latter has prevailed too long and it has robbed Swaziland of developmental opportunities too much already. I would like those who are guilty of this twisted logic to know, here and now, that this line of thinking serves to undermine the sincere hand of the appointing authority. 

The King appoints people to serve his nation and not for the nation to serve these appointed people.  The same goes for people who come to power through the ballot box - the same principle applies.      

Sadly though, it takes people with integrity and honesty to know the difference.
A politician will never be greater than the people they are called to serve. On the highway we happily give way to our politicians’ cars provided they have the flag hoisted not because they are better than us, but because we want them to get wherever they are going faster and without hassles because they’re going there to represent us. At least in our naïve minds that is what we think. But we know better now.

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