Let me start by addressing the obvious. Someone in government is making decisions in a darkness as thick as my complexion. Somewhere in Cabinet, there is a brain operating in conditions so dim you’d swear the lights went off mid-thought. How else do you explain this? Government says it cannot raise E1.3 billion to pay off 5 000 civil servants who are willing to take early retirement and go start businesses.
We are too broke to save money. That’s like refusing to buy a cow because milk is expensive. It’s like standing in the rain complaining about drought. It’s fiscal logic that sounds like it was workshopped during a power cut.We are choosing to pay monthly salaries indefinitely, rather than pay once and free the economy. If logic were electricity, some of these meetings would be running on candles and good intentions.
Let’s slow this down. Apparently, we must. You pay the willing early retirees a once-off package. They leave with dignity. No drama. No forced retrenchments. No angry placards. They go and start businesses – transport companies, consultancies, construction firms, farms, IT services, logistics outfits.They hire graduates. You know, the ones at home holding degrees like framed apologies. The ones who attend family gatherings and suddenly become the official Wi-Fi troubleshooters because that’s the closest they’ve come to employment.Those graduates start earning. They pay VAT when they buy groceries. They repay scholarship loans. They pay PAYE. Their employers pay corporate tax on profits. Money circulates.The same government that paid once now collects repeatedly. It is not charity. It is circulation. Instead, we are stuck polishing a wage bill that eats like it skipped breakfast and lunch. We say we do not have E1.3 billion, but we will happily commit to billions every year in salaries for posts we quietly admit are redundant.
Typists in a digital era. Drivers in an era where officials drive themselves. Layers of supervision supervising supervisors who are supervising supervisors.We are maintaining yesterday’s payroll at the expense of tomorrow’s productivity.That is not caution. That is financial fear wearing a suit and pretending it is prudence. Oh and please, spare us the cashflow lecture.The private sector has been surviving on overdrafts, faith and motivational quotes for years. Small businesses wake up every day and solve problems without consultants from Washington explaining basic arithmetic.
Entrepreneurs in this country operate with resilience that should qualify as a natural resource. They borrow. They pivot. They improvise. They survive.Government, on the other hand, sees a once-off investment that reduces long-term expenditure and responds like someone asked it to fund a trip to Mars.Let’s do the maths without a task team. If even half of those 5 000 retirees started viable enterprises and each employed just two graduates, that is between 5 000 and 10 000 young people off the unemployment list.That is scholarship loans being repaid instead of haunting Treasury like unpaid ghosts.That is VAT flowing because people are spending.That is corporate tax rising organically because profits are real – not squeezed from a shrinking base.
That is disposable income circulating through townships and towns, stimulating demand for goods and services. Instead, we are paralysed. We are told government fears the severe social consequences of downsising.What about the social consequences of stagnation? Graduates are home. Loans are unpaid. Skills are rusting. Innovation is stuck in traffic. We fund tertiary education. We celebrate graduations. We clap for distinctions. We post proud photos.Then we park those skills at home like a luxury car without petrol.We are paying for brains and then refusing to switch them on. Balance is what is required. Yes, the wage bill is high. Yes, fiscal stability matters. Yes, reckless downsising can be destabilising. But balance means using money strategically, not emotionally. Pay once. Create space. Let business breathe. Let youth work. Let loans return. Let tax revenue grow from movement, not from panic-driven levies slapped onto an already tired economy. Right now, we are like a crowded bus where nobody is allowed to get off, even those begging to, and nobody else can get on. And then we complain that the bus is not moving. This is where the satire writes itself. We are essentially saying to 5 000 people: “We cannot afford to let you go.”Think about that. We cannot afford to stop paying you every month for the next decade. So please, stay.That is like refusing to plant seeds because you are worried about the cost of water. It is like declining to repair a leaking roof because the ladder is expensive.We are too broke to stop being broke and somewhere in the middle of this, a straight-faced official will say: ‘‘We are exercising fiscal discipline’’. Fiscal discipline? No.
This is logic wearing sunglasses indoors. This is arithmetic hiding under the desk when the teacher asks a question.The irony is that this is not even a radical idea. It is not revolutionary economics. It is basic restructuring. It is acknowledging that government cannot be the employer of last resort forever while simultaneously claiming it has no money.You cannot say the wage bill is unsustainable and then refuse a structured, voluntary mechanism to reduce it.
You cannot complain about youth unemployment while blocking pathways that would generate employment. You cannot preach growth while handcuffing movement. Maybe, just maybe, the problem is not the E1.3 billion. Maybe the problem is that somewhere in government, someone is thinking in a darkness so deep it rivals mine, and trust me, that is dark!
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