The New Dispensation Has Been Promoted to Waste Management:
(How Mnangagwa replaced thinkers with tenderpreneurs, and called it reform.)
By Reason Wafawarova
History can be cruel. It remembers not only what leaders build, but also the company they keep.
When President Emmerson Mnangagwa marched into office in November 2017, he promised Zimbabwe a New Dispensation. We were assured that the old habits of patronage, cronyism and primitive accumulation belonged to the Mugabe museum. Zimbabwe was now “Open for Business.”
And, to be fair, the President initially looked the part.
He surrounded himself with people whose CVs required several pages rather than several police dockets.
There was Pastor Shingi Munyeza, who arrived armed with Scripture rather than invoices. He famously justified joining the Presidential Advisory Council by invoking the four lepers who asked, “Why sit here until we die?” It sounded noble at the time.
Petina Gappah arrived from Geneva carrying international credibility, legal expertise and enough diplomatic polish to convince Davos that Zimbabwe had finally discovered the twenty-first century.
For a brief moment, State House looked less like a political headquarters and more like a TED Talk.
It was a beautiful experiment. It lasted almost as long as fresh milk during load-shedding.
The professionals slowly discovered they had misunderstood the job description.
They thought they had been recruited to rebuild Zimbabwe. It turned out they had merely been hired as decorative parsley on a buffet table.
The Presidential Advisory Council eventually advised itself to leave. One by one, the serious people quietly exited.
Petina Gappah reportedly concluded that economic reform was proving difficult because too many people regarded monopoly as an economic policy.
Pastor Munyeza eventually diagnosed what doctors politely call an incompatible environment. He publicly lamented that too many around the President were interested in only one development programme.
Not national development. Personal development.
Their economic blueprint was remarkably uncomplicated.
Vision 2030? No. Division 2030. Everybody wanted their slice.
Or, as one might say, Zimbabwe did not need a Ministry of Finance anymore. It merely required a Ministry of Sharing.
Nature, unfortunately, hates a vacuum. When intellectuals leave government, governments usually recruit other intellectuals.
Zimbabwe chose innovation.
The empty chairs were gradually occupied by tenderpreneurs, fixers, socialites, gold dealers, invoice specialists and individuals who appear to regard public procurement regulations as optional reading material.
Some countries have advisory councils.
Zimbabwe appears to have assembled what could generously be described as an Executive Committee of Entrepreneurial Opportunities.
Nothing illustrates this remarkable national progression better than comparing who advised the President in 2018 with who advises him today.
Back then, Zimbabwe had an internationally respected trade lawyer helping sell the country to global investors.
Today, we have appointed a Presidential Adviser on Waste Management whose own public controversies have generated considerably more waste than the average municipality.
One cannot accuse the President of lacking consistency.
He promised waste management. He simply began with the Cabinet.
Delish Nguwaya’s appointment deserves scholarly attention.
Elsewhere in the world, procurement controversies occasionally interrupt public careers. In Zimbabwe they appear to accelerate them.
The Drax controversy came and went. Pomona followed.
Eventually someone in government appears to have reasoned:
“This man has spent years around waste. Perhaps he should supervise it.”
It is difficult to fault such administrative logic.
If someone spends enough time around refuse, eventually they become an expert.
One only wonders whether the appointment was made by the Ministry of Local Government or by the Harare City Council’s refuse department.
Then comes Kudakwashe Tagwirei.
Most countries have central banks. Zimbabwe occasionally appears to have operated a central businessman.
Entire economic sectors seemed to orbit around him with the gravitational certainty usually reserved for planets around the sun.
Command Agriculture consumed billions. The harvest, however, appears to have been considerably smaller than the paperwork.
Economists continue searching for the missing productivity. Geologists appear to have found it. It allegedly resurfaced as mines.
And then there is Wicknell Chivayo. Perhaps the greatest motivational speaker Zimbabwe has ever produced.
He teaches one profoundly encouraging lesson. Failure is temporary. Government contracts are forever.
The Gwanda Solar Project produced very little electricity. It generated something arguably more renewable.
More government business.
In most countries, failing to deliver one project reduces one’s chances of receiving another.
Zimbabwe has courageously rejected this outdated colonial thinking.
Failure is simply proof that one deserves a larger contract.
Paul Tungwarara meanwhile solved one of economics’ oldest mysteries.
Can a wall cost more than the house it surrounds?
Zimbabwe answered confidently:
“Why stop at the wall?”
Thereafter came boreholes. Ordinary Zimbabweans drill for water. Connected Zimbabweans drill for invoices.
The water may or may not arrive. The invoices always do.
Even diplomacy underwent innovation. Most countries appoint ambassadors to improve international relations.
Zimbabwe appointed one who allegedly appeared in an international documentary discussing moving gold and cash.
One must admire policy consistency.
If Zimbabwe was open for business, somebody apparently misunderstood the business.
Looking back, perhaps we misunderstood the New Dispensation altogether.
We assumed “Open for Business” meant attracting investors.
It increasingly resembled opening a supermarket five minutes before a cyclone.
Everyone rushed inside. Nobody appeared interested in paying.
The tragedy is not merely that Zimbabwe lost respected lawyers, economists, pastors and policy experts.
The greater tragedy is that they were replaced by people whose greatest qualification appears to be proximity to power.
A government that once sought advice from international thinkers now increasingly seems content receiving strategic guidance from men whose principal expertise lies in discovering that every national crisis can somehow be converted into a procurement opportunity.
That, perhaps, is the true obituary of the New Dispensation.
It did not die because its enemies defeated it. It died because the thinkers left…
…and the invoices stayed.
