
Browsing through a photographic website I saw distorted image, a lot of thoughts went through my mind, if the person who took this photograph wants to be a serious photographer he has a lot to learn in order to perfect his skills. This post follows on the first two of this challenge where I focus on the turmoil which continues in my native land.
The collins dictionary defines dictionary defines distortion as an act of giving misleading accounts of issues at stake. In the world of post truth politicians seem to be the ones misleading the nation they lead by distorting the truth about the issues that affect people’s lives.
When the interim president was sworn in after the events of November a year ago this month, he promised to govern in a different way from the way we had been governed for the three decades. As the nation was yearning for a change it was prepared to give the benefit of the doubt, and ignored his chequered past hoping he meant business this time round.
It is becoming clear that all that the president has been saying from the time he sworn in was only rhetoric which is not backed by a will to act instead he has done the opposite. One of the reason for the coup was according to the ruling party was to ‘restore legacy’ I want to believe they alone knew what they meant by that. The rest of the nation me included concluded that the “new dispensation” was about working hard to resuscitate the economy so that the much needed jobs may be created.
It was disheartening to hear that all our government spent time in their first session in parliament was discussing what model of vehicles should be bought for the 300 parliamentarians. While they were discussing the vehicles 12 lives had been lost to cholera, that to me is a distortion of what it means to be representatives of the people in the house of assembly and making decisions which affect people’s lives.
It is possible for government to put in place a scheme whereby the parliamentarians would purchase their own vehicles which they can use for their work without having to make tax payers to provide cars for them The tax payers money should be to make all services like purifying water, deploy workers in communities to promote hygienic lifestyles which prevent diseases. A quick calculation of how much it will cost tax payers to provide these vehicles at US$60.000 each is US$5,400,000 which is more than enough to sort out the drinking water systems.
Hard working Zimbabweans have nothing to show as rewards for their hard work and find it hard to save money to do things all working people do like going away for holidays. The more I read and hear of the kind decisions that are made in the assembly leaves me wondering as to who is serving who, the answer is simply that the majority of us are serving those in government.
My wish is for the population to challenge their own representatives and demand accountability of all the promises they made especially the president. I am aware that there those who feel the president should be given more time, the only problem with that school of thought is so far a year on there do not seem to be any signs of doing things different from the previous government.
The only regret is the kind of opposition we have it must by seen to challenge the way the nation is is being governed instead they oppositions parliamentarians have voted for the controversial cars living them in a tricky position. It does seem like we trapped by politicians who get into politics for their own agendas. There is a need for politicians to be seen to be wanting to reflect a leadership style which is not distorted if the electorate is to trust them.