6 August, 2007

THE IMPLICATION OF CHANGE

In today's ever-changing environment driven by high technology, leaders must adapt their styles and skills to contemporary demands. As the needs of organisations and communities change, leaders must act as facilitators and not obstacles to change. They need to establish a proactive culture that encourages democratic principles supported by teamwork and innovation, as well as inspire vision, creativity and empowerment in order to meet the challenges of the future.

Over the past two decades, Zimbabwe has had the same group of people running the affairs of government. Each time the country's president embarks on cabinet reshuffles, the result is always the same "furniture" moved into different corners of the house. In the July 1997 reshuffle, for instance, Zimbabweans were told that President Robert Mugabe had "trimmed" the government by merging some ministries, but what they were not told was that the number of people with ministerial positions had been increased from fifty to fifty-two; excluding the Speaker (who is ranked as a senior minister) and his deputy. Some cabinet ministers were demoted, but not disgraced as they were tacked in the President's and the two Vice-Presidents' offices. Observers have become so cynical that they call every reshuffle a cabinet "recycling of dead wood".

The rationale for having a legion of seven ministers of state in the President's office and two ministers without portfolio was difficult to fathom. There were two ministers in the Planning Commission; two ministers without portfolio; and five ministers of state. And then in the reshuffle at the end of 2002 a new position of Minister for Special Affairs in the President's Office was created. And, of course, there always is that duo of vice-presidents whose real usefulness and responsibilities are highly vague and suspect, yet they cost the taxpayer a fortune.

In another ‘feat' to create jobs for the blue-eyed boys, President Mugabe, in February 2004, increased his Cabinet. The increased size of the Cabinet highlighted President Mugabe's lack of commitment towards addressing the fundamental issues that are significant to reviving the country's faltering economy. Instead of downsizing his Cabinet to contain government profligacy, he had created more posts. Most curious was the anti-corruption and anti-monopolies post. It seems logical that the anti-corruption portfolio should have been within the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Home Affairs, while the anti-monopolies one would have been better served under the Ministry of Industry. Furthermore, the appointment of governors for Harare and Bulawayo was another unjustified waste of resources because all urban areas are already under the Minister of Local Government. After all, the Urban Councils Act has no mention of governors. As cities are run by elected Executive Mayors, it is puzzling to understand what responsibilities the governors actually perform.

Today, President Mugabe and his ZANU (PF) party are quick to accuse the West and the official opposition, the Movement for Democratic Change, of encouraging "illegal regime change" in Zimbabwe. Official propaganda depicts demands for democracy in the running of the country - especially the way elections are contacted - as a conspiracy to unseat Robert Mugabe per se.

It should be understood that all forms of change start with some form of dissatisfaction or frustration generated by actions and behaviour that disconfirm our expectations or hopes. Whether we are talking about adaptation to some new environmental circumstances that thwart the satisfaction of some need, or whether we are talking about genuinely creative and generative learning of the kind Peter Senge focuses on, some disequilibrium based on disconfirming information is a pre-requisite (Senge, 1990). Disconfirmation, whatever its source, functions as a primary driving force in the quasi-stationary equilibrium.

It may be appreciated that if President Mugabe admits to himself and others that something is wrong or imperfect in the way Zimbabwe is governed, he will lose his effectiveness, his self-esteem and maybe even his identity. Most humans need to assume that they are doing their best at all times, and it may be a real loss of face to accept and even "embrace" errors (Michael, 1973, 1993). Adapting poorly or failing to meet our creative potential often looks more desirable than risking failure and loss of self-esteem in the learning process.

However, it is dealing with learning and accepting to accommodate change that is the key to producing change. Donald Schon was invited to give the 1970 Reith Lectures in London. His focus, ‘Change and industrial society', became the basis for his path-breaking book: Beyond the Stable State. Schon's central argument was that ‘change' was a fundamental feature of modern life and that it is necessary to develop social systems that could learn and adapt.

The basic argument is that unless leaders learn to adapt to the changing environment, their contribution to society become outdated and, thus, become irrelevant to development, and, consequently, no change will take place. The key to effective change management, then, becomes the ability to balance the amount of threat produced by dissent in society with enough psychological safety to allow the change target to accept and deal with criticism and become motivated to change.

Unfortunately, Zimbabwe's governing coterie does not appear prepared to adapt to change despite petitions and protests all over the southern African country. It is widely recognised that the independence government has had its fair number of corruption scandals within high echelons of power. This alone calls for change and the fact that both internal stakeholders and external observers call for change should not be regarded as a conspiracy to "force" regime change.

Transparency and accountability are qualities deserving of people in position of responsibility and of organisations and departments entrusted with public resources. People in positions of control should set an unambiguous example of transparency and accountability in the use of public funds. Lack of transparency and accountability which characterise Zimbabwe's political scene today - rising levels of corruption and the intensifying social problems - can lead to industrial action and disruption in production. Lack of checks on Executive power by the legislature has been identified as the major cause of corruption in the country. Corruption has been around for a very long time.

Contemporary events and experience have shown that Marxist-Leninist dictatorships or one-party systems of government brought about by de facto one-party "democracies" are highly prone to corrupt activities. Corruption had reared its head as early as the first decade of Zimbabwe's independence.

During the drought period of the 1980s, haulage business became popular when the government had to feed millions of people in the communal lands. There were reports of fraudulent activities in high places; a haulage company owned by the late Mashata Paweni was the one which got entangled in the web of cheating. But the extend of the fraud was never documented. It is known that Pawen's haulage company was overcharging the government for every kilometre covered during the transportation of the grain to communal lands. All this was being done with the concern of high-placed government officials who were willing to share the loot. Had one of the players not overdone it and allowed himself to be caught, the extend of the fraud may never have come to light. It was said, but never proved, some ministers were directly involved in the fraudulent activities.

Right from the day the Demobilisation Fund was set up in 1982, one could smell a rat. The people appointed to administer the fund had questionable financial control credibility and the basis for their appointment was that they had worked for the party in one of the African or European capitals. The result was that those undeserving of demobilisation funds got rewarded for having participated in the war of liberation and those in the corridors of power, especially the ones with "brains", had incredible access to demobilisation money.

During the 1980s, there was the illegal trade in emeralds centred at Sandawana in Mberengwa. The reason no one big fish was caught was mainly because the small fish, that travelled the length and breadth of the country to obtain the emeralds, did the dirty work. The businessmen provided a ready market, but they were basically safe. Black businessmen were not the only people involved in this racket.

Earlier in September 1988, students demonstrated at the University of Zimbabwe and the Harare Polytechnic over reports that some government officials, including ministers, were involved in the illegal buying and reselling of motor vehicles. In January 1989, President Mugabe appointed a joint commission to investigate the reports. As a result of the Sandura Commission's findings, five Cabinet Ministers and one Provincial Governor resigned from their posts. It is interesting to note that when one of the ministers was sentenced to jail, he was given a Presidential Pardon the very next day. After a period in the wilderness, some of these men have been rewarded with top jobs. In other civilised countries, it is a judicial practice that a person standing for public office first has to be cleared of any criminal activities.

The first time anyone has managed to personally link President Mugabe with financial wrongdoing was during hearings in the US Senate into the collapse of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) in 1992. Testimony given during those hearings alleged that BCCI had secured preferential banking rights in Zimbabwe by bribing Mugabe and the late Vice-President Joshua Nkomo with a bag full of cash, and then a payment of US$500,000 from the BCCI branch in Park Lane in London.

In a bid to beat the housing shortage afflicting most Zimbabwe's cities, a National Housing Fund and a Housing Guarantee Fund were established in 1995. Instead of benefiting the middle income group which had been contributing money towards the funds, funds were diverted to an illegal VIP housing scheme to build luxury houses for a host of top government officials as well as the First Lady.

Immediately after independence in 1981, the government created the District Development Fund by an act of Parliament. The main objective of the DDF water division was to provide rural people with community-owned boreholes. The Act did not cover any senior government officials and yet between August 1995 and August 1998 millions of dollars were spent drilling boreholes for politicians and other private persons with political connections.

Cases of alleged irregularities include the sale of a 51% stake in the Hwange Thermal Power Project to YTL International of Malaysia at a well below market price. In September 1996, President Robert Mugabe vigorously defended the government's decision to award the Malaysian Corporation a tender for the privatisation and expansion project of Zimbabwe's largest thermal plant. The privatisation and expansion project had originally been put out to tender, but the outcome of tender submissions was pre-empted. Observers believed that YTL Corporation was the least qualified of those bidding for the Hwange tender who included prominent American and European power companies. When the board of the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (ZESA) protested, its members were promptly fired. Critics of the agreement described it as "back-door privatisation" and called the swift dismissal of ZESA's board as an action lacking transparency.

In another case involving the setting up of a second cellular telephone network, Net Two, it was obvious that the company that won the tender did so because of its connections with political heavy weights. It was in April 1997 that Strive Masiyiwa's Enhanced Communications Network (Econet) lost this second tender to Telecel. Apparently, a foreign company and a Zimbabwean consortium that included the husband of the Minister of Information, Posts and Telecommunications and the President's nephew jointly owned Telecel. According to sources, the Government Tender Board had concluded that the best submissions came from Econet and Telecel. In a compromise decision, the board recommended that both Econet and Telecel should be jointly licensed under a 50/50 shareholding. However, a decision was taken outside the tender board to exclude Econet, there by creating a rift between the Information Minister and the Government Tender Board.

The fascinating case of the missing AIDS levies produced a perfect example how the ZANU (PF) government has let down all and sundry. The AIDS Levy was introduced at the end of 1999 and deductions from the salaries of the already over-taxed worker started in January 2000. Right in the middle of the bitterest election campaign Zimbabwe has ever seen, someone somewhere decided to deep one's hand into the till.

It may not have come as a surprise to many observers and political analysts when a story on the Harare International Airport tender broke up in The Daily News in November 2000. The paper had a leaked letter, written by Hani Yamani (son of Sheikh Yamani of the OPEC fame), which implicated President Mugabe; his nephew; the then Speaker of Parliament, Emmerson Mnangagwa; senior government ministers, past and present, including the out-going Minister of Finance, Hebert Murerwa; Kofi Annani's son; the Palestinian ambassador to Zimbabwe; and many others, in a major bribery scandal. The scandal revolved around the tender process for the construction of Harare's new International Airport.

Fuel shortages that started in early 2000 resulted in a fuel import racket in mid-2001. Official sources said cabinet ministers and ZANU (PF)-aligned businessmen holding direct fuel import licences issued by the National Oil Company of Zimbabwe (Noczim) were abusing the permits for self-enrichment. It was revealed that government cronies were using the licences, issued to import fuel for personal or company use, to buy the product for resale. The illicit trade in fuel came to light as National Railways of Zimbabwe (NRZ) sources complained that one of the Vice-Presidents was using most of the railway utility's storage facilities for private profit.

In 2002 allegations of rapacious plunder and looting of diamonds in the Congo were made and by no less credible organisations as the United Nations which named Zimbabwe in Resolution 1457 on the "Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth in the DRC".

Meanwhile, the shortage of maize-meal since April 2002 opened another door for the exploitation of the less-privileged by those given the responsibility to distribute the scarce commodity. It emerged in February 2003 that a Gweru city councillor was arrested after residents had accused their councillors and senior ZANU (PF) officials of diverting maize-meal for resale on the black market. The Masvingo District Administrator and a senior manager with the GMB appeared in court charged with corruption involving 15 tonnes of maize grain delivered to the Deputy Minister of Gender, Youth Development and Employment Creation on February 5 2003.

At the end of November 2003, it was reported that ZANU (PF) chefs were among directors of companies whose gold-buying licences were cancelled by the government. The government cancelled fourteen gold concessions awarded to nine companies alleging the companies were involved in illegal trade of the precious mineral.

In November 2004, a Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe investigation revealed that more than US$12 million allocated for fuel procurement had been diverted to other uses. At least fifteen companies had failed to submit required information on their fuel imports and distribution. The money that could not be accounted for was enough to buy two weeks' supply of fuel for the whole country.

Lucrative hunting and photographic concessions were being granted to ZANU (PF) officials without going to tender in 2005. Several aggrieved businesspersons and safari operators who had hoped to get concessions in the parks and wildlife areas in Matabeleland North were instituting legal proceedings against the Minister of Environment and Tourism, Francis Nhema, over the allocation of concessions to government officials.

In July 2007, a scam surfaced with details indicating a plunder of Parks and Wildlife Management Authority (PWMA) resources by influential officials taking turns to order the slaughter of game, commandeering vehicles, and ordering the purchase of personal cellphones by the authority. Sources reported that the Environment and Tourism Minister had obtained a Prado vehicle from the PWMA for personal use. The PWMA is one of the biggest foreign currency earners among government departments, making it a magnet for corruption.

In September 2005 there were reports of huge amounts of foreign currency that had been swindled after Zimbabwe Revenue Authority (Zimra) workers, arrested in an anti-corruption crackdown at the revenue body, alleged their two bosses (the Minister of Finance and the Commissioner of Taxes) had been involved. Information voluntarily supplied to the police by Zimra officials indicated that there was a syndicate, linked to the two government officials, that was involved in diverting foreign currency paid as carbon tax by foreign motorists entering Zimbabwe through the Beitbridge border post on the country's border with South Africa. Again, in July 2007, police arrested two Zimra officers at the Victoria Falls Border Post for alleged corruption involving carbon tax fee.

An internal audit at the Ministry of Higher Education and Technology in October 2005 revealed pervasive corruption, with billions of taxpayers' funds alleged to have been misappropriated through rampant abuse of vehicles and fuel allocations. The internal audit revealed that vehicles worth more than Z$3.3 billion were procured from local car dealers by ministry officials without going to tender. Procurement expenditure above Z$1 billion should go through a formal tender, according to laid down procedures for government departments.

When rumours of diamonds spread in May 2006, thousands flocked to Marange District from all over Zimbabwe and neighbouring countries in what may have been the largest diamond rush in Africa in the last 100 years. The illicit diamond economy was expanding beyond Mutare, and a new wave of illicit trade in minerals and money laundering was flourishing as villagers and the unemployed struggled for subsistence outside formal employment or sound agriculture. Money laundering and fraud became commonplace as the illicit diamond economy expanded, attracting swarms of police and military patrols that also joined in the illegal trade.

There is the well documented multiple farm ownership racket and the pillaging of equipment from Kondozi Farm in Manicaland and from other commercial farms that had been compulsorily acquired by the government throughout the country. The Executive has been reluctant to deal with this abuse of power, obviously because he condones the practice.

Having said that, even funds intended for farmers who produce food for the nation have been swindled. About 60% of the funds the government allocated to the agricultural sector disappeared before they reached the farmers, a Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Lands, Land Reform and Resettlement reported in its July 2005 fact-finding mission on the State of Preparedness by the Agricultural Sector for the 2005/2006 summer crop. The report revealed that about Z$70.8 billion of the Z$118 billion that had been set aside to fund agricultural inputs could not be accounted for.

The price controls that the government embarked on this July 2007 have created fertile grounds for corruption. It has been reported that members of the police who are part of the taskforce on price controls are hoarding basic goods for re-sale on the parallel market at inflated prices. Family members of the police and army are being given preference to buy goods in bulk and these goods end up on the black market.

Even the government-controlled daily, The Herald did not mince words on its disgust with the degree of corruption. In an editorial on January 15 2004, the paper had this to say, "Never before or since has Zimbabwe been up against cases of corruption that depict the total lack of conscience, patriotism or the sheer greed of some people..."

In a nutshell, the saying that "power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely" (Lord Acton, 3 April, 1887) has its roots implanted in Zimbabwe. Once regarded as a "clean" leader who even tried to introduce a leadership code through which all political leaders had to register their assets, although the results of the exercise were never published, President Robert Mugabe has lost a lot of credibility because of the way he has dealt with those believed to be corrupt and those close to him who have been awarded tenders in a manner that is not very transparent.

Ordinary Zimbabweans have every reason to be concerned when people they elect into power and are paid from their taxes are unaccountable. They are tied of misrule and this government's numerous scandals involving people in high places. Democracy is not something that Zimbabweans have had much chance to enjoy under successive regimes since the occupation of the country in September 1890, but on available evidence they appear to have a taste for it and would hugely welcome free and fair elections. The only obstacle is the electoral fraud being committed in every election since the June 2000 parliamentary election.

Basically, what should be advocated is the overt agenda of ensuring free and fair elections in March 2008, which will require an immediate end to the repression and intimidation of the opposition, civil society, media and legal professions, including the repeal of repressive laws. There is an urgent need for constitutional changes aimed at establishing a fully independent electoral commission to replace the present military-run body (this being part of a larger need to demilitarise state institutions), to prepare a new voters' roll and carry out everything necessary to ensure a free and fair election.

Mugabe, who faces his biggest electoral challenge from the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), has become increasingly reliant on the military for political survival over the past few years. The Zimbabwean leader has over the past few years appointed serving as well as retired members of the armed forces to take charge of electoral bodies and institutions directly involved in the running of elections. For example, Zimbabwe Electoral Commission chairman, Chiweshe is a former senior army officer. Before his appointment to the ZEC, he headed the Delimitation Commission that draws the country's voting constituencies. Zimbabwe's Attorney-General, Sobuza Gula-Ndebele, is also a former army intelligence officer while the chief executive officer of the country's Grain Marketing Board, Samuel Muvuti, is a former army colonel. The GMB is accused of obstructing MDC supporters from accessing maize corn.

If the South African mediation is unable to achieve the outcomes necessary for free and fair elections, it is the moral responsibility for the SADC to publicly state, before the elections, that the conditions are simply not in place for any possible outcome to be free and fair; or after the election, refuse to certify it as free and fair. This will find the ZANU (PF) government in the same predicament as the Muzorewa-Smith Zimbabwe-Rhodesia government of 1979. Mugabe is politically dependent on support for his positions from his Southern African peers. Any condemnation by them of the electoral process would be likely to have a devastating effect on his credibility, and create the conditions for an effective political move against him.

The other factor that should be carried out behind the scenes should be the involvement of senior SADC and other figures, to negotiate a "soft landing" for Mugabe - a reasonably graceful exit combined with assurances that he will not face prosecution in any domestic or international court. However, indications are that this course has been made much more difficult by the removal of Liberia's Charles Taylor to face charges in the Haag International Tribunal, notwithstanding safe refuge assurances he had earlier been given by Nigeria's President Olusegun Obasajano in 2003.

More than ever before, the people of Zimbabwe, individually and collectively clamour for change and their voices and petitions are increasing by leaps and bounds. Thus, the ZANU (PF) government needs to adapt itself to people's needs in the form of economic recovery. Most leaders are fairly quick at learning, at cultivating new strategies and understanding when it is necessary to adapt to change. Why is it that Mugabe's reaction to change is always tinged with suspicion and hostility, and in all circumstances, resistance?

It should be clear that the future does not necessarily come out of the past. Sometimes, we tend to cling to the "good things" done in the past, and this makes us reluctant to "let go". To be happy and successful in the present, it is often necessary to free oneself from some past conditions. Zimbabweans cannot live on the glories of the 1970s liberation struggle.

• For more on the roots of corruption, read A Crisis of Governance: Zimbabwe, Algora Publishing, New York, 2004.