The Sunday Mail
In governments, corporations, or even within families in households, there has to exist communal bonds of trust and responsibility for people of mutual interest to achieve their shared goals.
As we are all members of some form of community, I’d advise you to try out an exercise.
Draw out a circle, and ask all members of your community to tick where they individually think they belong within that circle.
Ask that they mark towards the centre if they feel greater personal responsibility and trust in the group; and ask they mark further away from the centre to show less personal responsibility and trust in the group.
You can do this with your workmates, family members, team mates or business partners.
You will find that the groups with the most ticks concentrated near the centre are more likely to succeed in achieving their shared communal goals. Conversely, groups with ticks concentrated furthest from the centre are less likely to be trusting, contributory and ultimately less functional towards achieving goals. This exercise seems more pragmatic within small groups, but I’d argue similar relevance on a national scale.
Unfortunately in fact, Zimbabwe at present would probably be a fitting case study of which circles of trust show more ticks around the edges than in the centre of our national circles of trust.
Where to start? Recent factionalism within government, auditor general’s report revealing extreme corruption in state enterprises, or maybe the expansion of the ever growing informal economy?
These are all instances illustrating betrayed circles of trust. Perhaps more recently, the initial reception to the roll out of RBZ bond coins seemingly shows compromised trust between citizens and their central bank, as the Governor has laboured to assure the public and ease its rightful concerns that this is not the return of the Zimbabwean dollar.
As we enter 2015, I’d advise policymakers and legislators to list high on their priorities regaining citizen trust in our State structures.
For policies and national economic agendas to be effective, good faith between institutions and citizens has to exist. Occurrences such as misappropriations at ZESA leave citizens with the belief that their best interests are not being served.
Fiscal irresponsibility and poor service delivery incite private businesses to avoid joining formal procedures and regulatory requirements. These are undesirable perceptions for citizens to have.
A government’s strongest asset is its goodwill. If we are to get all stakeholders on board with national agenda and work together for communal achievement, strides have to be made in mending our goodwill. Political analysts have done well in putting forward in our national discourse that at certain points we have become a politically polarised environment.
Regretfully, however, as a society we continuously overlook how we have become economically polarised to an even greater extent.
While we find comfort in taking stabs at politicians and state structures, the general citizenry finds less serenity in self-reflecting our own economic shortcomings.
Within the private sector you will find many companies are struggling to maintain employee engagement and work enthusiasm. As a customer myself, this has become very evident on a daily basis.
On the surface one casually assumes this employee disengagement to be caused by the tough economy, but what we really face is a case of workplace inequity.
Many companies have gone months without paying low level employees, many without bonuses this year end, while higher level management pays itself high wages and perks.
In some cases, executives milking entire companies off their limited resources for self-benefit.
Such conduct is hidden behind the tough economic circumstance faced by industry. Now, i am not a populist or proponent of extreme ideals of socialism, but as a society have we not picked up elitist tendencies in our workforce?
I would wager that many lower level employees seem to think so. Workplace inequity is a significant factor for our decreased productivity, low industrial output and poor customer service in the service sector. Associates that I have had this conversation with suggest weak labour unions and unenforced employee protection laws as cause to workplace inequity; I will leave the subject open to your own determination.
Trust is all the more important in dealing with foreign economic interests. There is no other way of working out of our national debt but by regaining creditworthiness. That does not mean being able to payback billions immediately. Trust is built over time. We must show a continuous commitment to make regular payments to our creditors, as well as showing internal fiscal responsibility. Moreover, if we are to attract foreign investment, trust is security.
Can we guarantee the respect of property rights? Are a foreign investor’s assets in Zimbabwe going to be secure? We must overtly signal this in speech and action. There’s no compromise to that necessity.
The idea here is simple; we have too many fractures of trust within our economy. This has diminished our chances of sustaining national achievement, locally and as a member of the global economy.
As we celebrate Unity Day tomorrow, I hope we can extend our thoughts to where we stand as a unified economic entity that is Zimbabwe? If we drew a circle of trust, where would the highest concentration of ticks be? I hope we all have reason to tick right on the bull’s eye.
