The Observer - 23 March 2014 - 5
Mugabe blames the system he created
Vince Musewe and Professor Louis van
der Merwe
P
Vince Musewe
resident Mugabe continues to blame
the system he created. Zimbabwe
is now perfectly designed (at a
structural, or systemic level) to get
the results it now delivers.
Corruption and economic decline are as
a result of the structural deficiencies within
our society and the institutions that we have
created after independence.
Unfortunately the GNU, a side show for
fundamental change, failed to address the
structural deficiencies which continue to
produce our economic and social decline to
this day.
This provocative paradigm, deliberately
seeks to discourage any denial by leadership
about their role in the systems which are
delivering the current performance of
their organizations be they political parties,
private sector companies, state enterprises, or
government departments up to the office of
the President.
Our politicians are after all, the chief
engineers of the structure and therefore
create the capacity limits that we now face.
These structures and processes which they
created are delivering our current realities!
Until our leaders take responsibility and
accept this fact, we will continue to see decline
and the blaming of imaginary exogenous
factors as the main cause of our economic
problems.
Our politicians are good at reframing
problematic issues and always exclude
themselves as the chief architects. It is critical
that we intelligently diagnose the root causes
of specific problems or dynamics.
This will lead us to durable solutions that
will permanently remove capacity limits and
other structural problems, thereby enabling
sustainable improvement in our socioeconomic condition beyond a ‘quick fix’.
Clearly most of today’s problems come
from yesterday’s ‘solutions”, but we continue
to focus on symptoms thereby missing the
deeper causes. Unfortunately, the ‘quick fix’
is what is usually asked for by leadership and
the public.
Often we seek to change dysfunctional
behaviour quickly, in months or weeks, when
the ‘problem’ might have taken years to
establish itself. The way most of us typically
see the world is at an events level.
The media, for instance, talk of and look
for a ‘Who event’ not a ‘What event’ to write
on or to broadcast. We all fall into this trap,
and we become trapped in a reactive mode,
because we see only part of the dynamic and
react to counter this.
A clear example is the hurry to “solve”
corruption by changing the boards of directors
of state enterprises, without looking at the
deeper underlying causes of the decline. We
are wasting time and resources and assuming
that we have addressed the root problem.
We haven’t.
It will be only when we start to look
below the surface to identify the patterns of
behaviour can we begin to better understand
the e