Vusi Nyamazana

‘Task of moving Zim ahead not only for President, Govt’ https://www.herald.co.zw/task-of-moving-zim-ahead-not-only-for-president-govt/ South Africa-based Zimbabwean economist, Vusi Nyamazana — who has developed a government policy tracker eponymously called MnangagwaMeter following the ushering in of the new dispensation last year — says President Mnangagwa achieved a lot in his first eight months before the July 30 elections. With a new mandate, President Mnangagwa is set to achieve more, but it is the duty of citizens to also take part in the development of the country. Nyamazana says his barometer will help Government and citizens stay in the loop in terms of the country’s trajectory in the next five years. The Herald’s Political Editor Tichaona Zindoga (TZ) caught up with Nyamazana (VN) to discuss the initiative. TZ: Can you tell us about the polimeter; how it started and what you seek to achieve with this kind of initiative? VN:  The wh...

High Expectations From The Mnangagwa Government At the outset, let me congratulate President Mnangagwa for winning the 2018 Presidential Race. The agenda of the Second Republic in the shape of their visionary “Election Manifesto” is to successfully implement growth-oriented, people-friendly, and consensus-driven policies. The overriding expectation from Zimbabwean’s is that the government will deliver on all its election promises.  The Mnangagwameter initiative produced an on-line tracker https://mnangagwameter.polimeter.org. outlining several promises. I believe that the new government has plans emanating from the manifesto that are comprehensively prepared, encompassing all facets of our economy and society. The citizenry has high expectations, and anticipate such expectations to be met. All they want is an improvement of their standard of living. The challenges that President Mnangagwa faces are very tall and he may be subjected to unrelenting politica...

Gov’t Permanent Secretaries: The Unsung Heroes "While governments and ministers come and go, the permanent secretary remains the permanent custodian of permanent problems" Former senior Canadian permanent secretary One of the relatively unknown heroes and heroines in the civil service are the permanent secretaries. If the government’s entire workforce was taken over by a robot army, the few remaining human employees would be permanent secretaries. They are simply the unsung heroes of the government. They are the cogs in the machine that keeps it running. The performance of permanent secretaries will come into more scrutiny because President Mnangagwa has called on the civil service to demonstrate tangible results. Permanent secretaries will be expected to fortify monitoring, evaluation and reporting on policies, projects and programmes. The department of policy monitoring and evaluation should put in place better capacity for monitoring and evaluation (...

Elected MP’s: Nowhere to Run New Members of Parliament will be sworn in recently. Each one of them came to us with their own promises and those belonging to political parties, they also promised us a number of things their political party was committing to do once in office. As voters, members of our constituency and/or citizens, are we doing enough to hold our representatives accountable and keeping them honest? How many times have you contacted and/or made an effort to contact your elected representatives, be it the Member of Parliament or councillor on any general or particular issue? The sole idea behind representative democracy is that the citizens should be able to hold their elected representatives accountable for their activities. Citizens should be made aware of the performance of their elected representatives in parliament and constituencies. Armed with this information citizens can be able to make informed choices when election time comes. ...