Editor - In one of his most remarkable works, the Ke-nyan writer, Ngugi wa-Thiongo, introduces the most relevant prudence that we should examine "where the rain started to beat us" in any debilitating situation that we find ourselves in. He exhorts us to dig out the real causes of our suffering as wananchi (povo).
One of such situations that needs analysis, in contemporary Zimbabwe, is the plight of government workers who earn below the poverty datum line, and are confronted with the challenges of paying for exorbitant household rates, astronomical school fees, their feeding habits in the face of food shortages and expensive medical bills in order to sustain good health.
We know "where the rain began to beat us" was when ZANU-PF began to be reckless with the economy more than a decade ago. That "moment of economic madness" saw unbudgeted gratuities being dished out to war veterans, a harmful ‘agrarian enterprise and the most needless war effort in the Congo.
Government workers' uni-ons should not forget this chronology of events to the current plight of the workers in their present struggles, in order not to just confront the symptoms of the problem instead of its real cause as we say in local parlance, in order to know where the rain began to beat us because that is where the problem is.
The Minister of Public Service, Lucia Matibenga, is part of the crippled scheme for rectifying things in the ill-fated inclusive government.
It is needless to mention that vendettas that emanate from trade unions should be put aside for the time beingl.
Vivid Gwede
Harare
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