Mutumwa Mawere

What is a politician? This question was posed by Mr. Vusi Sindane in his article entitled "Simple Politics? Part 1 of 2" http://www.africaheritagerivonia.com/?p=305 to help challenge our minds on the need for and the role of political actors in economic and social change.

We all want to be governed well and yet humanity has not found a reliable instrument to select the right politician who can deliver on the promise.

Electoral democracy has not produced the kind of outcomes that people expect and deserve.

The education system is able to discriminate efficiently among citizens. People who do not make it in the educational system tend to accept their fate in life and surrender their future to the educated mistakenly believing that there is a causal link between being book smart and an effective politician.

Those that make it still remain human but their claims on life become more expensive.

They tend to make it as politicians and yet nothing in their training prepares them for service and humility.

Without measurement, the value of education to humanity would just be academic.

When people are graded they tend to excel and want to do better than the generation before them.

We all strive for excellence when we know that someone is watching and grading us.

Even in the arena of sports, for example, the spectators are the judges and this normally energises people to distinguish themselves on the field.

The political market is complex and its players are difficult to understand and rate.

Is it fair for anyone to expect another person to do what one can do for himself/herself?

We all expect to be led well forgetting that the leaders are after all human and subjective. They can only see what their eyes allow them to and hear what their ears allow them to.

Those that are close to politicians automatically become advantaged in as much as those that are close to the CEO in a private setting.

In business, we know that success is secure if underpinned by service.

If you pick in a store you must pay and equally if you pay you must pick. However, in the political market if you elect you are never be guaranteed of the quality of the people you select.

Even if the chosen people may really be rotten apples, there is nothing that one can do in between elections to reverse the selection and citizens have to live through it.

In some countries they may never know what the difference looks like because the incumbent may be persuaded by those close to him/her to believe that the future is not secure without him/her at the helm.

Once elected, the citizen who becomes a politician ceases to be like the people who elect him/her. He/she assumes a new life and acquires the powers that are created by the citizens that he then presides over.

In a representative democracy, a politician is really a person to whom power is surrendered by the voters so that he/she can preside over state affairs on their behalf.

In a functioning constitutional democracy, citizens never lose control of their project i.e. the state as they are constantly alert to any abuse of power.

However, in many developing nations, citizens are not organised enough in between elections to provide the checks and balances required.

When we look back at Africa's post colonial history, we never pause to think what form of government we would have had if colonialism had not visited the continent.

Republican constitutions that have been adopted by many African states were largely borrowed from other people's experiences.

A republic necessarily requires a different political mindset from that which is resident in the majority of our heads.

Most politicians are not trusted largely because they tend to promise what they cannot deliver.

We look up to people who derive an income from the sweat of others and when they administer public funds they behave as if they have generated the funds.

Politicians would like the public to believe that the state is capable of creating resources forgetting that free people are capable of generating extraordinary outcomes not because political actors want them to but out of self interest.

A good politician ought to be a servant whose primary mission is to advance the interests of the people he/she represents.

Africa has produced its own political superstars. If anything, the world knows more about what they say than what they actually do in office.

Largely because of weak institutional foundations, many African political parties from whom politicians are drawn tend to be weak and underfunded.

Whilst people find faith more attractive, politics is not readily embraced as a career leaving the few who choose to invest in the political industry being unaccountable thereby exposing citizens to helpless in terms of any change agenda without divine assistance.

It has been remarked that any person who overstays in power ceases to be sane and useful to him/her.
Power can corrupt and absolute power is toxic.

However, politicians are daily encouraged by citizens who constantly approach them for assistance and facilitation on things that they can do for themselves in the belief that a politician's purpose is to serve his circle of friends and not the nation at large.

The only reason I call my car mine is because of the law. Without the rule of law, what is mine may only be so when there is no stronger person to claim such right or asset.

We have accepted that we must be nations of laws otherwise the rules of an animal farm will apply and yet many of our societies exhibit characteristics of an animal farm.

Politicians become powerful on the back of state power and it is not unusual for politicians to use such power to limit freedom.

With respect to political role models, Africa has few of them.

For the youth who want to serve their nations, the space is continues to be dominated by a few and the landscape is infested with dangerous landmines and political potholes.
Although competition produces best outcomes for the consumer regrettably the same cannot be said in the political industry where big man see in people who have made a career out of politics and see no future out of it.

The foundations of nation state building in Africa have to be located in the colonial story.
The settlers understood that they had to fend for themselves and create a new home with the kind of civilization they were accustomed to.

Political power was inextricably linked to economic power. Institutions were built to serve the people who needed such institutions. State actors had no choice but to play a catalytic and supportive role.

There was no room for tyranny against the settler community from whom resources were to be generated to support the state. Tyranny was directed at the majority who were simply not part of the deal on account of the fact that it was deemed that they had no stake in a modern state.

Independence brought with it a new dispensation that should have allowed for greater citizen participation in civic and state activities.

However, the space continues to be limited and crowded by tired faces of Africa who do not know when to leave office.

We need to invest in political literacy so that citizens can assume more control of their future than allow a few wise men/women to decide their future.

There is much at stake for us to refuse to be part of it.
Does a politician need to be smart? We all want our politicians to be book smart and yet no leader has to write any examination before elected. We all trust that the selected people will know what the real purpose of the state is and what citizens want to see.

However, any civilisation that trusts anyone with too much power is doomed to fail.

We need to appreciate the real purpose of the state as an instrument of the power to advance their cause rather than as the driver of change.

The selection process of political actors is too imperfect to be trusted and the rules applied in the industry are treacherous at best and not people-centred.