By Charles T.M.J. Dube

IN our last instalment we demonstrated by way of my personal experiences how the actions of Ndyire and Mudyazvevamwe affected my parents’ businesses, unhu/ubunthu and social responsibility as they were failed by people they aided in times of need who would not only not pay them when their crises were over, but changed loyalties.
We also witnessed a similar behavioural pattern from those borrowing for business and consumption from microfinance institutions.
Even commercial banks were prone to unethical conduct from their own staff who, coupled with mudyazvevamwe culture from their borrowers, led to non-performing loans and bank collapses.
From earlier contributions, we demonstrated that the collapse of the Zimbabwe dollar due to loss of value through parallel trading and inflation was also due to loss of integrity by commercial and central bank staff as they became major drivers of this social malaise as major players using people’s savings and the printing press leading to wholesale black marketeering unsustainable by any economy.
As it is, even the Bond notes could be subject to the same victimisation if the Government, central bank and its commercial bank counterparts do not exercise utmost integrity in their operations.
We have already witnessed the POSB being fined for lack of integrity for malpractice by the Reserve Bank.
We cannot afford to continue playing with people’s livelihoods. As a matter of fact, like they say, ‘Once beaten, twice shy’, we cannot afford to entertain the silent farts that will spoil the air for all of us.
The Government must therefore demonstrate it has teeth and any unravelled cases of corruption must be dealt with decisively with instant justice being seen to be applied.
As a matter of fact, those caught with their hands in the till cannot be allowed to continue with life as usual if the institutionalisation of corruption, graft and dishonesty we have witnessed since the time leading to our last fall is to be contained.
The introduction of death sentences and life imprisonment is therefore a reality that could save us from this cancer of lack of integrity that has infected us.
In the case of the Bond notes for instance, there cannot be any parallel market trading given their paucity and restricted release unless there is some institutional hand otherwise.
Anybody who has the guts to play around a national currency/medium of exchange must also have the guts to face the repercussions which should be deterrent.
The question of integrity in the public sector will be the subject of a separate instalment in the future, but maybe for now let us go micro again.
In December last year, I took my car for attendance to some engine oil leak. When I got it back, the problem was worse and had to take it back. I got my car back five days later than the promised two after some even more problems it had not had before, which I was assured had been addressed.
There were always ‘good’ explanations for what could have gone wrong which was always no fault of the mechanic.
I collected my car from the garage with my aunt who had visited from the Diaspora straight to a long haul of a holiday which was supposed to take me to Bulawayo, Mberengwa and the Victoria Falls.
Some 100m from the garage, my car lost traction power. After some slight rest it was back to normal and I filled the tank at Mbare in Harare.
Traffic congestion led me to change course at the Chitungwiza Roundabout as I decided to use the Norton route.
And 10km from Norton, my engine failed and on opening the bonnet I could see some oil spills. My car was now ‘dead’, kaput, and has been off the road since then. There was some ingenious explanation about the timing belt, which again had coincided with the car being taken to the garage.
It was no fault of the mechanic at all and I was supposed to simply buy the necessary spares. In his first proposal, we were to meet the cost of spares on a 50:50 basis although he would still charge me for the labour.
I obliged and bought the spares but once the spares became available, he would have none of that as it was not his fault that my engine had broken down, but a result of natural wear and tear.
He did what he had to do, but apparently after his repairs, the same problem that had happened 10km before Norton a month earlier recurred. He was now going to buy the spares but after some trial and error, he phoned to confess the problem was certainly beyond him and he was now going to take the car to a more experienced mechanic.
He did, but by this time the full tank of fuel had been drained and put to better use, a flash and modulator was also missing and I do not know what else as I still have not yet gotten my car back. The battery was also missing. Add to that, a light is missing as well or damaged.
You can already see how the lack of integrity on the part of the mechanic has affected my own mobility and business. You can tell that even the initial diagnosis after the first mishap was just in self-defence to pass on liability to the customer.
The issue here is that in business, we should be professional enough to admit limits to our capabilities and refer our customers, where we know we are not capacitated enough to hold the dollar from the better expert.
We should also divulge when we make mistakes instead of hiding our errors in the jargon of our professions to confound and portray an infallible posture.
As it is, I sent my car to this young man because I believed in promoting upcoming businessmen, particularly the youthful who take the entrepreneurial route instead of seeking employment.
In the process of pursuing this route, I burnt my fingers in a big way and lost even potentially huge joint venture partnerships due to timeliness in taking moves owing to mobility constraints. I was also constrained from accessing important stakeholders in my business development.
And yet those who start businesses should guard against earning a bad reputation for themselves and even others who, while conducting their business with integrity, could end up being painted by the same brush.
Experiences from this car alone have exposed me to further issues of integrity on the part of law enforcement agents, landlords and regulatory authorities which I have no intention of writing about. Suffice it to state that we will not progress as a country unless ‘umwe noumwe amira panzvimbo pake’ with integrity. Let’s all play our part with integrity in whatever we are doing.