Learn from Zimbabwe

Malaysia is now arrived at one point or one phase of serious morale damage where the bribery is so high, from low ranking to the highest ranking, the corruption is everywhere, where people have no more shame doing it publicly.  

Day by days hundreds of cases is reported in newspapers about this misbehave of taking bribe. People nowadays no more think about halal and haram. No more think where the money came from. No more think the sources of money that they buy food to feed their families. All these people only think about is just to have a lot of money in an easy way.

Have we ask ourselves, where is our integrity?

If these things keep happening without taking any prevention steps, we afraid something bad might happen to our country. It’s not impossible that any country might fall someday if the system of the particular country is badly corrupt. We should learn from history. We don’t want to be like the famous Zimbabwe story, in the African continent where the system was so damaged and corrupted until the continent was fall badly.

A long time ago, Zimbabwe was a country with a strong economy and its city Harare was among the beautiful and cleanest in the continent. That is until there is rose to power one of their own named Robert Mugabe.

Robert Mugabe started by fighting for independence from white rule and then went on to wrest power by the bloody deaths of his own people, which allowed him to stay in power for almost 30 year. His system was too corrupt. His politics raises questions about racism and tribalism. He shared power with soldiers and police who looked after him so well that he stayed in power for so long.

At that time, maybe for his tribe, he was their warrior, but for others, he just a dictator.

Mugabe ensured that others ethnic groups were oppressed and when they opposed his cruelty they were accuse of being traitors to the country. There was a terrible violation of human rights and oppression that took place.

His cruelty and damaged that he made had lead the world to criticized his racist politics and ironhanded rule. But when the world criticized him, he accused other countries of wanting to overthrow his rule.

His politics had a huge impact for the people because the economy became worse and collapsed. The police and government institutions had long been tools of his party and were no longer government bodies or agencies that were objectives or professional. The mass media was completely under the control of Mugabe’s cronies. With this, they hoped that Mugabe would continue to look after their interest.

As a result, the Zimbabwe economy was destroyed and inflation jumped to unimaginable levels and unemployment hit to 80%. The country’s currency became worthless. Diseases like cholera and HIV/AIDS swept across the country. The life expectancy for Zimbabweans dropped to 37 years for male and 34 for females, the lowest in the world!

Look what an unprincipled leader with no integrity, who was also cruelled and wicked, destroyed his very own country. Even his own tribe suffered terribly because of the action of their supreme leader who supposedly fight for his own country people but did not do so.

So this is the famous story of Mugabe and Zimbabwe. The story that we should takes as reminder to us and to our beloved country. We don’t want this to happen to us. We should learn from history. Smart people learn from mistake, but smarter people learn from other’s mistake.

Malaysia today is undergoing her worst crisis, that is, a crisis of trust in the authority and integrity of the government and non-government institution. The people have lost confidence in these bodies, especially in hoping they would act justly. The people doubt the ability of these bodies to carry out their duties in an honest and professionalism way. They may thrill to say that they doing all of this for their religion and race. They are probably are unaware that that was the practice in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe.

Maybe one day we too will become like Zimbabwe.

Bribery and corruption is everywhere that sometimes we ourselves is so confused what motivates people to not care of having integrity in their administration. If we say they want promotions, aren’t they already high enough? If we say they want high salaries, isn’t their salary now already quite handsome and more than sufficient?

But we should remember one thing, not everyone like that. If there are 10 bad people, there must be at least one good people. And I believe our country is still full with a good and integrity people.

So here I would like to apologize to all the government officers and staff who are honest, transparent, hard-working, good hearted and non-political if my writing here has hurt them. Everyone know many government officers are honest, don’t take side and don’t like being hypocrisy. They prefer to carry out their duties professionally without the interference of anything. But sadly, while there are those who did reach the highest position without playing any bad tactics, many others were sidelined. In fact those who are honest and brave because of the truth might find themselves stuck without any promotions.

Therefore, these words only for the guilty. To the honest and sincere, congratulations, and sorry coz I didn’t intended to demean their hard work. Let us achieve success slowly as long as we don’t give or sell our principles, trustworthiness and dignity. Let us be the one who is good instead of being among the 10 that is bad.