The Sunday News
Raisedon Baya
Dear Madam Minister (Honourable)
APOLOGIES for not calling you ‘‘Honourable’’ Minister as most of your colleagues in Cabinet and Parliament love to be addressed. This is so because the word ‘‘honourable’’ has been abused so much.
Your name is still a good name and let’s try to keep it clean. Anyway, we were supposed to meet this past Thursday at the stakeholders meeting in Bulawayo. At least that is what the invitation from your ministry said. Come meet your new minister, your officers said. But you were not there minister.
Your officers gathered us together on the promise of meeting you in person and discussing sector issues but alas, you were not there. As you are already aware, your deputy and the permanent secretary ended up meeting us and representing you. It is our hope that this is not going to be common during your tenure. Madam Minister, let me start with a little history. Very brief.
Some years ago when Andrew Langa was appointed to head the Ministry of Arts and Culture he called a stakeholders meeting where we met him and his team. We made some submissions during that meeting. He also made some promises to us. Up to now we don’t know what happened to our submissions. In all honesty the minister left without doing anything tangible for us.
Today we wonder whether we wasted our time making those submissions.
After Langa came Makhosini Hlongwane. Our hopes were raised. Immediately after his appointment he called for a stakeholders meeting. We met him at the National Art Gallery in Bulawayo. Again we made submissions. Within a few months of making those submissions the minister was history, swept away by the political whirlwind. Sadly the submissions we had made to him and his team were swept under the carpet. We nursed our bruised dreams and continued hoping. Hope is all we have. It is what keeps us alive and standing.
Kazembe Kazembe came, full of life and all. He also called for a stakeholders meeting. We gathered at Bulawayo Polytechnic in our hundreds. Again we made submissions, the same submissions we made to Langa, the same submissions we made to Hlongwane and Kazembe Kazambe, like the ministers before him, he told us to forget what had happened in the past. He made new promises. Good promises that again did not graduate to anything tangible.
And this past week it was your turn, Madam Minister. Though you were not there in person your team was there. They said you had sent them to get our submissions. We were there in our numbers.
Again we made our submissions. Same submissions we made to Langa, Hlongwane and Kazembe Kazembe. There is something our Ministry, which you are now heading Madam Minister, should know. That our situations and issues are not going to change because we have changed a minister.
Our issues and situations will only change if something is actually done about them. Also note that the past ministers have taught us one thing. We love meetings. We love talking. We love hearing our voices. And it ends there.
We end our short letter with a prayer. We pray that the next stakeholders meeting we have with our ministry will not be when a new minister is being introduced to us again.
Yours in the arts
Raisedon Baya
