The Sunday News
Michael Mhlanga
Importance of fundamentals in policy making
I shall do a three-part series that explains the process of policy making, the oversight of the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee and the prospective outlook of the Youth Commission.
This week I shall focus on the fundamentals of policy making which I think are crucial in this historic moment of establishing a Youth Commission.
In reference, I find South Africa to be an informative case study of what Zimbabwe is intending to create.
South Africa had a National Youth Commission until 2009 which was repelled by the National Youth Development Agency. This will be a credible case study to learn from as I unpack my thesis on this subject.
On Thursday 4 July 2019, the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Youth, Sports, Arts and Recreation held a public hearing on the prospects of establishing a Youth Commission in Zimbabwe.
This was in pursuit or response to a petition by one Believe Guta of Kadoma who wrote to the Zimbabwe Parliament in August 2018 and his petition is stamped 2 August 2018.
His petition is a prayer to enforce Section 20 of the Constitution which focuses on Youths.
The public hearing held at the iconic Stanley Hall in Makokoba had an apathetic attendance, a common feature which should never be normalised — not more than 25 attendants including the parliamentarians and their secretariat.
In reviewing the Public Hearing in Bulawayo, this week, I shall pay attention to how the first step of policy making-agenda setting has already been missed which conclusively affects the outcome of the consultations anyway.
The review of the public hearings on the Youth Commission is largely influenced by Makumbe’s (2001) “Fundamentals of policy making in Zimbabwe” whose thesis points out that “ . . . many officials and politicians sometimes take advantage of the people’s ignorance of the process of policy making to get away with all manner of dubious explanations of their unacceptable actions when confronted by the affected people”.
This stands true in relation to the witnesses at Stanley Square on Thursday 4 July 2019.
A couple of weeks back I wrote about the need for a Youth Commission on peace-building and conflict resolution, before the announcement of the hearing was made.
When I saw the advert on social media, I was glad that the response to the most pertinent issue of our time has been timely, little did many of us know that it is a rushed process “behind time” as confirmed by the Portfolio chairperson, marred with incongruent communication, a catastrophe that has affected Zimbabwe’s impressive policies on many occasions where policy communication is blemished.
For this particular Youth Commission public hearings, there was a testified witlessness of policy procedure and recognition of the systematic fundamentals; keys which are components of agenda setting in policy making.
Process of Policy Making
We first need to understand that there are six basic steps of policy making which are agenda setting, formulation, legitimation, allocation of resources, implementation and evaluation and adjustment or termination.
What the Youth Commission hearings is on is the definition stage where questions that pertain to what the problem or need is, whether it affects an individual, household, section of society or the whole society?
So far, the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee is only attempting to determine the breadth and depth of effects cited by the petitioner to warrant a Youth Commission, that is commendable, but there are important faculties of agenda setting that have been left out.
Within agenda setting in policy making, adequate information such as background on the state of youth in Zimbabwe, what exactly is affecting them, tried, tested and failed youth policies, successes and limitations of the National Youth Policy, possible alternatives in mitigating youth related challenges and the exact contents of the petition lodged to Parliament in 2018 was necessary to equip those attending the public hearings.
This would then influence informed debates and contributions to the need or un-need of the Youth Commission.
Formulation and legitimation
After agenda setting, the committee should move on to formulation where they identify proposed solutions and players involved.
The third step is legitimation where the committee should embark on a process of ensuring support for the proposed solution, identifying the groups, organisations, and individuals in support of the preferred solution and determine how that support could be maintained.
That is an essential part in this policy called the Youth Commission because so far, institutions such as this should be guaranteed of sustainability.
The resource allocation menace
The next step is resource allocation, where there is dedication of finance, determination of resources and human capital needed.
This is the debilitating part which will cause a stir especially at this juncture where public expenditure should be significantly cut down.
To medicate this, this is the part where creative policy making should be adopted, in the process of reducing public expenditure, the
Government should identify how the Commission should be well resourced without haemorrhaging the State, perhaps collapsing redundant activities and offices will go a long way, or even transforming the Youth Council and empower the Youth Commission which can effectively and efficiently address pertinent political, economic and social stalemates that when addressed will contribute extensively to Zimbabwe’s development.
However, the composition in terms of design and function was not robustly discussed at Stanley Square because the significant parts of agenda setting were left out.
What was echoed in Bulawayo as well as in Mutare is the age of the Youth Commissioners, yet the operational designs should also come out from such hearings.
(I will discuss this in the next instalment).
Implementation, evaluation and policy adjustment
This stage is followed by the implementation of the policy.
At this stage particular individuals who are 35 and below, of good standing, innovative and dynamic need to be transparently identified in order to give credibility and legitimacy of the Commission.
Upon this, crucial of them all, is the evaluation mechanisms that will inform adjustment of the policy to guarantee its sustainability which will serve not only the interest of the youth, but immensely contribute to productivity in Zimbabwe, remember, the productive age group is unemployed or cannot employ and disturbingly, it is a product of an already crippled education system that should be decolonised to capacitate them to think without a box and be innovative in national development.
To be continued . . .
