The Moral Rot at Gweru Registry

By Tongai Phillip Mukarati

On Wednesday 10 September l took my daughter to the Gweru Registration offices trying to get her a replacement birth certificate. The moral rot we witnessed there left my mouth dry and it has been dry up to today.

Besides the broad daylight robbery by vendors outside the offices who pounce on desperate members of the public, there is also the contention with the guards who start off very polite and then turn into demons just before the public officials start arriving.

There is some serious truth in the saying that ‘the fish rots from the head’.

We could go on and on about the rot in various departments, but l want to focus on the Provincial Registrar, Mai Gambura herself and the way she talks to people.

She is very rude. One wonders how she got to such an influential post with such a rotten mouth and disrespectful thoughts. One would be forgiven for thinking that she is frustrated by a myriad of things somewhere else not at work. Let that frustration not be a Public servant’s mantra.

Silence is golden, they claim…..But then there are times when silence is no longer golden. People, some who would have travelled from far afield, who would be paying very high prices for Passports, and birth certificate reprints shouldn’t be subjected to such uncouth, disrespectful and downright rude behaviour as expressed by that woman.

She should know, and we are.making it explicitly and categorically clear, that she is a public service employee and by extension, an employee of the very Zimbabweans she holds with disdain and clear disregard, and on whom she uses, not explicit insults, but subtle unsavoury words are her trademark.

Therefore it would serve her well to revise her manners, people skills and especially the way she speaks to paying Zimbabweans who have every right to have documentation, albeit within the regulatory confines. What beats logic is how an obviously well educated woman behaves like that. Because quite frankly, as it is, it is pathetic and shameful.

It is shameful for public office holders to take advantage of people’s desperation like that.

The conversations about how this lady treats people started outside the gate where some people would have slept, or walked long distances coming two to three times narrating their ordeals at the hands of this, in their words, ‘a vindictive She-Devil.’

A couple of young ladies narrated, with obvious anger, how they were rudely told their hairstyles and dressing were inappropriate for a passport photos and that that was their second day coming back to the Gweru Registry Offices. One of the ladies, whose name l won’t mention since l am not sure whether her documents were successfully handed to her mentioned that she was commuting from Sebakwe a little further than Kwekwe for the past 2 days. I also verbally and politely challenged her in person, to revise her approach to people, and l was told that ‘Muri kutaura nonsense ‘ – a response which has prompted the writing of this piece.

Understandably, those clothing and hairstyle parameters exist, but surely their are more humane ways of handling such situations or a better qualified people’s person in the office to tell people about such regulations. Yet another man in his late 40s whom l left the Registry shed with registered his displeasure and confided in me saying, ‘Mai ava vanoda kundibata semwana mudiki.’
I asked about the reasons why people tolerate such behaviour and l got many answers but the golden thread was that ‘They know that we are desperate.’

Last year, when the same offices were near OK Gweru and Ministry of Mines, l escorted my younger daughter and we experienced the same mediocrity.

That there are bribery issues behind closed doors at most government offices is a well known evil that has sadly been normalized in our country. That kwaMudzviti kune vanhu vanoda kuzvida and who openly disrespect people, young and old is also another known fact which has persisted over time. KuPolice hatichataure.

The same can be said about nurses of a few decades ago. I do not know what happened exactly that saw our nurses become more pliant and understanding – but whatever it is, that happened there, one hopes that it can also happen to the Gweru Registry Office starting with the Registrar Madam Gambura herself.

People are only as good as their leader – when Madam Gambura’s subordinates see her harassing paying Zimbabweans with the impunity the way she does, they highly too will normalize such shameful behaviour. And it is such uncultured people and behaviour which forces and sinks Zimbabwe further down into the pits of Hades.

DISCLAIER: The thoughts expressed above are the author’s own and not The ObserverZim’s.