Thanking the president for things he didn’t do shows that he is doing nothing

There is a strange and exhausting surrealism that has come to define public life in Zimbabwe.

We witness in utter horror as the boundaries between state administration and a bizarre cult of personality have completely dissolved.

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Cabinet ministers cannot finish a sentence without thanking the president for work the ministers themselves performed. ​ A villager feels compelled to sing the praises of the head of state for a new school block. ​ Citizens have to sing the president’s name for a 5 kilometer stretch of road. It is understandable to wonder what this circus is all about.

A recent meeting featuring prominent tenderpreneur and ZANU-PF Politburo member Kudakwashe Tagwirei laid bare the mechanics of this system. He went beyond ordinary sycophancy to institutionalize a new civic religion: the mandatory channeling of all gratitude upward. According to Tagwirei’s explicit directive, citizens and party members must never thank the people who actually do the work—even when a borehole is drilled or a road is patched.

They must direct all their praises exclusively to President Emmerson Mnangagwa instead. Tagwirei’s rationale was that credit must flow to the apex center of power, after which the president will supposedly thank the local official in private. When unpacked, this bizarre directive exposes a profound political truth. Thanking the president for things he did not do is not an innocent display of cultural respect or traditional deference.

Rather, it is a glaring symptom of a system where he is effectively doing nothing of substantive national value. In a functional democracy, leadership is measured by systemic institutional output, economic stability, and the rule of law. It also requires the quiet, efficient delivery of public goods that do not depend on presidential benevolence to function. When a society degenerates to a point where basic civic infrastructure, private business ventures, and ordinary employment milestones must be attributed to the supreme grace of one individual, it reveals an acute vacuum.

This points directly to a total failure of genuine governance. A government that works does not need its citizens to perform daily public rituals of gratitude for the bare minimum of existence. Roads do not rehabilitate themselves through presidential speeches. Businesses do not flourish because of political patronage. Boreholes do not yield water out of sheer loyalty to the ruling party. These are the fundamental duties of a functional state, funded by taxpayer money and executed by civil servants, contractors, and local communities.

By insisting that every localized success story be reframed as a personal gift from the presidency, the ruling establishment admits that institutional systems have completely collapsed. When institutions fail, the state must replace structural accountability with theatrical performance. This hyper-centralized obsession with attribution creates an upside-down world of absolute political surrealism. Businessmen feel compelled to credit the head of state for opening a new company branch.

Villagers are expected to bow in gratitude for a single borehole in a region parched by systemic neglect. Young people must thank him for securing a job at a private company despite an economy destroyed by his own policies. Soon, citizens half-jokingly wonder if they will have to thank the executive branch for their morning bath or their evening meal.

Yet beneath the dark humor lies a tragic reality: this mandatory praise-singing is an admission of absolute failure. If the presidency must be credited for every microscopic grain of progress in the country, it logically follows that nothing in the country functions unless the supreme leader personally wills it into existence. Such a dynamic is the ultimate refuge of a patronage network under severe pressure.

When an administration can no longer point to functional currency, robust health care, mass employment, or reliable public services, it cannot survive on tangible performance. It must therefore manufacture an invisible economy of gratitude. It forces ordinary citizens, cabinet ministers, and business elites alike to participate in an elaborate theater where loyalty substitutes for competence and praise replaces policy. Ultimately, demanding that people follow Tagwirei’s script and thank the president for things he never did strips citizens of their agency and reduces governance to a feudal farce.

It signals to the nation that independent effort, local initiative, and institutional competence do not matter as much as proximity to the throne. But no amount of forced applause or orchestrated gratitude can pave a broken highway, stabilize an economy, or substitute for genuine leadership. When an administration relies entirely on fabricated credit for things it had no hand in building, it exposes a naked truth. Behind the deafening noise of manufactured praise, nothing of real, lasting substance is actually being done.

***Tendai Ruben Mbofana is a social justice advocate and writer. Please feel free to contact him on +263715667700 or ***[email protected]

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