Tendai Ruben Mbofana
There is a profound and unsettling irony when a government demands that its citizens celebrate a “Life of Sacrifice” while those very citizens are the ones being sacrificed on the altar of administrative greed and misplaced priorities.
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A recently surfaced letter from the Ministry of Local Government and Public Works serves as a chilling testament to this disconnect.
In it, the Permanent Secretary instructs all Town Clerks, Town Secretaries, and Chief Executive Officers to procure copies of President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s biography.
The directive is not merely a suggestion but an “imploration” to spend scarce public funds on a revised 2026 edition of a book that has yet to even see the inside of a curriculum vetting room.
This move is more than just a questionable marketing tactic; it is a moral and administrative failure that exposes the rot within our governance structures.
Imagine for a moment a resident in Redcliff.
This is a town where the taps have been dry for half a decade and where the hope for running water has been replaced by the daily, back-breaking labor of searching for communal boreholes.
Imagine a parent in that same town being told that the local council, which cannot afford to fix a single potholed street or collect a month’s worth of refuse, is now “implored” to spend fifteen dollars a copy on a glossy biography.
It is a slap in the face to every Zimbabwean who navigates impassable roads and survives in cities where the stench of uncollected waste has become the background noise of daily life.
The USD 17 price tag on a single book might seem insignificant to a high-ranking official, but when the math of bulk procurement is applied, it becomes a fortune stolen from the public good.
The letter explicitly dangles a “discounted price” of USD 15.00 per copy for orders of 100 or more.
For a town like Redcliff, or any of Zimbabwe’s 92 local authorities, the math is devastating.
A single “minimum” order of 100 copies costs a struggling council USD 1,500.
The mathematical trap in this directive is as clear as it is cynical.
While the letter mentions a “minimum of 100 copies”, the Permanent Secretary simultaneously “implores” local authorities to ensure the book is distributed to “all schools and libraries” within their jurisdiction.
This is a logistical impossibility that reveals the true financial burden.
How is a council supposed to cover every single school and library with just 100 books?
They cannot.
By issuing such an expansive mandate, the Ministry is effectively forcing councils to order thousands of copies to satisfy the state’s expectations.
Even a modest attempt to provide a functional number of copies across a district’s schools would require an order of 1,000 to 2,000 books.
At the “discounted” rate of USD 15.00, the invoice to the ratepayer quickly climbs to USD 15,000 or USD 30,000.
This is money that does not exist in the empty coffers of towns like Redcliff.
In a place where the social contract has been replaced by the daily struggle for a bucket of clean water, USD 30,000 represents a staggering loss.
It is the cost of ten industrial water pumps to revive a dormant reservoir or 20,000 liters of diesel for refuse trucks and road graders that currently sit idle.
It could pay for the complete solarization of local clinics, ensuring that life-saving vaccines remain cold and mothers no longer have to give birth by the light of a cell phone during blackouts.
Instead, this wealth is being siphoned away to fund a commercial narrative that does nothing to quench the thirst of a child or repair a shattered road.
Every stack of these biographies delivered to a school is a direct monument to a burst pipe that was never fixed.
The role of a Permanent Secretary is supposed to be the bedrock of a neutral, professional civil service.
They are the technocrats who ensure that the wheels of the state turn efficiently, regardless of which political wind is blowing.
However, when the Office of the Secretary is used to push the commercial and hagiographic interests of a sitting president, the line between state and party evaporates completely.
By turning local government officials into involuntary book agents, the ministry is effectively subverting the mandate of these authorities.
Local councils do not exist to fund the vanity projects of the executive; they exist to provide water, light, and safety to the residents who pay their salaries.
Furthermore, the directive to distribute these books to schools is particularly predatory.
In any functional democracy, the education system is protected by a firewall of rigorous vetting.
Books that enter the classroom must be approved by the Ministry of Education to ensure they meet pedagogical standards and offer a balanced, factual view of history.
To bypass this process and use the Ministry of Local Government as a back door into the minds of our children is an act of indoctrination.
It suggests that the government is less interested in producing critical thinkers and more interested in manufacturing a generation of “believers” who are fed a curated narrative of history before they are even old enough to question it.
What does it say about a leader’s genuine support if his life story must be forced upon the populace through administrative decrees?
A truly “illustrious” life, as the letter describes it, does not require a government directive to find an audience.
If the biography were a genuine reflection of a life that resonates with the struggles and triumphs of the common person, it would fly off the shelves of its own accord.
The need to “implore” local authorities to buy batches of one hundred copies at a time reveals a deep-seated insecurity.
It suggests that the ruling elite is aware of a growing gap between the official narrative of “sacrifice” and the lived reality of the Zimbabwean people.
The title of the book itself, “A Life of Sacrifice,” feels like a grim joke when viewed through the lens of this letter.
While the elite celebrate their own perceived sacrifices from the comfort of Harare’s leafy suburbs, the actual sacrifice is being made by the mother who cannot afford school fees because her council is diverting ratepayer funds toward vanity biographies instead of ensuring the taps run with water.
It is being made by the motorist whose hard-earned income is bled dry by constant repairs to a suspension shattered by roads that have not seen a shovel of tar in years.
It is being made by the student who sits in a classroom with a crumbling roof and no basic furniture, forced to study a biography of the powerful while the very walls of their school rot away for lack of municipal maintenance.
This directive is a symptom of a larger, more dangerous ailment in our body politic; the total conflation of the state with the individual at its helm.
When the resources of the Ministry of Local Government are diverted toward promoting a biography, it confirms that the government has abandoned its primary duty of service delivery.
The state has become a machine for self-perpetuation.
Every dollar spent on these books is a dollar that will not go toward a borehole in a drought-stricken village or a desk in a rural school.
It is a choice made by those in power to prioritize the ego of the presidency over the survival of the people.
The timing of this “revised and translated” edition is also telling.
In an era where the nation is grappling with economic volatility and a desperate, coordinated push to unconstitutionally extend the president’s term of office, the government’s response is not a policy shift or a renewed commitment to transparency, but a push for more hagiographic propaganda.
The translation of the book into Shona, Ndebele, and Tonga is framed as an act of inclusivity, but in this context, it feels more like an attempt to ensure that no corner of the country is left untouched by the state-sponsored narrative.
It is inclusivity without representation; a way to reach the masses with words while failing them with deeds.
As we look at that letter, with its official stamps and formal tone, we must see it for what it truly is.
It is a document of surrender.
It is a sign that the government has given up on the hard work of earning the people’s respect through good governance and has instead resorted to the crude tools of administrative pressure.
The residents of our towns and cities deserve better than a forced reading list.
They deserve roads that do not swallow their cars, taps that flow with clean water, and a government that understands that its first and only “sacrifice” should be the abandonment of its own vanity for the sake of the nation.
The tragedy of Zimbabwe is not a lack of resources or a lack of talent.
It is a persistent, chronic misalignment of priorities.
As long as we have a system where a Permanent Secretary feels comfortable “imploring” broke councils to buy books about a president while those same councils cannot provide a basic bucket of water, we will remain a nation in waiting.
The story of Zimbabwe is currently being written in the dust of our broken roads and the dry pipes of our suburbs.
No amount of glossy biographies can rewrite that reality until the government decides to put the needs of the citizen above the image of the leader.
The true biography of any leader is not found in the books they authorize but in the quality of life of the people they serve.
By that metric, the current narrative is one that no amount of translation or revision can fix.
- Tendai Ruben Mbofana is a social justice advocate and writer. To directly receive his articles please join his WhatsApp Channel on: https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VaqprWCIyPtRnKpkHe08
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