We are paying twice, sometimes thrice

Let me tell you about a queue you already know by heart. To renew a passport, you first queue to buy the form that allows you to join the real queue. You complete it standing up, leaning on whatever surface you can find, in black ballpoint pen, because somewhere in government a circular decided that black ink is more trustworthy than blue. If your hand slips, you do not correct the mistake like an adult. You discard the controlled form, return another day, buy another one and begin again.

Two days of your life can disappear over a piece of paper, only for a clerk to type the same information into a computer on the other side of the counter. The state guards the form more carefully than it guards your time.

This is not a passport problem. It is a governing philosophy. A car owner moves between separate offices for licensing, roadworthiness and insurance. A parent carries information from a hospital to a registry because two arms of the same government do not speak to each other. A business pays taxes, levies, licence fees and compliance costs to institutions whose mandates overlap. We have mistaken more offices for more government and more rules for better government. The result is over-governance without enough delivery.

I have now completed a line-by-line analysis of more than 247 ministries, departments, commissions, regulators, funds, authorities and parastatals. The conclusion is not that every public institution is wasteful. It is that far too many perform functions already housed elsewhere, collect their own revenue, maintain separate corporate services or continue long after the reason for creating them has disappeared. The analysis identifies which bodies should be retained, merged, transferred, commercialised or closed. The cuts are not abstract. They can be named.

The State Has Become Too Expensive

Every duplicated agency is more than an irritation. It is another payroll, another building, another fleet, another board, another set of allowances and another annual plan. Citizens pay for that duplication through formal taxes, transaction charges and licence fees. They also pay through inflationary or domestic borrowing, and through hours lost navigating the machinery. Time spent in a queue is an unofficial tax. So is the cost of hiring someone merely to interpret government for you.

The economic consequence is straightforward. When government borrows to sustain offices it does not need, it competes with businesses and households for scarce credit. Interest rates remain higher, savings are absorbed, and productive investment is squeezed. We then ask why firms stay small and why entrepreneurs remain informal, while the state makes formality expensive at every turn.

A credible tax-cutting programme must therefore begin with the cost of government itself. Tax cuts funded by new borrowing are a temporary performance. Real tax cuts are financed by closing structures, ending duplication and permanently reducing recurrent expenditure. Only then can Zimbabwe lower transaction taxes, simplify the burden on small businesses, consolidate nuisance levies and progressively reduce taxes on work, enterprise and investment.

A government running the same job through two offices is not being thorough. It is charging citizens twice for one service.

Fifteen Ministries. Sixty MPs. One Accountable State.

Zimbabwe should set a hard destination: no more than 15 ministries and a Parliament of 60 MPs. Not as a slogan, and not as punishment, but as the organising discipline for a modern republic.

Fifteen ministries are enough to cover the essential functions of state if portfolios are coherent and permanent secretaries are empowered to manage delivery. A ministry should exist because a distinct national outcome requires political leadership, not because every important subject needs its own minister, deputy minister, permanent secretary and bureaucracy. When mandates overlap, responsibility becomes negotiable: success belongs to everyone and failure belongs to no one.

Sixty MPs are enough to legislate, represent citizens and hold the executive to account if constituencies are fairly drawn, committees are professionally supported, proceedings are public and gender and geographic representation are built into the design. Zimbabwe does not need hundreds of legislators, parallel chambers and proliferating committees to make clear laws. A smaller Parliament would cost less, deliberate more sharply and make it easier for citizens to know exactly who is responsible.

The principle should be relentless: one national outcome, one accountable ministry; one regulatory function, one regulator; one public service, one authoritative record. Fewer institutions must mean clearer authority, not weaker oversight.

Return to the 2013 Constitution - and Return Power to Voters

A leaner state must also be a more democratic one. Zimbabwe should return to the original 2013 Constitution approved by citizens at referendum and reverse later amendments that concentrated appointment powers and weakened the constitutional settlement. A constitution is not an inconvenience to be edited whenever power finds its limits uncomfortable. It is the limit.

The offices of Ministers of State for Provincial Affairs and Devolution should be abolished. So should the parallel provincial coordinating machinery that monitors ministries, local authorities and development programmes from offices answerable upwards to the centre. Provinces and metropolitan areas should be governed through elected provincial and metropolitan councils, while cities, towns and districts should be led by elected councillors and mayors with real authority, predictable financing and public duties.

The power to suspend elected councils and replace them with appointed caretaker commissions should end. Where a council fails, the remedy should be law, audit, judicial process and, where necessary, a prompt election - not an indefinite substitution of voters by ministerial appointees. Devolution cannot mean appointing more representatives of central government in the provinces. It must mean trusting citizens to choose, scrutinise and remove the people who govern them locally.

Say the Names - and Make the Cuts

It is easy to promise that waste will be cut. Conviction begins when we identify the duplication and act on it. My review of more than 247 public bodies shows the same pattern repeatedly: a ministry makes policy, an authority regulates, a fund collects a levy, a commission advises and a parastatal implements - each with its own chief executive, board, finance team, procurement unit, vehicles and offices. The country pays five times before a single result appears. Here are some of the clearest cuts:

• Environment: Zimbabwe has a full Ministry of Environment, Climate and Wildlife and a statutory Environmental Management Agency with its own board, corporate services, plans, programmes, licences and fee collection. Environmental protection matters too much to be duplicated. The ministry should set national policy and legislation; regulation and enforcement should sit in one clearly defined place. If EMA remains an arm's-length regulator, strip out every function duplicated in the ministry. If the ministry can regulate directly, absorb EMA and retire the separate board and headquarters. Do not finance two institutions to describe one national purpose.

• Mining: A mine is licensed by the Ministry of Mines, may involve the Zimbabwe Mining Development Corporation, and sells through the Minerals Marketing Corporation of Zimbabwe. Three state touchpoints around one rock create delay, discretion and opportunity for rent-seeking. Regulate clearly, manage any public investment transparently and allow competitive marketing.

• Small-business finance: Support is fragmented across the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Corporation, the Zimbabwe Women's Microfinance Bank and ministerial SME structures. Three overheads do not create three times the capital. Consolidate the machinery and put more of the money into lending, guarantees and business growth.

• Agricultural trading: Retain a transparent strategic grain reserve and genuine food-security functions, but stop using public entities as unnecessary middlemen between farmers and buyers where competitive markets can work.

• Water: The same institution should not make the rules, allocate rights and sell the service without strong separation of functions. Regulation must be independent, while commercial delivery is judged against clear service and financial standards.

• Boards that have outlived their purpose: Every board, authority, commission and fund should face a statutory sunset test. Unless Parliament positively renews it after evidence of public value, it should expire. Bodies that neither require regulatory independence nor perform a genuine commercial function should become ordinary departments - or close. Too many agencies that should have died years ago survive because the law gives them a birth certificate but no death certificate.

These are not obscure line items. Each duplicate means real salaries, vehicles, offices, boards, procurement and reporting. More importantly, each one creates another place where a citizen can be delayed, redirected or asked to pay. Over-governance is not neutral. It is expensive, and its cost lands hardest on people with the least time, money and influence.

One Country. One National Revenue Collector.

The state has also allowed too many institutions to become miniature revenue authorities. A regulator should regulate. A ministry should make policy. A fund should finance a defined purpose. None needs a separate national tax-collection apparatus. Except for constitutionally assigned local rates and genuine service charges collected by elected local authorities, all national taxes, duties, royalties and statutory levies should be assessed and collected through ZIMRA on one registration, one return, one payment account and one auditable ledger.

• Road revenues: ZINARA currently collects through vehicle licensing, tolls, fuel levies, transit fees, bridge tolls and overload fees. ZINARA should administer a transparent, ring-fenced Road Fund and publish allocations and results. ZIMRA should collect the national charges and transfer them automatically to that fund. Road administration does not require a parallel revenue service.

• Payroll levies: The 1 per cent ZIMDEF training levy and the Standards Development Fund levy of up to 0.5 per cent are collected through separate systems. If Parliament retains these levies, employers should declare and pay them through ZIMRA alongside PAYE and other payroll obligations. The beneficiary funds can allocate resources without each maintaining its own inspectors, forms, enforcement machinery and revenue department.

• Regulatory fees: EMA licence fees, ministry import and export licence fees, mining payments and other national regulatory charges should appear on the same ZIMRA account. The responsible regulator can approve the permit and set the legally authorised charge; it should not also operate a separate cash office, debtor system and enforcement bureaucracy.

• Local revenue: Local authority rates, property charges and fees for genuine local services should remain local, collected transparently by elected councils and spent under public budgets. Centralising national revenue under ZIMRA must not become an excuse to strip elected local government of the resources guaranteed by the 2013 Constitution.

One collector does not mean more taxes. It means fewer forms, fewer audits, fewer bank accounts and fewer opportunities for arbitrary enforcement. Parliament decides the tax. ZIMRA collects it. Treasury accounts for it. The institution receiving an appropriation explains what it delivered. Those lines of responsibility should never be confused.

Build Government Around Life, Not Filing Cabinets

The alternative does not require another ministry of digital transformation. It requires government to organise itself around the events of a citizen's life: birth, school, work, enterprise, tax, health, property and retirement. One secure identity. One citizen account. Information supplied once and reused lawfully across public services. What government already knows should follow the citizen; the citizen should not have to carry it between offices.

Digitisation, however, is not the act of turning a bad paper form into a bad online form. First remove the unnecessary approval. Then combine the duplicate processes. Only then digitise what remains. Otherwise, technology simply allows government to inconvenience people at greater speed.

What Conviction Requires

This will not be achieved by trimming every travel budget by ten per cent and declaring victory. That approach protects every institution, including the ones that should not exist, while slowly weakening those that matter. Reform means closing, merging and selling where appropriate. It means publishing the new machinery of government, the institutions abolished, the recurring savings and the tax reductions those savings will finance.

There should be a fair transition for public servants: redeploy strong performers into the consolidated institutions, offer time-bound separation support where roles genuinely disappear, and pay the smaller civil service properly. The purpose is not to humiliate public servants. It is to stop wasting their ability inside structures designed around duplication rather than results.

Zimbabwe is not short of talent, resilience or enterprise. What it lacks is permission for that energy to move without carrying an oversized state on its back. A government of 15 ministries and 60 MPs would be easier to understand, cheaper to run and harder to hide inside. Restore the 2013 Constitution. Return provincial and local power to elected authorities. Merge the agencies. Close the expired boards. Let ZIMRA collect national revenue once. Cut the taxes that punish work and formality. Measure the state by what it delivers, not by how many offices bear its crest.

That is not a retreat from government. It is a demand for government worthy of the name.