By Cde Sikhosana Bambazonke
In Ruka Chivende’s Second Republic, nothing is accidental, and urgency is a selective virtue.
When it comes to suppressing dissent against Constitutional Amendment No. 3 (CAB3), the State moves with the urgency of a kombi driver during peak hour.
However, when it comes to addressing nurses’ poor remuneration, a meagre US$30 despite fuel prices having spiked above US$2 per litre, the same urgency disappears.
The Second Republic appears largely indifferent to the ongoing three-day nationwide nurses’ strike.
Parliament, once imagined as an institution of deliberation representing citizens’ grievances and aspirations, now resembles a payroll awaiting confirmation.
As the vote on CAB3 approaches, MPs are reportedly positioned to receive over US$110,000 each.
The earlier US$10,000 narrative fronted by serial tenderpreneur Wicknell Chivayo now reads like a rehearsal script for a much larger performance.
Over US$33 million is being assembled through constituency grants and loans, not as development, but as alignment insurance intended to extend the incumbent’s term by two years.
Almost every MP, including those who once branded themselves as opposition, has reportedly signed on.
In this system, ideology is temporary.
Payment and its accompanying benefits are permanent.
Recent developments suggest CAB3 does not move through persuasion, but through financial settlement that has drawn in opportunistic, unprincipled politicians more interested in profit than public service.
Outside Parliament, the country is not negotiating; it is absorbing.
Transport costs have risen sharply, making the US$30 salary adjustment for nurses not relief but arithmetic cruelty.
It dissolves in transport before it reaches rent, food, or dignity.
US$5 to get to work, and another US$5 for return transport.
A month’s survival is reduced to a weekly subtraction.
At Sally Mugabe Central Hospital, nurses begin their shifts already depleted.
Negotiation exists, but only as theatre. Outcomes are pre-written in scarcity.
“We’re walking dead,” one nurse says, not as poetry, but as clinical description.
The wards remain open because closure would require acknowledgement of collapse.
Exhaustion has become normalised.
True Patriots, the ongoing three-day strike is not rebellion but exhaustion made visible.
The State responds not with urgency, but with silence, while patients are left unattended.
Elsewhere, students linked to the Zimbabwe National Students Union (ZINASU), are moving through a different system of governance entirely, the judicial one.
Arrests, court appearances, and delayed hearings form a rhythm of containment rather than resolution.
Protest is no longer a democratic act; it is a procedural risk.
Opposition voices are not debated.
They are processed.
The State is no longer merely silencing dissent; it is scheduling it.
Meanwhile, another machinery operates efficiently for Agenda 2030 and CAB3 compliance.
Selected individuals with political loyalty receive luxury vehicles, cash, and state generosity with ceremonial speed.
War veterans, who sacrificed their youth for independence, receive bicycles.
Civil servants such as nurses receive promises that expire mid-transport fare.
Student leaders advocating for affordable education and democratic reforms receive dockets.
MPs receive incentives for alignment.
In this hierarchy, nothing is hidden, it is operational.
At United Bulawayo Hospitals, sarcasm has replaced expectation. “I want a Raptor,” nurses say, not as aspiration but as indictment.
If abundance exists for persuasion, why is survival always under review?
If millions can be mobilised to secure votes, why is a nurse’s commute a financial crisis?
The question is no longer rhetorical; it is structural.
Hospitals wait for staffing that never arrives.
Students wait for hearings that never conclude.
Nurses wait for salaries that never reach survival.
Citizens wait for a State that appears only when obedience is required.
The Second Republic is not collapsing. It is sorting.
It is sorting who is worth persuading, who is worth suppressing, and who is worth abandoning.
In this sorting, a darker logic emerges—one where money flows upward to secure power, while pain is pushed downward to manage cost.
CAB3 is just the headline.
The real story is the distribution of who gets to live without waiting.
