A STABLE environment is good for long term planning. This is why business people shun investing in an environment that is not stable and very unpredictable (like Zimbabwe).
Stability enables you to understand what is happening and, more importantly, gives the assurance that it will not regularly change to suit people’s moods.
Clear rules, regulations and laws are some of the things that give predictability and a sense of stability. When these are not clear, everyone determines for themselves what is right and how they should behave.
Imagine the chaos that pertains in such an environment.
No-one knows what to avoid and what to indulge in and how - that kind of chaos is not conducive to civilisation and progress.
Having clear rules is not enough - they should also be accompanied by the willingness and ability to enforce them. An absence of either willingness or ability to enforce will give rise to a situation where these have no force. They will be ignored as if they do not exist, because people will know that there will be no consequences.
This opens a door to chaos and lack of accountability. Impunity becomes the order of the day and corruption the norm.
Many people are wary of investing in a country like Zimbabwe although they would definitely get more for their money given the weakness in that country’s currency. The main reason is the absence of rules and in other cases the lack of predictability in implementation of regulations.
Who would want to invest when they are not sure of the sanctity of their investment? You do not want to have a person coming to claim your property or any other kind of investment and then you find that the law is useless when it is supposed to protect you.
We hear stories of a number of countries where if you do not bribe, you do not get government services and people feel helpless because no one is pronouncing on and implementing the law.
For this not to be viewed as government-bashing I must state that I have also come across a church that has nicely written rules that are sometimes ignored by those that are tasked with implementing them.
The enthusiasm and willingness to implement depends on who is in the leadership at the time.
Human factors tend to feature strongly in the process, so if a favoured person is in the right, the rules will be strongly implemented, and if they are in the wrong, then there will be laxity in the implementation.
In such situations corruption prevails, as people know that they don’t have to fight to change the system, but they can just buy the ones who are to dispense justice. Sometimes this is done by finding ways to delay making a ruling based on the known rules, so as to lessen the impact on transgressors.
I also know of one province where those in power would sometimes decide to suspend a person for a long time with the view of frustrating him/her. In some of these cases the people are suspended without pay so as to ensure that the person loses everything.
Those who are doing this know that they are breaking the law, but they don’t care. They know that if the victim goes to court the process will take a long time. This ensures that by the time the court rules in the favour of the victim he/she must have lost almost everything.
There will be no consequences for the perpetrators as the court ruling will be against a government department and thus there is no personal liability for them.
Bringing the person back to work will not heal the emotional scars and the lost property of a person will be viewed as a victory by the perpetrators.
There are many instances where rules are either fuzzy, or implemented inequitably, based on who is involved, either as a dispenser or recipient of justice.
What we are asking is to have stability and a bit of predictability in the environment that we live we live, work and worship in.
We cannot invest with confidence in an environment where rules keep on changing.
