I was telling somebody that I want to have a driver’s license. It’s about time now. You will not believe what he said or maybe you will. He said in order for me to get a license I would have to go with an extra US$80 or so for me to get the license. That’s not all. He continued to tell me that after the provisional license I must be prepared to have another US$80 to pass the road test. But that is not the end of my story. I went and spoke to another gentleman and said to him; can you believe it, to get a license you need to be prepared to pay extra bribe money of about US$160. I can’t pay that. I vented to him that I am a Christian and I do not promote bribing and such lawless acts. Above all no wonder we have lots of car accidents and unnecessary deaths on the road. We have people that buy their way into the driver’s seat. You know what the second gentleman said to me. He said I should not view this extra US$160 as a bribe but as part of the Zimbabwe driving curriculum. In other words we should have it in black and white, a statement saying in terms of section 1.1 of the new drivers act, all excluding the ones related to driving inspectors, shall be required to pay an extra amount for the acquiring of a driver’s license. Failure to do this will result in you writing the driver’s license exam until you pay the required bribe. I was going to be afraid to write this piece in fear of not passing my driver’s test when I go next month. But I don’t want to be a part of this “bribe me” mentality that has infected our country. Rest assured I will read for the exam and hopefully start a new breed of people that want to do things differently.

This entry was posted on October 29th, 2010 at 3:21 pm by Zanele Manhenga and is filed under Activism, Governance, Inspiration, Reflections, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.