Junior MPs and Senior Entitlement
The Junior Parliament of Zimbabwe is a structured youth leadership initiative that mirrors the actual Parliament of Zimbabwe, consisting of a Children’s Senate and a House of Assembly with representatives from all ten provinces. It was designed to empower young people, by giving them a platform to advocate for child rights, influence national policies, and discuss critical issues affecting their welfare.
Back when I was in High School, members of Junior Parliament would be selected from outstanding orators in the Debate and Public Speaking club, sharp tongues and quick minds. When my friend was selected to be a Speaker of Parliament, it brought a sense of prestige to our mission boarding school, we floated in the aura of it.
This was one of the things that inspired me to also sign up for public speaking in my senior year… imagining that one day I too might thunder about justice and rights…. well, that and the adolescent crush on my English teacher who was the club patron.
Fast forward to now, 25 years later, and the Junior Parliament holds up a mirror that shows an unflattering reflection. During the 34th session of Zimbabwe’s Junior Parliament, a junior MP proposed that every member should get an iPhone 17 Pro Max.
Not books. Not better school infrastructure. Not policy reforms.
An iPhone.
He reasoned that the government-provided devices have poor-quality cameras that produce blurry images and videos. They need better devices to properly document and share issues affecting young people in their constituencies.
Shortly after, the same junior MP publicly appealed to flamboyant businessman Wicknell Chivayo to donate cars to the junior MPs, claiming they rely on public transport, which makes their work difficult.
As you can imagine… this went viral with people remarking on the culture of entitlement amongst the youth, who, instead of focusing on real issues, are just looking at what they can get for themselves…
Junior Parliament is supposed to build future leaders and civic responsibility. When it produces a viral display of materialism, it suggests the program (and broader system of governance that it copies from) promotes patronage over equitable resource distribution.
In Zimbabwe, senior politicians, connected businessmen and their families often display lavish wealth amid national poverty. Mugabe’s son once posted a viral image flaunting a $60 000 watch.
Recently, businessman Chivayo, who is well known for his extravagant vehicle donations that rain like confetti to loyalists, shared a social media clip wearing a Jacob & Co. Billionaire Double Tourbillon Angel Cut and dropping a cool $4.3 million because time is money…
Given this backdrop, simply dismissing the junior MP as being entitled and spoiled, undercuts their lived experience, they are accurately reflecting the actual political culture they’ve been raised in… They see parliamentarians bickering about vehicles and allowances and at an early age they learnt how real influence and resources flow through patronage, not institutions or merit.
The outrage is understandable, but it mostly attacks the mirror instead of the system that produced the reflection. It’s like breaking a mirror because it showed a pimple on your face.
Maybe the real outrage stems from that we are not shameless enough to also ask for favours from the connected and instead only lash out at the beneficiaries, saying they are captured or they should refuse and instead insist that an ambulance be donated at their nearest clinic…
We have a Shona proverb, mbudzi kudya mufenje hufananyina whose meaning translates to a goat feeds on the mufenje tree just like its mother. It’s an allegory for how the habits and behaviour of children very often reflect those of their parents.
And so, here we are.
Shocked that the next generation has learnt the lesson, when we handed them the syllabus, and they studied it.
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