Majoring in the Minor: A Zimbabwean Habit with Economic Costs

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Zimbabwe’s public discourse follows a familiar cycle.

A remark goes viral, a symbolic issue ignites outrage, or a minor controversy dominates social media and talk shows. For days or weeks, the country is consumed. Then attention shifts, leaving little changed.

Meanwhile, the fundamentals — productivity, service delivery, policy coherence and competitiveness — continue to struggle for sustained attention.

This tendency is often described as “majoring in the minor.” The phrase may sound dismissive, but the consequences are real, particularly for business confidence and economic planning.

The issue is not whether minor controversies matter at all, but whether they consistently crowd out attention to what matters most.

From a business perspective, the imbalance is costly. Zimbabwe’s economic challenges are well known: currency volatility, limited access to affordable capital, infrastructure constraints and high unemployment. These factors shape pricing decisions, investment timelines and survival strategies for enterprises across sectors. Yet rigorous, continuous public engagement around solutions to these challenges is rare.

Instead, national energy is frequently absorbed by debates that generate emotion but require little structural change.

Economic performance is influenced not only by policy, but by the seriousness of the conversation surrounding policy. Investors observe more than official pronouncements. They watch how a country debates its priorities, how quickly attention shifts, and whether difficult issues receive sustained scrutiny. When noise dominates discourse, uncertainty deepens — and uncertainty is the enemy of investment.

There are clear incentives behind this pattern. Minor controversies are safer than structural debates. It is easier to mobilise public emotion around symbols, personalities or isolated incidents than around fiscal discipline, productivity, procurement reform or state-owned enterprise efficiency. Structural issues inevitably raise uncomfortable questions about accountability and trade-offs.

The minor offers intensity without consequence.

There is also a social dimension. In an environment where many citizens feel excluded from meaningful economic decision-making, symbolic debates feel accessible. Commenting on a viral issue provides a sense of participation and relevance. Structural reform, by contrast, appears technical, slow and distant. Majoring in the minor becomes a way to engage when deeper levers feel out of reach.

This does not mean that all “minor” issues are trivial. Culture, dignity and representation matter in any society. Small incidents often reveal deeper tensions — inequality, institutional mistrust or generational frustration. The problem arises when these signals become endpoints rather than gateways to deeper discussion. Outrage replaces analysis, and attention moves on before fundamentals are addressed.

For business, the cost of this pattern accumulates quietly. Companies operate under real constraints and real timelines. They must manage inflation, exchange rate risk, regulatory uncertainty and fragile consumer confidence. Long-term planning depends on predictability and seriousness of intent. When national discourse rarely sustains focus on economic fundamentals, reform pressure weakens. Delay becomes normal. Over time, postponement hardens into policy.

The media environment reinforces this drift. In the attention economy, what travels fastest is often what matters least. Social media rewards immediacy and emotion, not depth or continuity. Yet business journalism carries a different responsibility. It must repeatedly foreground issues of growth, productivity, innovation and governance, even when these lack spectacle or instant engagement.

The challenge, therefore, is not passion but prioritisation. A healthy national conversation can accommodate cultural debate while maintaining relentless focus on economic fundamentals. Zimbabwe’s difficulty lies in keeping the major issues major.

Ultimately, the question is not whether Zimbabweans major in the minor. It is why the pattern persists, who benefits from distraction, and what remains unresolved while attention is elsewhere. Distraction is rarely accidental, and delay has economic consequences.

For a country seeking sustainable growth, business confidence and meaningful job creation, learning to major in the major may be one of the most important reforms of all — not legislated, but practiced daily in how national attention is allocated.

Simbarashe Namusi is a peace, leadership and governance scholar as well as media expert writing in his personal capacity