By Tinotenda Bhunu
HARARE – THERE’S something worth reflecting on in the idea that you might soon need five O-Levels to get a professional driving licence.
The proposal is now before Parliament, and the reasoning behind it sounds sensible enough on the surface. Professional drivers carry passengers, they operate heavy vehicles, they spend long hours on public roads. Higher standards, in theory, shouldn’t hurt anyone.
But underneath that reasonable-sounding proposal sits a question that’s far less comfortable to confront.
If you need five O-Levels to prove you’re fit to drive a bus, what exactly should we be demanding from the people driving the country?
Think about it in terms of who’s actually responsible for what.
A professional driver might have a few dozen lives in his hands on any given trip. A Member of Parliament, a minister, a councillor – their decisions ripple out to hundreds of thousands of people, sometimes millions. Taxes, spending, debt, regulation, property rights, infrastructure, the whole direction of the economy. That’s the job.
And yet none of that requires a degree. An MP doesn’t need one. A councillor doesn’t need five O-Levels before taking charge of a local authority’s finances. A minister can be handed a budget running into the billions without ever having to show formal competence in economics, finance, or public administration.
It’s worth noting that some countries have actually tried the credentialist route. Iran requires candidates for its parliament, the Majlis, to hold at least a bachelor’s degree, and for years the bar was set even higher, at a master’s level. It hasn’t obviously produced a wiser or less corrupt legislature. If anything, it’s just another filter the state uses to decide who gets to play.
Meanwhile, the driver of a bus might soon need five O-Levels just to get behind the wheel.
That contrast is worth sitting with for a moment.
Some might argue that we should require a degree for Parliament. Five O-Levels for council. A master’s in economics for the Minister of Finance. A doctorate in public administration for whoever runs local government. And while we’re considering such ideas, why not a national competency exam for the President before he is allowed near the machinery of state?
Obviously, that line of thinking quickly becomes impractical.
Which is precisely the point.
The trouble with using certificates as a stand-in for competence is that a certificate and actual competence are two very different things.
Plenty of people walk around with five O-Levels and drive poorly. Plenty of others never finished school and still have superb road sense, sharp reflexes, patience, discipline – the whole package that actually keeps people safe on the road.
Politics works the same way, if we are honest.
A degree does not automatically make someone a good legislator. A PhD says nothing definitive about integrity. A strong academic record has never been a reliable shield against poor judgement. And history offers many examples of leaders with modest formal education who governed with greater wisdom than some of their more decorated contemporaries.
This is where policy tends to trip over itself. We reach for what is easy to count instead of what actually counts.
Certificates are easy to tally up.
Competence is not.
So the state, naturally, reaches for the certificate.
There is an economic angle to this too, one that is easy to miss if you are not the one affected by it.
A professional driving licence is not just a bit of laminated plastic. For a lot of Zimbabweans, it is their livelihood. It is the line between having an income and not having one. It is the ticket into public transport, logistics, haulage, delivery work – all the corners of the transport economy that keep people fed.
Every new qualification bolted onto that licence raises the cost of getting in.
That might be worth it, if the qualification genuinely makes someone a safer driver. But the burden of proof belongs to whoever is putting up the barrier, not to the people trying to get past it.
So ask the obvious question: does having five O-Levels actually make you a safer, more competent driver?
If yes, show the connection.
If what we are really worried about is literacy, basic numeracy, reading road signs, following instructions, filling in paperwork, handling the responsibilities that come with the job, then test those things directly. Test the skill, not the certificate.
Why demand five subjects passed years ago when you could just test whether someone can actually do the job today?
This is an old pattern in economic policy, and not always a productive one. Governments sometimes regulate by creating barriers to entry rather than by testing whether someone can actually do the work. The people already holding the credentials get protected. The people trying to break in face another barrier. And in an economy where formal jobs are already scarce, every new requirement deserves a hard look before it is built.
There is a bigger, more uncomfortable question lurking behind all of this.
If we are comfortable saying people need certain academic credentials before they are trusted with responsibility, should we not apply that consistently, across the board?
Why stop at bus drivers?
If five O-Levels are enough to prove minimum competence behind the wheel, surely someone controlling a municipal budget should clear some minimum bar too. If a councillor is shaping local development and handling public money, why is there no equivalent test of their competence? If an MP is voting on taxation and national debt and the laws that govern the whole economy, why do we not ask for at least some formal qualification?
The awkward truth is that academic qualifications were never built to measure political competence in the first place.
Maybe they should not be used to measure driving competence either.
A society that values fairness should be cautious about letting the state decide who is “worthy” based on paperwork alone. The better route is to identify the actual risk and test for that risk directly.
Want to regulate driving? Test the driving.
Test road knowledge. Test vehicle control. Test defensive driving. Test knowledge of traffic law. Test professional conduct on the job.
Fail those, and you do not get on the road – fair enough.
But pass them, and why should the state care whether you also passed five subjects at O-Level years before?
Politics needs the same logic, even if the fix looks different. Instead of dreaming up academic gatekeeping for who gets to participate, let voters judge candidates on competence, character, ideas, and track record. That is supposed to be what elections are for: sorting out who deserves the responsibility, not handing out certificates on the state’s behalf.
There is something deeply inconsistent about a country that might demand five O-Levels from the person driving the bus while asking nothing comparable from the people debating the national budget.
Perhaps the real lesson here is not that politicians need more paper.
It is that paper was never a good stand-in for competence to begin with.
And if we genuinely believe qualifications should decide who gets trusted with responsibility, we should have the nerve to follow that logic all the way through, instead of stopping wherever happens to be convenient.
Five O-Levels to drive a bus.
A degree to sit in Parliament.
Five O-Levels to sit on council.
And, for the people actually running the economy, an economics degree and a public exam to go with it.
Once that starts to sound unreasonable – and it should – we can finally get to the question that actually matters:
Why are we using certificates as a substitute for competence in the first place?
Tinotenda Bhunu is an economist by profession. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tinotenda-bhunu-114645208?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=android_app
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