What happened to a once proud nation such that we now celebrate a borehole?

Tendai Ruben Mbofana

A caricature currently circulating on social media depicts jubilant residents singing and dancing around a newly installed borehole in the middle of an urban setting.

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Their ecstatic reactions resemble a nation witnessing some historic scientific breakthrough rather than access to a basic necessity that any functioning city should already provide.

Yet, the disturbing power of the cartoon lies precisely in what is being celebrated: access to water in a city.

That caricature is uncomfortable not because it is unrealistic or mocking Zimbabweans. 

It is uncomfortable because it forces us to confront a painful question many would rather avoid: how does an entire people become conditioned to celebrate what should already be a basic and unquestionable right?

The answer has very little to do with intelligence, culture, or national character. 

No people are naturally born with low expectations. 

No society willingly chooses to embrace dysfunction, mediocrity, or decay. 

What happens instead is far more dangerous and tragic. 

Human beings adapt psychologically to prolonged hardship. 

When decline persists long enough, entire populations gradually adjust themselves emotionally and mentally to conditions they would once have fiercely rejected.

That is how nations slowly lose not only infrastructure and prosperity, but also their sense of what is normal, acceptable, and deserved.

One of the most destructive effects of prolonged national decline is the gradual replacement of aspiration with survival. 

In healthy societies, citizens concern themselves with progress. 

Public conversations revolve around improving living standards, strengthening institutions, expanding opportunities, increasing efficiency, and building prosperity for future generations. 

Governments are judged not merely on whether people survive, but on whether society advances.

But when a country experiences repeated economic crises, collapsing public services, unemployment, corruption, and political instability over many years, the collective mindset changes. 

People stop thinking about advancement and begin focusing almost entirely on survival. 

The daily struggle becomes about finding transport money, accessing clean water, obtaining electricity, buying food, or securing healthcare.

And survival changes people psychologically.

It drains emotional energy. 

It narrows horizons. 

It forces citizens to focus on immediate needs rather than long-term transformation. 

A population trapped in permanent survival mode rarely possesses the emotional strength required to sustain pressure for systemic national change. 

Survival itself becomes exhausting.

Over time, this prolonged hardship also creates what psychologists refer to as learned helplessness. 

This occurs when people are repeatedly exposed to disappointment, failure, and powerlessness until they gradually stop believing meaningful change is possible. 

Citizens witness corruption scandals that produce no accountability. 

They hear endless promises that never materialize. 

They endure worsening conditions despite repeated expressions of frustration and anger.

Eventually, many stop expecting improvement altogether.

This does not happen because people are weak. 

It happens because repeated disappointment conditions human beings to lower expectations as a form of emotional self-protection. 

Hope itself becomes painful when it is repeatedly betrayed.

At that stage, societies begin normalizing conditions that would once have provoked outrage. 

Dry taps become routine. 

Endless power cuts become ordinary conversation. 

Potholes become accepted features of roads. 

Public hospitals without medication become part of everyday life. 

Dysfunction ceases to feel temporary and instead becomes embedded into national identity.

This is where the real danger emerges.

Once people adapt themselves psychologically to dysfunction, even the smallest improvements begin appearing extraordinary. 

The restoration of electricity after hours without power sparks celebration. 

A repaired road becomes headline news. 

The installation of a borehole in a city becomes treated like a national achievement rather than the bare minimum expectation of functional governance.

The tragedy is not the celebration itself. 

Human beings naturally celebrate relief after prolonged suffering. 

The tragedy is that suffering lowered expectations so dramatically that basic services now appear miraculous.

Perhaps even more damaging is how this transformation alters the relationship between citizens and leadership. 

In functional democracies, public services are viewed as obligations of governance. 

Citizens understand that roads, water, healthcare, electricity, and sanitation are not gifts from politicians but rights funded through national resources and taxation.

But in struggling societies, those same services increasingly become framed as acts of generosity. 

Citizens are subtly conditioned to feel gratitude for receiving what should already belong to them by right. 

Leaders receive praise for performing elementary duties that ought to be routine responsibilities.

This is precisely why some are now even supporting the extension of the president’s term in office simply because his government drilled a few boreholes and repaired some potholed roads.

That shift is devastating because it weakens accountability. 

Once citizens begin celebrating mediocrity, mediocrity becomes sustainable. 

Standards collapse. 

Expectations diminish. 

The government no longer feels pressure to pursue excellence because survival-level governance becomes politically sufficient.

At the same time, prolonged hardship creates dependency structures that reinforce this mentality. 

In weakened economies, access to opportunities and resources often becomes tied to patronage systems and political loyalty. 

Public displays of gratitude become socially and politically useful. 

Under such conditions, exaggerated celebration may not always reflect genuine satisfaction, but rather adaptation to systems where dependence discourages criticism.

Meanwhile, younger generations growing up under these conditions may never fully experience what a properly functioning society looks like. 

If someone has spent their entire life without reliable electricity, efficient public healthcare, clean running water, or accountable governance, they may eventually begin viewing dysfunction as normal. 

Their standards are shaped not by what society should be, but by what they have always known.

At the same time, older generations who remember better days often become emotionally exhausted. 

Years of disappointment wear people down psychologically. 

Many retreat into private survival strategies, focusing on protecting their families and livelihoods rather than engaging in broader national struggles.

This produces another feature common in struggling societies: humour as a coping mechanism. 

Satire, jokes, laughter, and exaggerated celebration become emotional survival tools. 

People laugh not necessarily because conditions are acceptable, but because humour provides temporary relief from frustration and despair.

That caricature of Zimbabweans celebrating a borehole is therefore not merely comedy. It is a warning.

It warns of the psychological consequences of prolonged decline. 

It exposes what happens when a people become conditioned to expect so little from leadership and governance that basic necessities begin feeling like extraordinary accomplishments.

The most dangerous form of national collapse is therefore not always economic or infrastructural. 

It is psychological.

A country can rebuild roads. 

It can restore electricity generation. 

It can revive industries and repair hospitals. 

But rebuilding the mindset of a people conditioned for decades to survive rather than aspire is far more difficult.

Because true national recovery begins the moment citizens rediscover the courage to demand more than survival.

Not miracles.

Not charity.

Not symbolic gestures presented as achievements.

But competent governance, functioning institutions, dignity, accountability, and basic public services as ordinary, non-negotiable expectations of any society that claims to value its people.

• Tendai Ruben Mbofana is a social justice advocate and writer. To directly receive his articles please join his WhatsApp Channel on: https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VaqprWCIyPtRnKpkHe08