Bootlicking business leaders flatter Mugabe

eepening crisis.
According to minutes of the confidential business briefing availed to The Zimbabwean this week, business leaders told the aged leader that they had let him down. They allowed him to run away with his rhetoric that sanctions were responsible for the economic crisis in Zimbabwe.
“When we look at how we as a nation have performed against the goal that you set for us, that is the goal to create a prosperous nation where the lives of all our people are uplifted, we can all clearly see that we have all let you down, this country, business and government, have let you down,” the business leaders were told Mugabe during the confidential meeting held at State House, President Mugabe’s official residence.
The meeting was attended by Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries president Callisto Jokonya, Zimbabwe National Chamber of Commerce president Marah Hativagone, Employers Confederation of Zimbabwe head Johnson Manyakara, Delta Corporation CEO Joe Mtizwa, former CZI boss and Ariston Holdings CEO Kumbirai Katsande and Pindie Nyandoro, chairperson of the Bankers Association of Zimbabwe.
The business leaders told the geriatric leader that his “contribution to Zimbabwe was without equal” and that he was a “decisive leader” who had created a “prosperous society for all.”
The business leaders spoke amid grinding poverty, massive shortages of basics, unemployment and hyperinflation.
They told Mugabe that his disastrous “price war” that has resulted in empty shelves in supermarkets “had very good reasons.”
Nothing was said about the arrest of up to 4,000 businessmen defying the insane directive to slash prices by 50 percent, nor the closure of hundreds of businesses weighed down by unviable pricing structures imposed by Mugabe.
Nothing was said about the mounting job losses. Instead, business leaders proposed a package of reforms which they claimed could breathe new life into the comatose economy.
In a tone that smacked of bootlicking, the business leaders said: “We do not want to prescribe any solutions to you Your Excellency but we do have some suggestions on areas of priority,” say the minutes.