ointed Prices and Incomes Commission and the Cabinet Task Force on Price Controls. In other words, these dubious bodies now have no real work to do in relation to the setting of prices and incomes in the Zimbabwe economy. Mugabe is clearly delusional, or is it a strange kind of senility that is haunting him? He probably believes that by authorising changes in prices and incomes he will be able to control inflation in the face of the 2008 presidential and parliamentary elections.
We remember that this same old man once claimed that no one could have run (down) the Zimbabwe economy better than himself. Well, now that the economy is effectively on its knees where else can he ever take it? For the past 27years, Mugabe has amply demonstrated that he is a lousy leader whichever way you look at him. Politically, he has been a disaster for this country. He has effectively stripped this country of all known vestiges of democracy and human rights, except as defined by him and his hoodlums in ZanuPF. The result is that this nation is the laughing stock of the region. Zimbabwe has been reduced to a pariah state that no sane country, developed or developing, wishes to relate with, perhaps with the exception of Namibia and Malawi. North Korea and Cuba do not count – they are not democratic states.
It must be frustrating to such noble bodies as the ZCTU, ZIMTA and PTUZ to realise that Mugabe froze the incomes and prices just days after his corrupt government approved numerous price increases, without any meaningful salary and wage increases. The only labour organisation that may be unperturbed by this ridiculous development is Chinotimba’s ZFTU. Indeed, Chinos is jokingly quoted as having recently said on an independent radio station, “We will not left Mugabe alone”. Let us see how he impresses his humble followers to accept that their incomes have been frozen although the prices of various goods and services have been hiked in the past few days.
What the dictator has done is to set himself up for widespread strikes in virtually all sectors of the economy. This time even the timid “evil servants” will be forced to threaten to participate in collective job action (or inaction). School teachers are likely to take their vengeance on the defenceless kids in their classes. There is likely to be no meaningful teaching taking place this term if teachers do not get reasonable salary increases. It is ironic that street cleaners in Harare earn better salaries than educated school teachers in government schools. Meanwhile, there is little evidence of any improvement in the availability of goods whose prices were recently increased.
What the rulers of this sinking Titanic fail to understand is that the productive sector is complex; it cannot simply be switched on and off like Zesa. Producers and manufacturers need time to source inputs and set their targets in relation to potential market demands. Is Mugabe going to be able to force producers and manufacturers to provide the goods and services that are now desperately in short supply simply because he is now in charge of changes in incomes and prices? There has never been a more urgent need for regime change than right now.
Post published in: Opinions