I would want to believe that possibly Mugabe is the only patriot left in Zimbabwe otherwise everyone else is an enemy of the country. How else can one afford to be patriotic to the marrow and still retain their sanity? How?
Teachers have been striking for the second time this year; they are enemies of the state – agents of the British – because they are supposed to keep on working even when their salaries can no longer cover the cost of commuting to and from their workplaces. They are supposed to be patriots, otherwise why would they demand huge salaries when they know that the Government has other more important things to attend to?
There are also the doctors and university lecturers who are almost permanently on strike. Then there are also farmers who demand to know producer prices before they start tilling the land.
Then there are villagers in Matabeleland who are now reportedly refusing to accept payment for anything in Zim dollar; they prefer the rand or pula as a means of payment because they can no longer trust their country’s own currency.
Then some peasant farmers refuse to sell their grain to the Grain Marketing Board, instead preferring to smuggle a few buckets to sell on the black market in towns and cities. They don’t think the price offered by the GMB is fair, but there is no-one to argue with. So they end up being enemies of the state.
There are many people, hundreds of thousands, who were given the land to till under the land reform programme. Most of them have not bothered to see where the pieces of land are, and those who have taken up the land are not doing better than those who never bothered to take it up. Year after year, they have made a fortune from selling farming inputs and implements…seeds, fertiliser, chemicals, and most commonly diesel. Almost every farmer, including senior members of Mugabe’s cabinet and party, is guilty of this mischief. We know that it is the British who are behind all this, but this makes them enemies of the revolution.
Business has been getting orders from the British to keep on increasing prices. Even though common-sense thinking detects that they should sell their products and services above cost in order to make profit, they are expected to sell below cost. The argument is that they should make money from huge volumes (never mind where the raw materials come from!), not price increases, even when inflation is well over 100,000 percent. In fact, they are expected to do like the GMB, which imports maize for more than $5bn per tonne and sell it to millers for just $2.5m. Or like NOCZIM which imports fuel for about $20m per litre only to tell it for about $80,000. A special pricing commission has been put in place to ensure that they achieve this miracle; otherwise anyone who does not comply becomes an enemy of the state.
We sell the foreign exchange we get from our relatives in the diaspora and from moonlighting for the some hostile Western media on the black market; even Government ministers and State media journalists also sell their forex to the same market when they return from the President’s many trips. So they are also enemies of the president and his country.
Almost most all the vehicles on Zimbabwean roads – including those of ministers of religion and other God-fearing individuals – are running on fuel sourced from the black market. Bread, cooking oil, and other basics of life are only available on the black market. So by going out of the way to source these on the illegal black market, we all run afoul with the dictates of good citizenry, and thereby become enemies of the state.
Anyone who tries to think or argue otherwise is an enemy of the country! They are witches and prostitutes, to use the presidential language!
I just wonder how many other Zimbabweans really qualify to be called patriots. So this should be some form of consolation to Morgan, Simba, Dumiso and others who have are being insulted daily for allegedly being less patriotic.
Post published in: Opinions