In my opinion, the ordinary Zimbabwean, or the Zanu (PF) member who naïvely remonstrates at the idea of Mugabe going, has no idea of the rot the party has created over the last 25 years robbing this country of its future.
It is estimated that we are losing about $800 million every month in smuggled gold. Economist Eddie Cross estimated that we have lost close to $12 billion in diamond revenues since the discovery of alluvial gems in Chiadzwa.
The army is in mining and other sectors, while even the CIO has its own business interests. Cigarette smuggling is a huge mafia business. The commodity trading and import licences issued to Zanu (PF) cronies, who put a premium on prices, create serious profiteering on the economic shortages they create. This ranges from food and agricultural inputs, to building materials, medicines and anything you can think of. The informal sector is also being sucked dry. Rents are paid to Zanu (PF) touts for providing space and imported goods are brought in without paying duties. It’s plunder by all as party minions continue to extort fees from poor vendors and kombi drivers.
I am reliably told that the government has spent a whopping $600 million on motor vehicles alone in the last year and, of course, these are sourced from car dealers connected to Zanu (PF) – who are doing very well despite the fact that this economy is on the edge.
In addition, a number of projects are being stalled because some Ministers want a share of the spoils for doing nothing. Mystery also shrouds the recent Russian and Chinese mining and infrastructure deals. It’s a feeding frenzy by the unscrupulous, corrupt and greedy.
The Godfather himself, President Mugabe, has an annual budget of $200 million approved by parliament, including our opposition legislators by the way. Of course he spends it at his pleasure with no accountability at all. He is above the law.
Our state enterprises are loaded with parasites who collect salaries each month for doing nothing but pay homage to the supreme leader and place adverts of their undying loyalty at any given chance. Others even confess publicly that they fear him so that they can keep their jobs.
Amongst all this, someone has the audacity to suggest that Gideon Gono saved the country. That is truly laughable and assumes that we are all idiots. If anything Gono saved Zanu (PF) by entrenching a mafia economy and now we are expected to fund the RBZ debt he created. Don’t forget how he wiped out the wealth of a generation of Zimbabweans through printing Zimbabwe dollars. It’s a crime against humanity.
The truth is that the lucrative mafia-style secret economy is feeding off the general collapse of the formal economy and the now burgeoning informal economy. I suspect that our GDP is actually much more than the formal numbers of $14billion as suggested by Patrick Chinamasa.
As I sit and contemplate on the future we want, and how we can break this system, I am persuaded that our only means is through a united front that demands the immediate stepping down of this government and its replacement by a National Transitional Technical Body as proposed by Elton Mangoma. Such a body would take over the day-to-day management of the country as we move towards reforms and new elections as soon as possible. Nothing else will work.
We must be united in purpose, and action and reject any election without reforms. We must encourage peaceful mass protest by every sane Zimbabwean on all issues we face. Make no mistake, we cannot do this if we protect own our little turfs in political parties in the fear of losing our positions.
The battle is bigger than any one of us. I therefore fully support the Bakare initiative, but let the results of that be action and not another gathering of victims, analysts and academics. – Vince Musewe is an economist, author and President of Zimbabwe First! You can contact him directly on vtmusewe@gnail.com
Post published in: Opinions