Gideon Gono must go

At last, the SADC is beginning to show some teeth, but we still have to see them being used to deal with some of the simple problems that the inclusive government seems to be experiencing since its formation in February. It is clear that the ministerial team made much better mileage in dealing with the crisis in Zimbabwe than is usually attained by the heads of states of the SADC.

It is unfortunate that most of the people in Zanu (PF) have since lost the decency of knowing when to vacate offices when they are rejected by the people. Common decency would have made a person like Gono leave the RBZ many months ago. It is not true that Mugabe has insisted that Gono should not vacate his office.

It is not true that Gono resigned some time in the past and Mugabe would not accept the resignation. This is fiction. Gono has never wanted to leave the RBZ, and I doubt that he has ever written a letter of resignation and submitted it to Mugabe. On the contrary, the truth of the matter might actually be that it is Gono who has pleaded with Mugabe to allow him to continue as governor until the latter leaves office.

It is obvious that Mugabe owes Gono a lot by way of all manner of financial and other corruption-related benefits for himself and for his decaying political party. It is therefore incumbent upon Mugabe to protect Gono for as long as possible. The fact that this situation is now threatening the very existence of the inclusive government places Mugabe between a rock and a hard place.

There are many senior members of Zanu (PF) who agree that Gono should leave the RBZ as soon as possible for the sake of the national economy. Some of them have had their own businesses wrecked as a result of Gonos weird monetary policies. Foreign investors are unlikely to take the risk of investing in a country where the central banker is alleged to have a track record of abusing corporate and individual bank accounts for the benefit of his preferred political party.

Foreign development agencies are wary of trusting a kleptomaniac with their financial resources that are supposed to benefit this nation. Gono has publicly displayed his ill-gotten wealth without any credible explanation of how he came to accumulate it in five short years as governor of the central bank in this country. The man who once said, Failure is not an option has now been forced to eat his own words.

It will not be easy for Mugabe to assign Gono to any meaningful position within the public sector. Perhaps the detested gentleman should simply be reinstated as chief executive office at CBZ where he came from in the first place. Alternatively, he could be appointed Zimbabwes ambassador to some back-of-beyond democratic republic elsewhere. This would have to be a place where the poor man would be out of the limelight for at least five years so that the people of this country can forget about him and his dubious financial gyrations.

And as the Roy Bennett case gets underway in the courts, the nation expects to witness another of the controversially unwanted people, Yohannes Tomana, make a fool of himself by prosecuting Roy for fictitious and trumped up charges. There is no room for boredom in Zimbabwe.