A full grown black mamba, rovambira, five or more metres long has enough venom to kill 400 men! It is cold comfort to hear that a juvenile black mamba has enough poison to kill just a handful of men, especially if you are the one facing those beady eyes!
Under this Mnangagwa Second Republic inflation has been creeping up and up it is Mount Everest 500 billion percent high of 2008 still it is already Mount Inyangeni high to cause serious economic hardships.
“ZIMBABWEAN retailers are struggling to restock locally produced goods using the local unit as manufacturers and wholesalers are turning them away in favour of those that pay in the United States dollar,” reported NewsDay.
“The failure by retailers to procure in local currency comes as the Zimdollar has experienced a sharp depreciation against the US$ amid calls for the full redollarisation of the economy.
“Retailers told NewsDay that they had gone for weeks without the supply of locally produced basic commodities and warned of critical shortages of some products such as sugar.”
We all know where this is going! Those is a position to demand payment for their goods or services in US$ and/or insist on payment is local currency, at the exchange rate of most favourable to them, will do so. And those without the economic muscle will find themselves being short changed at every turn.
“As of yesterday, the Zimdollar was trading at 1:17 830 against the United States dollar at the interbank market and 1:18 500 in supermarkets, while it stood at 1:20 000 on the parallel market,” continued the report.
“American economics professor Steve Hanke on Wednesday said Zimbabwe's year-on-year inflation stood at 1 630%, the world's highest.
“Yet authorities claim that they have ticked all the boxes to contain annual inflation, which according to official statistics was 47,62% in February.”
Some one in my social media WhatsApp group asked me: Why do you always talk about implementing democratic reforms, free and fair elections, Zanu PF rigging the elections and many other political issues but hardly ever comment on the bread and butter economic matters?
Simple, as long as Zanu PF is able to rig elections and stay in power nothing will change. By blatantly rigging the elections Zanu PF confirmed that Zimbabwe is a pariah state ruled by corrupt and incompetent thugs; there is criminal waste of human and material resources, as we can see, and it is naive to expect the economy survive much less thrive.
President Mnangagwa and his cronies keep wittering about Zimbabwe becoming an upper middle income nation by 2030, Vision 2030. This just propaganda, Zimbabwe’s economy is sinking deeper and deeper into the abyss, as the soaring inflation shows.
Even if we accept the regime’s own very conservative inflation rate of 47%, how many countries in human history have enjoyed economic growth whilst inflation remained high?
Zanu PF blatantly rigged the 2023 elections; SADC, AU and even our own ZHRC election observers all condemned the election as flawed and illegal. The regime got away with it because the country’s sellouts in main opposition party leaders, CCC led by Nelson Chamisa, conned the people into participating in the flawed elections to give the regime legitimacy. And once back in power the corruption and mismanagement have continued whilst selling us the vision 2030 mirage!
Like it or not we cannot stop the gross mismanagement and rampant corruption, the cancers killing the Zimbabwe economy without first addressing the issue of good governance. We must cure ourselves of the double curse of rigged elections and bad governance.
The present system gives ruling elite carte blanche powers to rig elections and after that, they do as they please. They completely ignore our suffering and pleas for meaningful change, we, the people, as helpless as a kitten chasing its own tail.
“Seek ye first the political kingdom and all other things shall be added unto you.” advised Independent Ghana’s first President, Kwame Nkrumah.
Simply put; We in Zimbabwe must seek a political system in which those in power are democratically accountable to the people only then can we hope for any meaningful economic recovery.
There cannot be meaningful economic change in Zimbabwe without meaningful political change. There cannot be economic recovery without political reforms to underwrite and guarantee free, fair and credible elections.