“The Minister gave me an assignment about the purchase of Ministers’ vehicles and we have agreed with the supplier of vehicles. We are going to buy these vehicles through a letter of credit so that you all get them in one lot,” Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) Governor John Mangudya has announced.
The cars will be purchased using money drawn from foreign currency generated from exports. Cost US$ 16 million!
There is nothing wrong with buying ministers new vehicles per se just as there is nothing wrong with spending millions of dollars sending chefs out of the country for medical care or building palatial mansions for the ruling elite. What is wrong is spending US$ 16 million on new vehicles for ministers, etc. when the country is failing to buy chemical to treat water putting the health of 2 million Harare residence at risk, especially when the said ministers have cars already!
The US$ 16 million is not the ministers money to dispose of as the wish. It is taxpayers’ money and, by right, the taxpayers should have a meaningful say in how the public funds should be used. Given a meaningful say, the public will never ever agree to spend money on this futile exercise of trying to gratify the insatiable appetite of the ruling elite.
The ruling elite’s appetite for mansions, expensive cars, globetrotting, etc. has grown exponentially, they more the got the greater their demand for more. Worse still, whatever the nation spend on the ruling elite the nation got nothing back. The nation has never earned a single dollar from Mugabe’s palatial Blue Roof mansion.
Zanu PF seized the former white-owned farms to give away to party loyalists mostly resulting in the total collapse of the country’s once productive agricultural sector. We have the singular honour of starving in a land which, for all practical purposes, is the Biblical Garden of Eden! A damning testimonial to epoch of human failure.
Zimbabwe is bankrupt because for the last 39 years the nation has been trying to gratify the insatiable appetites of the nation’s ruling elite. We have been trying to fill the proverbial black hole - it takes everything and is always hungry for more and never gives anything away, not even light escapes its gravitational pull and hence the reason we cannot see it and thus the name, black hole.
There is no doubt Zimbabwe is in serious economic trouble! Unemployment has soared to dizzying heights of 90%, 3/4 of the population now live on US$30 per month or less, basic services such as health care have all but completely collapsed, etc. Zimbabwe cannot afford the extravagant waste of feeding the nation’s blackhole ruling elite at the expense of the heart breaking human suffering and deaths of millions of ordinary citizens.
Zimbabwe’s political system in which the ruling elite can spend US$16 million buying new vehicles for ministers whilst millions are forced to drink untreated water is unjust and unsustainable.
The nation has been stuck with this corrupt, incompetent and tyrannical Zanu PF dictatorship for 39 years and counting because the people could not remove the party from office. Zanu PF has enjoyed the dictatorial carte blanche powers to rig elections and stay in power regardless of the people’s democratic wishes.
President Mnangagwa blatantly rigged last year’s elections, he does not have the nation’s democratic mandate to govern and must step down.
If Zanu PF is allowed to stay in power until the 2023, the party will see to it that no meaningful democratic reforms are implemented and so the party will rig that year’s elections just as readily as it rigged past elections. And as long as Zanu PF remains in power the feeding of the blackhole and the tragic human suffering and deaths will continue unabated.
Force Zanu PF to step down so we can implement the democratic reforms necessary for free, fair and credible elections and we will break the cycle of rigged elections and corrupt and tyrannical governance.
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