The downward spiral continues for Zimbabwe – Tanonoka Joseph Whande

via The downward spiral continues for Zimbabwe | SW Radio Africa by Tanonoka Joseph Whande February 3, 2014

The ineptitude of Zimbabwe’s government is getting more and more critical by the day. The month of January exposed the simple fact that those running the country have long ran out of ideas.

As expected, the ZANU-PF government is hopelessly failing to rule the country they, themselves, destroyed.

The little upward movement of the economy we had started to notice towards the end of the unity government disappeared hardly a week after Mugabe and his goons took total control of the government.

Mugabe, whose senility can no longer be contested, has long been out of touch. His new cabinet is full of potential long-serving candidates from Homes for the Aged. He appointed blind men and women to stir the country. And we are speeding in the wrong direction fast!

The results of the old man’s misguided existence in politics are there for all to see. The country is sinking back into the pitiful depths of despair that have characterised our day to day lives for more than 20 years.

It is appalling that Mugabe has the talent to push the nation into the dungeons but has no clue as to how to remedy the situation.

The salary scandals that are currently rocking the nation, in which some are paid more than what the job is worthy while others go for three years without full pay, can be traced back to Mugabe’s practice of side-lining professionals and employing relatives, friends and praise singers.

All the parastatals are on their knees.

People went for months without pay at the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation while a so-called Director General was being overpaid.

Because of mounting pressure, the government made a move by suspending the corporation’s Director General and other top people but that, in itself, is a little too late and meaningless. Too much damage had been done.

In the latter half of January, the government had problems with civil servants in addition to teachers threatening to strike. Some cities, like Kwekwe, could not even afford to pay their water bills and the state-owned Zimbabwe National Water Authority (ZINWA) disconnected the water supply to the city.

Last week, the government threatened more than 800 asbestos miners with dismissal at Mashava’s Gaths Mine; they were on strike protesting six months of unpaid wages.

Nothing indicates this government’s misplaced priorities and indifference to the citizens than the Chiadzwa Diamond Fields where human rights violations and abuse of fellow citizens are widespread with the government turning a blind eye because Mugabe and his top comrades are benefitting.

Last week, a 13-page report detailing incidents of assaults, dog attacks and prolonged detentions by security officials working for the diamond mining firms against people accused of illegal diamond panning was published. It has gruesome visuals showing the extent of the injuries people sustained.

Meanwhile, Air Zimbabwe is a laughing stock of an entity, a scary thing considering how sensitive the business of flying people around is. Like at the other parastatals, Mugabe loyalists syphoned off the money into personal pockets.

In spite of the anti-British rhetoric and perpetual tirades, Mugabe’s government last week approached the British government and begged them to pay school fees for 750 000 poor children who are on social welfare.

In the current budget, Mugabe allocated his office a staggering $200 million yet he runs to the British to beg them if they could please pay school fees for thousands of his child citizens.

What a nationalist!

All this is happening while Mugabe cronies who head parastatals are being paid what those parastatals cannot afford. The most recent pathetic example is that of Cuthbert Dube, head of the Public Service Medical Aid Society who has been reported to earning USA $250,000 per month. If Dube so wished, with 3 months of his salary, he could pay a year’s school fees for half of these poor pupils.

How can donors take us seriously?

This comes at a time when revelations are being made that Harare City Council Town Clerk and 18 of his managers were earning more than $500 000 a month while residents of Harare are burdened with inflated utilities and amenities bills, in addition to poor service delivery.

This is Mugabe’s Zimbabwe today, alright.

We used to export chickens and day-old chicks across Africa but today, we are eating imported chicken from Brazil – chicken meat preserved in embalming fluid and formaldehyde.

There just is no management.

We have a government in free fall. A president who lost the script decades ago is surrounded by greedy, thieving imbeciles who, like their leader, believe in looting the nation and this time they are doing it big time.

As Mugabe sends a begging bowl to the British, he does not seem concerned about all the rot going on in the country although a few of the blood suckers have either been suspended or fired from their plum jobs.

Chombo just re-instated the Harare Town Clerk.

On his part, Mugabe is currently pre-occupied with the recovery of a house he had bought in Hong Kong but which is now said to have been taken by Hsieh Ping-sung, the emissary businessman who brokered and acquired the three-story house for Mugabe – presumably for use by Mugabe’s daughter when she was a university student there.

In 2009 Mugabe denied owning the property but said that they were renting it for their daughter and her friends. Oh, what a thoughtful father, renting a $5 million three-storey luxury pad for daughter and friends!

But in court papers filed in Hong Kong, Mugabe now claims it is, indeed, his house and “the government of Zimbabwe” wants it back.

It is interesting to note in the court papers how “Mugabe’s house” is used interchangeably with “the government of Zimbabwe”, as if he is trying to recover Zimbabwe government property.

The same man who appears to have duped Mugabe, also at that time allegedly conned Mugabe’s wife Grace of $1 million. Ping-sung and Grace Mugabe reportedly fell out over a botched deal to buy trucks in which Grace is claiming that Ping had stolen $1 million from her, with the long distance haulage trucks never having been delivered to her.

If Mugabe and his wife can dabble in millions of unaccounted for public funds, why do we expect their underlings not to indulge as well?

The heart of the matter is that both Zimbabwe and ZANU-PF have no leader.

Zimbabwe is marooned and the vultures have since landed and are feasting.

Zimbabwe has no government because none of these people in government appears to be there to work for the advancement of Zimbabwe.

We cannot remain in the same deplorable mess for as long as we have done.

Because ZANU-PF fails to adhere to accepted economic principles that are practised and that guide other nations, we are failing even to have our own currency. We have become a pimping nation; a monetary prostitute, so to speak.

In 2009, Zimbabwe adopted the US dollar, the Botswana Pula and the South African Rand as legal tender.

Last Wednesday, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe announced that the Chinese Yuan, Japanese Yen, the Indian Rupee and the Australian Dollar are now accepted as legal tender in Zimbabwe, “with Zimbabweans and exporters able to open accounts in the various currencies”.

With such a track record, it, therefore, came as no surprise when Mugabe was a few days ago elected to be the “First Deputy Chair of the African Union”, whatever that is. We are told this was because of admiration of his leadership.

Zimbabwe, along with SADC and the African Union, are solid proof that Ian Khama’s decision to break ranks with all of these is a necessity.

Except for the morons at the AU, I do not see anyone who admires what Mugabe is doing. Who really would like to be associated with such rot?

In spite of the rhetoric and stupid support, no leader has ever tried to borrow Mugabe’s satanic type of policies and government.

Is Mugabe not ashamed to fight so hard just so as to be invited to enter Europe?

I am Tanonoka Joseph Whande and that, my fellow Zimbabweans, is the way it is today, Monday,