Gideon Gono “… in sheep’s clothing” :
The Role of the RBZ
Governor in Murambatsvina
Sokwanele Report : 8 June 2005
No other party in Zimbabwe's history surely ever had the
sheer audacity that ZANU PF displays in, on the one hand, carrying out the most
dastardly acts, and on the other, dressing up those acts to look respectable.
Time and again they claim the most noble motives to justify the most ignoble
deeds. So in the year 2000, when the party's popularity was plunging and in
order to divert attention from the chronic failures in governance that were then
showing up in significant social and economic problems, they undertook a
programme of violent and unlawful farm invasions. They called it the Third
Chimurenga and used their state-controlled propaganda machine to portray the
exercise as correcting long-standing grievances arising from historic
inequalities in land holding. A mask of respectability to conceal an unpalatable
truth.
So too in the last few weeks we have seen ZANU PF launch a
massive blitzkrieg against urban dwellers whom they have conspicuously failed to
persuade to vote for the party in the last three major elections. This is
nothing other than political retribution, with no doubt a sub-plot of
depopulating urban areas and forcing people back to their "rural homes" where
ZANU PF thinks it can the more easily manipulate and control them. In other
words social engineering by means of forced migration, and carried out with the
kind of ruthless efficiency for which Hendrik Verwoerd and the founding fathers
of South Africa's Apartheid were once noted. Still the spectacle of thousands of
street vendors being brutally ejected from their homes and workplaces and
hundreds of thousands of families rendered homeless and destitute, was never
going to be a pretty sight, so ZANU PF did two things to minimize the public
relations damage. First they reduced media coverage as far as possible, and
second they did their best to portray the exercise as a necessary "clean-up",
anti-crime operation. It was therefore given the code-name "Operation
Murambatsvina" ("Operation Drive out Trash) - though this only begs the
question, what in Mugabe's and ZANU PF's view is "the trash"? A working
definition for them seems to be anyone foolish enough to resist ZANU PF
tyranny.
One ZANU PF chef who has not been linked too closely with the
"clean up" operation is the Governor of the Reserve Bank, Gideon Gono. For this
gentleman is more image conscious than most in the party. He would like
Zimbabweans, and the world, to think of him as a man with, as the Bible puts it
"clean hands and a pure heart". Indeed Gono has gone to some pains to portray
himself as very religious. He never speaks of his mission to save the economy
(and Zimbabwe?) without a touch of evangelical zeal, and his speeches are
littered with the most pious-sounding quotations from the Scriptures. To cite
his recent Monetary Policy Framework as just one example, the writer noted no
fewer than five Biblical allusions at one glance - including references to Sodom
and Gomorrah and the unfortunate Lot's wife (who was turned into a pillar of
salt), a rather free rendering of Jesus' experience in the Garden of Gethsemane
where (according to the learned Dr Gono) God said "My Son, take it like a man …"
(!) and a quotation which we have not been able to trace yet (but are sure we
will be able to find eventually) to the effect that "God will help those who
stand up to help themselves". Obviously Gono has a superior version of the Bible
to any the writer has - perhaps "The Expanded Bible" - but the point is the man
obviously takes the Christian faith with some seriousness. He ends his
presentation "In the Lord's hands, I commit this Monetary Policy Framework for
our economic turnaround." In a country noted for its religious observance,
Gideon Gono comes across as a true believer. And such an image is certainly a
political asset in Zimbabwe, as he well knows.
It is when one studies the text of Gono's recent speeches more
closely that an interesting link emerges with Operation Murambatsvina. His "Post
Election and Drought Mitigation Policy Framework" was delivered on May 19 and
published in full in a special report carried by the state (ZANU PF) media the
following day - in other words just a few days ahead of the commencement of the
savage reprisals against the informal sector and poor urban classes, of which
those outside the inner sanctum of ZANU PF policy-makers were then blissfully
unaware. Here are a few excerpts from his speech (the italics are ours):
1.13 "Yesterday it was the financial sector in the forefront
of illegalities. Today it is individuals ……….. who are in the forefront of
parallel market dealings and other economic crimes."
1.14 "Today, it
is the parastatals, it is the local authorities …. among others where the
rot needs thorough cleansing along the same lines that we did with the financial
sector. Let there be no outcry when the long arm of the law extends itself to
these sectors, as indeed we believe, it will soon do."
31.1 "With the Parliamentary Elections now over, the
marked peace and tranquillity prevailing in the economy forms a solid launch-pad
to deepen our turnaround thrust."
The conclusion is inescapable - when formulating his Policy
Framework speech the Governor of the Reserve Bank was fully appraised of the
social and economic tsunami that ZANU PF was just about to unleash on the
nation. Not only so, but he clearly approved the basic tenets of the policy,
witness his remark: "the rot needs thorough cleansing". He knew that the
blitzkrieg would cause massive upheaval and expected a strong voice of protest
to be raised against it: "Let there be no outcry when the long arm of the law
(sic!) extends itself to these sectors." He was also aware of the timing "…as
indeed we believe it will soon do", which was no doubt deliberate; based on the
ZANU PF's reading of the post-election climate "… the marked peace and
tranquillity prevailing in the economy forms a solid launch-pad to deepen our
turnaround thrust".
At the very least then Gideon Gono knew and thoroughly
approved the massive assault on the civil liberties of the informal sector and
the urban poor which was about be launched on the unsuspecting Zimbabwean
public. Indeed, in terms of political philosophy and economic policy,
Murambatsvina so closely fits the successive stages of the so-called
anti-corruption drive of which Gono was the author that it is difficult to
resist the conclusion that this too was his brain-child - perhaps the capstone
of his intended reforms. So much for his professed strong Christian convictions
- and the pious clichés that he trots out regularly to spruce up his personal
image (as indeed do a number of other ZANU PF heavyweights who are equally
guilty of the most heinous crimes against humanity). Evidently he, and they, are
unaware of another strain of the Scriptures which pronounces the most severe
judgment on those who oppress the poor, along the following lines:
"Woe to those who make unjust laws, and those who issue
oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice
from the oppressed of my people, making widows their prey and robbing the
fatherless …" (Isaiah 10/1-2)
And while we are quoting the Scriptures another passage comes
to mind as particularly apt:
"Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put
darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet
for bitter." (Isaiah 5/20)
A salutary warning surely for the ZANU PF spin-doctors, of
whom Gideon Gono must be reckoned one of the foremost.
But the purpose of this article is not simply to expose Gideon
Gono's appalling hypocrisy. It is to call into question the motives of all those
who accommodate themselves so easily to his hypocrisy, and indeed assist him in
the task of selling the most odious policies of a fascist state as nothing more
than economic good sense. And here we have in mind the likes of Eric Bloch who
sits on the Reserve Bank Advisory Board, and regularly sings the praises of
Governor Gono. Eric Bloch well knows two things - first, that this ZANU PF
administration is perpetrating unspeakable evils on the poorest and most
vulnerable section of the population, and second, that his presence on the
Advisory Board and his readiness to be an apologist for Gono's (and ZANU PF's)
policies, tends to add some measure of respectability to the same.
We find this behaviour rather strange, particularly given Eric
Bloch's own background, coming as he does from a religious minority (the Jews)
who have suffered the most appalling persecution under fascist leaders like
Adolf Hitler. Indeed we understand that Bloch's own parents were survivors of
the Holocaust. Perhaps then he should refresh his memory on some of the
atrocities committed by that other fascist dictator. As has been noted by many
with an historical sense, the parallels between the Nazi dictator and our own
are striking. In the context of Murambatsvina perhaps the closest historical
parallel was Kristallnacht, the "Night of Broken Glass" (November 9, 1938) when
Hitler's Storm Troopers went on a wild orgy of violence against Jewish persons
and property, while the police were ordered not to interfere. The toll of that
night's violence included 91 Jews killed, hundreds seriously injured and
thousands more humiliated and terrorized. It is recorded that about 7,500 Jewish
businesses were gutted while scores of synagogues were destroyed.
Let the Eric Blochs of this world know that they will be
judged - indeed their fellow Zimbabweans already judge them most harshly - for
their complicity in the ZANU PF persecution of the nation's poorest and most
vulnerable. The same can surely be said of any who join, or remain on, the Gono
gravy train. The fact is that we have long since passed the point at which
giving moral, financial or any other kind of support or encouragement to this
murderous regime must be considered a betrayal of the basic tenets of justice
and mercy of the great Judaeo-Christian tradition.
And a final verse of Scripture for our Bible-bashing
Governor of the Reserve Bank and those who do his bidding:
"(Jesus said) Watch out for false prophets. They come to
you in sheep's clothing but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. By their fruit
you will recognise them" (Matthew 7/15-16)
I woke up in the morning around 6 o'clock and soon realised that the
police were there and armed with AK-47's.
