When senility rules

via When senility rules | The Zimbabwean 16 July 2014

Simon Khaya Moyo – the man who adamantly clings to the ‘ambassador’ title, despite having long ago relinquished his attaché position – has called for Zimbabweans to save their earnings and desist from careless spending.

“Savings and credit cooperatives are critical in our society. They inculcate a culture of saving. Today our people have succumbed to a consumerist culture. They want to spend without making any savings,” he says.

Wow. ‘Consumerist, inculcate.’ These are very big words to be throwing around among us simple minds.

In other Sadc countries, where bank credit exists, consumers buy everything on loan, from real estate to the teaspoons in their kitchen drawers. Without lines of credit, Zimbabweans build their homes brick by brick, one day at a time. If there is any truth to the dodgy 2012 census report which claims 11% unemployment, it is that most Zimbabweans are financially literate, with 59% living in their own properties.

With the average salary estimated to be $300, against a poverty datum line of $500, Zimbabweans should be praised for surviving under the chaotic rule of Khaya Moyo’s Zanu (PF).

It makes no sense for vice presidential hopeful, Khaya Moyo, to glibly tell people ‘save’ when even the Reserve Bank is without resources to fulfil its function of lender of last resort. Even the much talked about ‘village woman of Dotito’ will only stock her granary after her children have filled their bellies.