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Zimbabwe Situation

‘Tax’ the Mafia – Zimbabwe Vigil Diary: 6th September 2014

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via ‘Tax’ the Mafia – Zimbabwe Vigil Diary: 6th September 2014 07 September 2014

President Mugabe – having failed to sell Zimbabwe in Beijing – is now turning to other salesmen to bail out his bankrupt regime. Street vendors in Chitungwiza are being told they must register to pay tax to the Zimbabwe Revenue authority, although most of them only manage to scrape up a few dollars a day to feed their families  (see: Zimra descends on vendors – https://www.zimbabwesituation.com/news/zimsit-m-zimra-descends-on-vendors-the-zimbabwean/).

 

Although Mugabe came home from China with the prospect of various development projects, it is clear there will be no cash injection to pay the government’s running costs. Finance Minister Chinamasa said plaintively: ‘China doesn’t supply budgetary support’ – for all the world as if this is a law of economics instead of a brush-off. Or perhaps he didn’t want to acknowledge that only the reviled West provides budgetary support for rocky African economies, such as for instance our cousins in Malawi. The upshot is that the Zimbabwe treasury is now, as they put it, about to run out of the readies.

 

Zimbabweans know all too well what happens when you run out of money: you have to cut your spending, sell your goods, borrow, beg . . . or steal. Mugabe has exhausted this list. Zanu PF can’t cut spending because most of it is on salaries – and where would that leave their supporters? It can’t sell anything because all parastatals are broke. It can’t borrow because its credit rating is zero. The failed trip to Beijing shows it can’t even beg successfully. That leaves only stealing: so it’s off to Chitungwiza to fleece the poor.

 

The Vigil believes, however, that there is still an untapped source of funding available: how about cropping the Zanu PF bigwigs and their mysterious wealth? After all, there is a school of thought that argues that wealth not accounted for is necessarily illegitimate. Take, for instance, the case of Vice-President Mujuru. She appears to be ready for plucking: her brooding clucking certainly suggests as much – feathers flying in all directions. Publicly accused by a party stalwart of the premature cremation of her vastly wealthy husband, Mai Mujuru has been quick to come up with money to buy votes.

 

Perhaps the valiant helicopter downer could be asked to make a donation to the fiscus from some of the reported $9 billion loot left by the late incinerated General Mujuru. The Vigil is sure he would have wished for no less. And if her rich supporter Didymus Mutasa and other cronies could also be ‘persuaded’ to cough up a billion dollars or so, Zanu PF could look forward with confidence to a well-fed congress in December at which the President could hand over the baton safely to a new generation of Mugabes who could carry on the valiant fight against illegal progress.

 

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