via Zimbabwe is not First Family’s playground November 15, 2014
Who will stop this petty, vindictive and vengeful lot?
As if the very public fallout in Zanu PF is not bad enough, the farm of beleaguered Zanu PF Mashonaland East chairperson Ray Kaukonde was yesterday
reportedly under threat of invasion with impunity by what we can deduce are backers of the First Family, which has been raging against Kaukonde for close to a month.
Kaukonde, to his credit, has stoically endured the unbelievable insults and abuse. He has faced pain and indignity without outwardly showing it.
Does this stalking and hounding have anything to do with the purported aim of agrarian reform to give land to dispossessed blacks? No. It has all to do with naked partisan politics at its worst and most damaging.
Business mogul Mutumwa Mawere had his farm illegally seized for having broken political ranks with Zanu PF. They did not stop at that as they went on to grab his thriving Shabanie-Mashaba Mines Holdings, which they proceeded to run to the ground, resulting in massive loss of export earnings and destruction of livelihoods in Zvishavane and Mashava, turning them into ghost towns. That was the handiwork of politics gone mad. No sanctions were involved.
Property instantly loses bankability with such malpractices, and this will have a contagion effect in the whole economic value chain. This is basic economics. One does not need to have a PhD to see this.
Kaukonde’s sin has been to remain steadfast and unbending in the face of intense political pressure accompanied by threats exerted particularly by Grace Mugabe to capitulate to her demands to express total and undying loyalty to Mugabe.
Where are property rights? Is getting land or running a business a favour from high up or a right due to every Zimbabwean as long as they have the means?
This hounding-out of people belongs to a long-gone era like the cave man clubbing of rivals during the Stone Age, not in a modern nation State. What we are seeing is a bribe and blackmail economy.
Anyone can do anything to anyone in the name of the party. Should the nation be subjected to such political gangsterism?
What we are seeing is pettiness, vindictiveness and vengefulness all rolled into one. This is not in the national interest at all.
Zimbabwe is not a playground of the First Family.
COMMENTS
Very succinct and thought provoking analysis. Sure, “What we are seeing is a bribe and blackmail economy.”
No wonder wealth is not being distributed, but amassed by the rich, and leaving the poor further and further behind.
As for economics and thinking in the national interest, “Property instantly loses bankability with such malpractices, and this will have a contagion effect in the whole economic value chain.”
No wonder even Zimbabwe’s own in the diaspora would not dare invest in such a fickle society!