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A Photo Essay by Cont Mhlanga
The world is twelve days away from the 2007 Christmas Day. While in most African countries and the world, services and goods will be accessible and affordable for families to have a memorable day, the reality in Zimbabwe is how ever different.
The government’s policy and overzealous hobby of prize controls has shut down industry and caused serious basic commodity shortages in the market. I stopped at a wholesale store in Bulawayo yesterday after having noticed the queue for six days out side the wholesale on the photo for a chat with some people on the queue. I wanted to find out what they where queuing to buy.
Anything
What kind of Christmas will the majority of families have in Zimbabwe this festive season? How does it become a merry Christmas with people sleeping in queues waiting for anything? How does 2008 become a prosperous new year when even anything is difficult to come buy? The life of ordinary citizens in the country has hit the lowest low of standards since independence and the disturbing thing is that government and the ruling party Zanu PF see this as normal and acceptable. Worse still they don’t think they have a hand in creating these terrible and difficult conditions for ordinary people. Talk about irresponsible governance!
Removed from reality
While his government claims to be controlling prizes to save the people from profiteer ring business people, he achieves the total reverse and gives himself high marks as a leader through his one million much and then blames sanctions for it! The very people his government aims to protect from prize increases are now paying the really market prizes in what his government calls the illegal black market. So what does it help to have your own dream prizes on paper in your media while basic commodities in houses exchange hands for the very prizes your government interferes with in the formal sector? Talk about being removed from reality.
Bread and 2008 National Budget
The Minister reads in the budget that he is giving a free tax band to those earning thirty million dollars a month! Haa this Comrade Minister! Is he drunk or what? He is fine with people earning thirty million dollars a month when they need thirty six million dollars a month to just buy bread for their families. Actually, the fact of the matter is that a majority of families in Zimbabwe need two loaves for their families so there bread expenditure alone is seventy two million dollars a month yet the Cde. Minister speaks of a salary of thirty million a month in his budget of 2008!! Talk about leaders removed from the people’s reality.
Is the Minister talking about the current Zimbabwean economy or he is talking of the economy of his imaginations or the economy of the Zanu PF elite and ruling class? Even those that have benefited from the government’s carelessness and impatience for long term planning are trying all they can to beat the current prize controls as they are disastrous to their efforts.
In the second photo is a new Zimbabwean farmer, a poultry producer who has parked his lorry loaded with chickens off the Main Street just outside the central business district in Bulawayo to sell all his chickens at a normal market prize and not at the crazy government controlled prize at the markets or super markets. He will not take his chickens to the formal market or economy that the Minister in his budget is predicting its growth because of prize controls. He is not alone in this prize control dilemma. So he is doing what a normal business person in their right mind would do, take their product to where the prize is right!
Well come to think of it, this farmer got a free farm, already with infrastructure put by the previous white owner at a cost, may be still not compensated for, got free money from the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, got government support to buy the truck in the picture and with all that support, plus hard work, has a thriving poultry project, yet he is forced by the same government’s mostly badly timed policies to deiced that it is wise not to deliver his produce to the formal sector. Talk of a government that corrects a wrong by creating a right then canceling the right with a wrong, then claim to be busy on behalf of the people and development of the Nation!
This person will vote for the current government. They will support the individuals in the current ruling party. The reason for the support is that he continues to benefit as an individual and because he understands that the government operates an economy of their own imagination far removed from the reality in which he operates and will not follow polices that government announces and uses the police, the army, war veterans and its youths brigades to implement. If he did he will loose the little that he has got for free from government.
What is the matter with our government? Which economy are they leading and planning for? Which people are they working and protecting when people sleep for weeks in queues waiting for anything a week before Christmas? Which 2008 national economy are they budgeting for? What is their interest to remain in politics and public service to the nation when the very public they should guide is living in hard times waiting for anything?
The government and the ruling party behave like a group of people who are running the country from exile. Even a mob boss running an empire from behind bars can do better than what we see our government and the ruling party doing to the national economy of the country today.
Making people sleep in commodity queues during Christmas holidays is governance at its worst by experienced politicians who have been in power and Cabinet for 27 years. One hopes they would do better with their experience in governance unless if they now remain there for self serving interests or are being used and manipulated by those who see opportunities to enrich themselves through party politics and not through brains and hard work.
Cont Mhlanga |
