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Joram Nyathi
Chinamasa immediately became a victim because inadvertently he was donating 25 000 civil servants to the small group Nera could muster for its demonstrations. They all celebrated Chinamasa’s mid-term policy review statement as “bold” because it impoverished civil servants, most of them already struggling to feed their families. These are the media who daily pretend to be on the side of the people. What forked tongued creatures I imagine there is no grief greater, keener than the loss of a loved one — whether child or parent. That’s why we value them above any earthly treasure, least of all a monetary value.

Now imagine a young couple in their twenties who lose their first, second and possibly third child. Combine the pain of child birth and the loss.

Painful though their experience might be, what would you advise them to do? A vasectomy and sterilisation and accept the fate of a childless life?

Adoption? Or to try one more time? Think about it.

The ban and challenges

It was always clear that the violent demonstrations instigated by the opposition would soon invite a strong response. That has come in the form of periodic bans. They wanted a state of emergency. And they haven’t given up by the way. When they say they will defy the ban they are in fact inciting a stronger reaction.

That is where government must tread with uttermost care. Everybody knows the problems the nation is facing can’t be resolved overnight, least of all by barking up a wrong tree. If those demonstrations had been directed at the American Embassy against Zidera they would have the desired effect. Who needs sanctions in this country on top of a natural disaster such as drought!

Instead we have demonstrations to shut down Zimbabwe. When Government responds with a state of emergency then the organisers have a cause, an issue, which they otherwise don’t have now. We have people desperate for martyrdom. Only such people always rush to tell the media that they are ready to die or to go to prison.

Childless couple

Back to the unfortunate couple. It turns out often that time is the greatest doctor God has provided to man. Time carries within it the power of healing, allowing us to temporarily forget. Most importantly allowing us to accept what we are given and move on.

When such misfortunes befall a family, people consult elders, doctors, izinyanga and prophets. We want to find out the reasons for the loss, the cause. Could it be congenital in the individuals involved, could it be witches or a medical condition which can be corrected? Could it be the delivery or home environment? The cliché is, we will leave no stone unturned to get to the root cause. We want a solution, we want answers. We shall not give up.

I want to imagine that there are couples who have tried again, anxious and worried at first, but gone on to bring up a healthy brood of four, five or even six more children and celebrated like they never had devastating losses in their lives.

Dear Reader, this is not meant to be some cheap attempt at motivational writing. It is more of a reality check on how experience can be used to build or to destroy a nation. It pains me how Zimbabweans generally, and in particular our economists and opposition politicians, have used our experience of 2007/08 to sterilise national creativity even as we are daily exhorted to think outside the box, to make a paradigm shift and to learn from the experience of others.

A nation is its money

Invariably, the experience of other people we select are those of couples who died of their grief — opted for vasectomy and sterilisation — and languish in a childless life. That’s the company we love to keep. To wallow in our grief while others try again and reap a harvest like there was never a drought in their lives.

The best Zimbabwe has tried so far is adopting without official permission the child of an implacable enemy in January 2009. You can imagine the anxiety-plagued life, living every day knowing the child is not yours, and may be snatched from you any time without prior warning. Our joy is tied around the fate of this adopted child — the American dollar — ostensibly because our experience of hyperinflation and the attendant loss in 2008 taught us that we can never have our own child to nurse.

Thanks Bishop Lazarus for Mayer Amschel Rothschild who sagaciously observed, “Give me control of a nation’s money and I care not who makes the laws.”

The enemy is America, and she doesn’t have to worry about controlling our money. Our money is her money. America doesn’t have to worry whether we have Zim-Asset or indigenisation and black economic empowerment laws so long as we rely solely on its money over which it has absolute control. As if Zidera were not enough of a vice grip on the economic windpipe.

Figure it out yourself.

Think of OFAC overnight announcing no foreign bank in any country should have any dealings with Zimbabwean banks using American dollars!

It’s a mere thought, a grim prospect. It should be a sobering one too. For every well-meaning Zimbabwean. Waking up without an economy because following the collapse of our currency in 2008 we are scared to try again. But we can endure the prospect of another child dying in our family. The economic collapse was more traumatic than the death of a child. What a fake nation!

I don’t know how the local opposition and their IMF-obsessed economists are able to sustain the delusion that once President Mugabe and Zanu-PF are out of power America will immediately open its currency faucet when it took its Congress until 2008 to realise that their idol, Nobel laureate and President of South Africa Nelson Mandela and his ANC were no longer terrorists. From the first democratic election in May 1994!

Sorry, I am not banking on Finance and Economic Development minister Patrick Chinamasa or Reserve Bank governor John Mangudya. They are fine fellows in their individual areas of specialisation. But on the local currency matter they have found themselves in terra incognita. They have been less than persuasive themselves to win converts on the bond notes as a surrogate currency.

At their strongest they tell a sceptically self-indulgent nation the bond notes will ease US currency shortages on the market since they can’t be exported. Next we are told the bond notes won’t be released on to the market all at once, but in response to demand. Tomorrow it’s you see, $200 million is a small amount as a percentage of our GDP. So $200 million worth of bond notes won’t hurt.

Then at their worst they tell us, people won’t be forced to use bond notes. In fact, they say, the bond notes are an incentive for use by exporters only. Hello!

If the bond notes are leprous to the rest of the nation why should those who earn hard currency through exports surrender their cash to unproductive guys who don’t want bond notes, but want US dollars to consume before they vomit on those who earn them?

In any case, what percentage of the Zimbabwean population has said they don’t want bond notes? Certainly not those poor in urban or rural areas who don’t receive US dollars to speak on our behalf. Not those who go for a whole month without handling a $5 note.

How can the fate of a whole nation be held to ransom by a few opposition anarchists threatening to shut down the country over the introduction of a local currency, but will not wait for an election to try out their own policies; politicians who amplify western ventriloquy through empty vessels in the private media!

Kissing Chinamasa

Talking of private media, after missing the big story on Wednesday about Cabinet hollowing out Chinamasa’ mid-term review statement on civil servants bonuses and retrenchments because of their morbid obsession with violent demonstrations, they woke up with a vengeance yesterday. You have never seen forked tongued creatures. The biggest story overnight was Chinamasa being betrayed, stabbed in the back, not any longer victims of summary dismissals following a July 17 Supreme Court judgment, not the fate of 25 000 civil servants who were set to lose jobs as announced by Chinamasa. To the joy of opposition leaders.

Chinamasa immediately became a victim because inadvertently he was donating 25 000 civil servants to the small group Nera could muster for its demonstrations. They all celebrated Chinamasa’s mid-term policy review statement as “bold” because it impoverished civil servants, most of them already struggling to feed their families. These are the media who daily pretend to be on the side of the people. What forked tongued creatures. So 25 000 civil servant jobs must be sacrificed to please the “international community” — the IMF — that American institution that’s set to be Chinamasa’s downfall. The IMF holds no salvation for Zimbabwe. It serves only American interests. It’s that simple.

I can’t understand how Chinamasa could step into such a hazard with his eyes wide open. It’s not like we don’t appreciate what he is trying to do. It’s only that he underestimates the dilemma and imagines that the IMF can be part of the solution to Zimbabwe’s economic challenges. It will never be, it has never been, it can’t be.