ON Monday this week, Zimbos woke up to the news that the price of bread was now ZW$2 000! That is nearly US$2 on the exchange rate which, in their wisdom, “vene vedu” have said we should use!
The bakers stated that they were merely following the real exchange rate of the Zimbabwe dollar (Zimdollar), the one on the parallel market. Later that day, word filtered that the exchange rate had already moved to ZW$2 700 to the greenback; so the bread price is likely to follow suit.
The spectre of 2008 is looming large, where prices will chase the proverbial tail of the parallel market rate. Even the Consumer Council of Zimbabwe now wants the common man to “seek other healthy alternative home-grown foodstuffs” to stay alive. In other words, we are back to “ngavadye mabura nembatatisi”.
Jenarari’s dollar
Our owner’s number two, the jenarari, wants the nation to be calm as they watch the value of their hard-earned Zimdollars shrink every day against the United States dollar and any other currency that matters.
Jenarari told the folks who were yawning at the Zimbabwe International Trade Fair (ZITF) Business Conference in Bulawayo last Wednesday after a night of drinking and fun in the City of Queens that the owner wants to keep things stable. He, however, failed to explain why the value of the Zimdollar keeps falling on the Reserve Bank’s own auction market.
Maybe the biggest laundromat in Southern Africa is just too busy washing the gold-related real money to worry about this perceived money called Zimdollar.
The Zimdollar is confusing even to those that print it: RTGS, bank transfer, bond notes, EcoCash, OneMoney, InnBucks, TeleCash, all attract different exchange rates. Keeping up with each one requires a Pythagoras mind and is no fun.
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It’s no wonder that even the government cannot be bothered, opting instead to just use the much more stable currency from across the pond. You know, the one from those fellows who dare sanction us for beating, I mean sanctioning the unpatriotic idiots from our midst who do not seem to appreciate the kind of sacrifices our owners are making in order to eat on our behalf.
“The transitory exchange rate volatility in the parallel market witnessed in the economy for March this year is merely a reflection of the store of value demand for foreign currency,” jenarari said.
So, our owners do know that we do need a currency that can hold its value!
Show me the numbers
It seems our owner has made a specific demand to the vapostori: show me the numbers! After being run very close in the 2018 ownership contest by that young upstart who now fronts the “Chinhu Changu Chete” (CCC) crowd when he ditched the “More Drinks Coming” (MDC) hooligans, our owner is not taking any chances, and wants to be certain who is voting for him before the charade of actually choosing our new owner goes ahead in August — maybe.
It is easy to see the attraction of the indigenous churches to our owner: Their members follow strict orders and follow the leader to the letter; the kind of dystopia our owner wishes he could create with all of us.
This means they do not have such grand ideas as freedom of choice, free speech and any such irritants a would-be dictator finds cumbersome.
While there has been little definitive research done on the sects, but one 2011 report published by Unicef projected that 2,5 million people were part of Zimbabwe’s vapositori movement. This is roughly a 16% of Zimbabwe’s 13 million population as per 2022 census and more than those who allegedly voted for him in the previous choosening.
So, the leader of one of the larger sects, Andby Makururu of the Johanne Masowe weChishanu is going around the country cajoling vatendi to vote for our dear owner when the vote counting charade will finally be held.
“I am going around the churches encouraging people to register to vote. As you are aware we are going towards the elections. I want to be clear about the number of the people who are going to vote for the ruling party as l am going around province by province,” Makururu told his followers.
“I have been in Masvingo and Harare and l know the number of people who are going to vote. As bishop, we need to support our President Emmerson Mnangagwa and we should show him by voting in our numbers.”
Shocked Juju
Juju Malema, a member of the neighbourhood watch, was shocked to hear that “vene vedu” jailed Jacob Ngarivhume because he had the temerity to demand that they account for how they used Covid-19 funds in 2020.
“Sending an activist to four years imprisonment for simply holding different political views is pathetic,” his Trumpian fingers wrote on Twitter. “Zimbabweans must learn to protect their own, particularly those who are the voice of the voiceless against the corrupt few. The truth will never be incarcerated; Africa we are one.” That was odd, given his government is trying to get rid of Zimbos who crossed the border to make a living in his country to avoid going hungry or meeting Ngarivhume’s fate.
“Vene vedu” have taught us that for all the talk of a clean break from the 37 years of the brutality of our former owner, the new dispensation is not prepared to allow any opposing voices, let alone the opposition, just ask Job Sikhala. Or even the CCC crowd after heavily armed police and army chased them out of their MDC headquarters and installed a puppet there.
Democracy, it seems, is a word “vene vedu” can use on international fora and as an excuse for the token choosening, but not to be practiced for real under its watch.
More bad news
It seems to Muckraker that Zimbabweans don’t know how to react to more news that “vene vedu” have more than one way of eating on our behalf. First there was that investigative documentary by Al Jazeera showing how our owners are enjoying the country’s wealth on our behalf.
Before we could even digest the flabbergasting amounts being discussed in the fourth episode by those Devil’s Angels (US$1,2 billion!), news came out that a South African crook may have paid US$3 million to our owner and his number two to ensure his mining deals in the country, are well, more secure! There are suggestions that he may have funded the 2017 coup that took out our previous owner.
Like the Gold Mafia documentary before it, the documents released by The Sentry show apparent attempts at state capture by this controversial crook from across the border.
Then news filtered through that our owner had taken delivery of a swanky new US$54 million presidential jet — a Dassault Falcon 7X so he can eat his mazondo in style while he is traversing the globe.
The new toy, it seems, was delivered in March, but was not put into service until last week because of the spotlight generated by the Al Jazeera Gold Mafia documentary. But the thought of flying on Air Zimbabwe’s dilapidated planes must have jolted him back to the reality that he is in fact, accountable to no one but his ego.
The rulers of Zimbabwe, it seems, have succeeded in creating a state in which fear rules and words like accountability and democracy are exactly that: words in a dictionary with no effect whatsoever.
The opposition, and the protest spirit it seems, have been neutered for real. The loudmouths Sikhala and Ngarivhume can testify to that.
