IT is that special week again when the nation is reminded that the country’s owners are stealing because of those dastardly Western sanctions.
All across the land, people are marching in the streets demanding an end to America’s measures against the country. This quarrel started when groups of hungry unwashed masses decided to dispossess a few white people of stolen property, using trusted methods such as knobkerries and axes.
Since then, our owners have accepted the gift of sanctions as a gift from the gods; they don’t need to explain anything to the masses. Why are we buying cars for chefs and not buying ambulances? It is because of sanctions. Why are our owners taking over the mines and sharing them with their friends? It is to protect the minerals from sanctions. Why are there no teachers in schools? It is because sanctions have eaten their salaries.
We must be thankful to America for such a gift. Without sanctions, we would have to find another excuse for our incompetence and theft. Who wants that?
Inane propaganda
One of the hardest-working people in the country, Nick Mangwana, was hard at work this week, making sure he spread more inane propaganda than his usual quota.
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Posting a video from years ago showing the country’s current owner talking about his alleged role in the struggle, Mangwana was in overdrive, as is required in this line of work.
Crowed the man: “President Mnangagwa has been fighting and working for this country pretty much all his life. He has always had Zimbabwe at heart and the nation is lucky to have him”.
Even Mnangagwa himself must have been shocked to hear that the nation is lucky to have him.
The last time he checked, some people were prepared to stay in long queues late into the night trying to get rid of him. We thank our ancestors for the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission, which made sure that no such nonsense would happen. That’s one lucky nation.
Illiterate vendors
The nation is lucky to have one Sithembiso Nyoni, a woman so good in her job that, for years, nobody actually knew what she did in government.
Having been recently moved to the ministry in charge of non-existent industry, she has been moving around town trying to be seen to be doing some work, for a change.
This week, she and her minions were up and about in downtown Harare, where she found time to lecture informal traders about being patriotic.
“We are here to prevent a shadow economy, everybody who is in business must operate openly,” she said, as if she does not know that doing deals in the shadows is actually a well-known economic policy of her party and government.
She went further, berating the traders for not selling their goods in the Zimbabwe dollar.
She said: “We must value our own currency and we must try to use it with pride”.
These unpatriotic vendors are shocking. Have they not heard that the Zimbabwe dollar is the most widely sought-after currency in Africa? What are they even doing selling things on the streets for a living? Have they not heard that the economy is booming? Do they not watch ZBC or read The Herald? Illiterates.
Sell-out MPs
Another group that needs Nyoni’s lecture on being patriotic about the national currency are our Zanu PF Members of Parliament.
At a recent seminar, some of them dared to complain about the Community Development Fund, the money that taxpayers give to their MPs so that they can waste it legally.
Apparently, the MPs said the money is useless if it is paid out in Zimbabwe dollars. According to a report, the MPs whined that “funds distributed in the local currency made it challenging to procure essential materials for completing projects funded by the government’s CDF grants”.
They, apparently, want to be paid in the currency of our worst enemy, America. What a thing to say at a time when we are fighting sanctions and when our owner is pounding every podium, every chance he gets, telling us that we are soon going back to our own currency.
These sell-out MPs need to be recalled, taken in for questioning, and sent to the Chitepo School of Ideology for reorientation.
Tshabangu lawyers better
Speaking of recalling MPs, one must doff their hat to that chap, Sengezo Tshabangu, who has been causing supporters of that Western-sponsored puppet party to spend endless nights in prayer and supplication.
Tshabangu convinced Parliament Speaker Jacob Mudenda that he was the secretary general of the CCC party. This was despite his letter looking like it had been written on a typewriter from around 1992. The CCC went to court to complain that this chap was a fraudster.
But it seems the man’s lawyers were better prepared than the CCC’s lawyers, who are known more for their fancy Latin than for their knowledge of the law. Tshabangu argued that the CCC cannot prove he is not a member of their party.
CCC lawyers, he argued, did not attach any document that “proves whether I am a member or not and whether they are members or not.”
Muckraker cannot wait to use this same legal argument when he turns up at the next meeting of the Zanu PF women’s league and claims leadership.
We do more damage
After a meeting between the reeling party Zanu PF and business leaders this week, The Herald had one of the best headlines we have seen in any newspaper this year.
“Business will prosper under Zanu PF,” said the paper, which we all know speaks nothing but the truth.
The business executives in that room, we are told, must have rolled about the floor with laughter.
At the meeting, Mike Bimha, the most bored Zanu PF commissar the country has ever seen, told the guests that his party’s achievements in the economy were their manifesto in the August alleged elections. One can guess that those achievements include high inflation and the collapse of the exchange rate, things every business person considers as a sign that they are prospering under Zanu PF.
“You vote for us, and we do more,” Bimha was quoted as having said. We are sure he meant to say “you vote for us, we do more damage”.
Congratulations Sanyatwe
The nation wishes to congratulate Anselem Sanyatwe, who has been brought back from boring diplomatic service in Tanzania and told to kit out in his uniform again.
The man was shunted to the diplomatic corps in 2019 as part of the outcome of a theatre production called the Motlanthe Commission.
Some people accused his army unit of shooting people in the street, and some people saw his shunting to Dodoma as a punishment, like the time a noisy child is told to stand in the naughty corner for five minutes.
Who can forget his testimony at that hearing? He told them that when his men arrived on the streets, people had already been shot.
“Members of the National Reaction Force, from the military, no one shot at any civilians,” Sanyatwe said.
When asked about videos of the soldier shooting into the crowd, he famously told the nation that the man was shooting at a 45-degree angle. Now, which leader would not want such a reliable man in charge of his army? He is just the right man for the job.
Invoice German tourist
It was reported this week that a German tourist who had gone missing in the Matusadona National Park had turned up alive after three days.
According to the National Parks, “he says his car developed a mechanical fault”.
Authorities deployed a helicopter, vehicles and sniffer dogs to scour the remote 1400-square-kilometre park that is home to lions, buffalo, leopards, elephants and all the dangerous animals you can expect in the bush.
On behalf of the people of Zimbabwe, Muckraker demands that the man be invoiced heavily for wasting our money.