In August, we argued that government’s move to push through a blanket ban in trade in unleaded petrol represented policymakers’ most brazen attempt to trample on consumer rights.
That futile and most embarrassing decree, announced through Statutory Instrument (SI) 150 of 2024, was meant to protect a Zanu PF — linked tycoon and his family, at the expense of assets worth billions of United States dollars.
The tycoon produces ethanol, which is blended with petrol before being forced into cars, under protest from powerless consumers.
This is why his business was bleeding months before SI 150 of 2024 came into force.
Ethanol has been proven to damage motor vehicle engines.
We took our stance and denounced the forced consumption of dangerous fuel.
We categorically told President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s regime that it had taken nepotism too far.
It was refreshing to see Mnangagwa backing down last week.
However, it is important to remind the President that he risks slipping deeper into the vicious cycle of policy pronouncements and reversals, whose consequences he already knows.
But there appears to be a cabal that wields so much clout in government that is determined to punish Zimbabweans at every twist and turn — and at whatever cost, to impress the President.
They erroneously think Mnangagwa will be happy to see them channel hefty amounts into government coffers, after forcing the public to pay through the most questionable means.
Yet Zimbabwe is not a profit-making machine.
Where these funds end up can only be anyone’s guess.
Service delivery continues to deteriorate, and infrastructure decay confronts us everywhere.
The ban on unleaded fuels was wicked in many ways.
It stripped consumers of their rights to choose.
It created a near monopoly for favoured enterprises because of their close proximity to Zanu PF and government.
It threatened to destroy armies of licensed unleaded fuel importers who have no access to powerful figures in Mnangagwa’s government.
Some consumers would have to ground their vehicles, or take expensive trips to neighbouring countries for refuelling.
Many automobile technologies on our highways today are engineered for unleaded petrol.
You crush their engines as soon as you force ethanol -laced petrol into their tanks.
When Zimbabwe introduced its highway tolling system over a decade ago, government was so overawed by an overshoot of revenues that it mulled extending toll gates to urban roads.
This is the thrill that permeates through the regime’s overzealous officials.
But in recent months, we have been overwhelmed by a sustained push to introduce a legislation that forces motorists to only pay for their licensing fees after paying for a radio listenership license.
It is the regime’s latest attempt to raise millions a year for the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation, and stem protracted haemorrhage.
This bleeding came out of four and half decades of protracted mismanagement, which has turned one of Africa’s finest broadcasters into a shell.
But ZBC cannot be turned around by forcing motorists to fund it.
A whole lot of actions would be imperative there.
But this is how it works in Zimbabwe — the elite destroy strategic State institutions through unrestrained plunder.
They then force everyone to fund reconstruction — at whatever cost.
We have seen this at Air Zimbabwe, Zisco Steel, the National Railways of Zimbabwe and a whole lot of other state firms.
We hope current moves to rebuild the firms under Mutapa Investment Fund will bear fruit.