ON behalf of our Owner, Muckraker would like to offer his most heartfelt of congratulations to members of the reeling party for their patience.
After waiting for more than two decades since blessing themselves to vast tracts of land seized from white farmers in a smash-and-grab exercise neatly clothed as a national land reform programme, they can finally cash out!
It really took the faith of Abraham for the Zanu PF members to wait for the fulfilment of the promise, but the day finally arrived.
This week, the Owner of the country decreed that it is now allowable to bring the loot to the market! He announced that “title deeds” will be issued to beneficiaries of the land reform programme, starting with the war veterans.
For now, there will be a show of making it illegal for whites to buy the land, through the insertion of a clause that specifies that the buyers ought to be “indigenous”, but who does not know that indigeneity has always been available for sale?
As ongoing court cases are showing, those documents are easily obtainable from the Registrar-General’s Office for an appropriate fee … even to those from as far off as West Africa!
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Refresher course
For those that may want to pretend to be confused, here is a free refresher course on how this simple process will be going.
The reeling party membership card is the lead document that potential beneficiaries ought to have. Then they will go through a rigorous vetting process in the party from the cell right up to Shake Shake Building.
It is only those that would survive this process that would be issued with the “title deeds” that are as credible as the country’s strongest currency, the ZiG. Armed with this document, those who have been patiently holding on to vast tracks of land can now do whatever they like with it … sell the farms to real farmers and other risk-takers on the market or use the documents to borrow from indigenous financial institutions (most of which detractors falsely claim are headed by people with bogus qualifications) without an intention of repaying the loans.
The motive of this move, our Owner said, is to “unlock value” in the land. And this is exactly what will be happening … unlocking the value of the land that until now had been locked away from the patient beneficiaries!
This is a real moment for those individuals and families that are multiple farm owners as they can now finally start enjoying the fruits of their patience and links to the party that really cares for the people.
This “landmark” development is coming just as Treasury has finally started making a show of paying some former white farmers the compensation that we obviously are reluctant to pay.
This is no coincidence here: everything is synchronised. While detractors are, as usual, falsely claiming that a lot of money is going to end up in some ghost accounts under the guise of paying compensation to the former white farmers, the issuance of “title deeds” naturally had to wait until at least something had appeared to have been paid to the noisy former farmers whom, unfortunately, death is not catching up with fast enough!
So, after this show of paying them something, the people can now get title to the loot so that they can sashay onto the market without any tag of criminality.
Silly detractors!
It is just unfair that some of the detractors continue to make noises that the US$3,5 billion compensation to the former land owners should not be paid by the taxpayer, but by the beneficiaries of the looted land themselves. This, obviously, is a very silly argument that is not even worth responding to!
It is also as dumb as the claim by the same detractors that this whole land distribution exercise is unfair to the generality of Zimbos because the land was seized from a white minority and shared among a black minority that are now giving themselves title deeds.
These detractors also falsely claim that these new “title deeds” will only boost the already thriving market for fake title deeds in the country. This is a big white lie that is also not worth responding to.
There are even some who laugh at the irony of a country that has nearly 10 000 dams and more than 33 million hectares of farmland getting food donations from tiny countries like Rwanda! This country has just too many foolish detractors!
When Zimbos celebrate that the country is blessed with a truly visionary leadership, this is exactly what we mean. It only takes a visionary leadership to come up with such an innovative way of empowering the people.
Hilarious relief
It was good, in fact hilarious, to see Finance minister Mthuli Ncube struggling to explain away the devaluation of the ZiG in Shona.
Apart from comically trying to de-link the ZiG from the gold that Zimbos were made to believe is backing the purported currency, he appeared to fairly understand a lot about criminals and criminal activity. Should anyone even wonder when a fish is swimming or when a bird is flying?
Anyway, we are only relieved and thankful that the reeling party youths have since vowed to defend the ZiG! The unemployables finally have something to do.
When you have such a youth as a country, know that you do not have a future, but even a country to talk about!
Zimbabweanisation?
Hindsight is a perfect science indeed! It is now making a lot of things clearer. Muck now understands why Botswana’s leader, Cde Mokgweetsi Masisi and his team are eager to learn a thing or two from the Sadc chairs in Harare, including the financial system.
On a Sunday, October 6 — of all days of the week — Masisi’s government issued an incoherent statement in which it blamed its non-payment of salaries and other services on the country’s Independence Day holidays that fell on the beginning of the preceding week.
In the same rambling statement, it was also “explained” that the payments were now being delayed and staggered “to avoid congestion at the collection points”, blah, blah.
While Muck is aware that the synthetic diamond industry is now posing a real serious threat to economies like that of Botswana that depend on diamond mining, he is disappointed that many Batswana are increasingly becoming fearful that they are fast becoming “another Zimbabwe”, whatever that is supposed to mean!
This has not been helped by the suddenly growing trend of celebrating otherwise banalities such as the delivery of medical drugs and the installation of water tanks.
As much as things appear to be heading in this direction, we pray that nothing untoward happens to the pula economy otherwise our economic refugees across the Shashe River may return to add to the headache that our Owner is already having trying to please an ungrateful people.
Muckraker’s advice to Cde Masisi is very simple: just blame everything that is going wrong there on Ian Khama!
It has worked wonders this side!