Eighteen pictures of Zimbabwe’s First Lady on Page 2 of the Herald of Truth on Tuesday this week! The power of being the co-owner of this country!
Eighteen, and Muck was gobsmacked. The newspaper followed that number with six more on Wednesday on the same page and another two yesterday.
This dedication to the exploits of our Dr Amai the Second prompted Muck to check some more: there were six pictures on Saturday last week and another four on Monday this week.
This particular page, it seems is dedicated to the exploits of the good doctor, be it baking, cooking, or hosting foreign dignitaries from some countries with questionable human rights records.
Muck has to feel for fellow scribes who have to ensure her presence on that page, every day, about whatever she is doing.
Not even our owner gets that kind of publicity and Muck thinks the First Lady must either inspire unedified devotion or has the ego twice the size of Kilimanjaro.
The ZiG is in trouble
The Zimbabwe Gold (ZiG) currency is in trouble. Barely four months after it was foisted on the local market, the ZiG is facing an existential crisis, largely in part to the bad decision-making and cowardice of its principals, the man who runs our central bank, John Mushayavanhu, the professor at the Treasury and the man they all report to, our owner.
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One Chronicle of sad but predictable news in Bulawayo reported that because of a surge in black market exchange rates, businesses in that part of the country had become unpatriotic and were rejecting the ZiG!
“While the official exchange rate remains at about ZiG13,79 to the US dollar, the soaring parallel market rate has diminished consumer purchasing power. Some businesses in Bulawayo have resorted to faking network issues with their point-of-sale (POS) machines as a pretext to demand foreign currency transactions exclusively,” the Chronicle of Woe reported.
While the official exchange rate has hovered around its launch-time rates, it is fetching double on the more verdant black market exchange. The ZiG’s afflictions are similar to those that hit its predecessors: lack of confidence and limited use in the local market.
These stem from the lack of spine by those in charge of managing the currency and who have placed us under their thumb to give the new currency some wings by making sure it becomes the sole legal tender in the country.
Our leaders continue to show their disdain for the ZiG by going around with bricks of mint United States dollars and shower them on their supporters.
It would not look good to “gift” the suffering masses with the ZiG now, does it? That tells us everything we need to know about their “confidence” in the local currency.
Arresting money changers does not kill the debate around ZiG. As Muck and much more educated minds have asked many times: how does a currency with limited use in its own country maintain any relevance? The ZiG cannot survive if its use in the local economy remains limited and is left to market forces.
Yes, the head honcho at the central bank has claimed countless times that he will not “stampede” fuel dealers to start selling petroleum products in ZiG, arguing that market confidence in the ZiG cannot be legislated.
Meanwhile, the police are busy trying to enforce confidence in the currency by arresting those playing the market forces of demand and supply.
Zimbabwe is a strange country.
Still ZiGzagging
Muck repeats, again, that if ZiG is to be our money, then so be it. Let us live and die with it. And our leaders must be seen to be leading in that respect.
After last week’s sharp decline, we were told by the Zimbabwe’s Boring Channel (ZBC) that the central bank will inject US$50 million into the interbank foreign exchange market “to ease demand for import requirements and consolidate the stability of the Zimbabwe Gold currency”.
That is because in recent weeks, there has been a “build-up in pipeline demand for foreign currency at banks thereby putting undue pressure in the foreign exchange market”.
That is a big worry, that the ZiG needs that kind of support to keep it stable. How about making its use universal?
Mushayavanhu says the ZiG is now used in 30% of all transactions, and a “shift in product pricing ratio, with the ZiG now accounting for 30% of all transactions”.
In a July 15 interview with Bloomberg, he said ZiG usage had risen to 20% of transactions from 15%.
The ZiG replaced the Zimbabwean dollar after it collapsed in value against the greenback. It is the southern African nation’s sixth attempt at having a functioning local currency in the last 15 years and is backed by foreign currency reserves as well as the precious metal.
Hilarious Tyson
The most hilarious news of the week for Muck, however, came from that self-exiled former fat cat, Saviour “Tyson” Kasukuwere, who we are told is now rallying Zimbos to resist overtures by our owner to illegally extend his lease agreement at the top citizen of this beautiful country.
The former Zany party axe-man posted on the ridiculously named X that: “The ill-fated 2030 mobilisation by factional interests within Zanu PF must be resisted. The current government is yet to complete a year in its second term of office.
President Emmerson Mnangagwa was sworn in for the second and last term on the 4th September 2023. To imagine that his minions are already running around motivating for a third term is careless and dangerous.”
Did we not suffer the same under the late Robert Mugabe, who we assumed was strong until his army chiefs showed him who really the boss was?
In his former job as the party hatchet man, he was at the forefront of rallying the faithful to the idea that Mugabe was the future, in a wheelbarrow or from the grave.
Unpopular campaign
It is no fun when the boot is on the other foot! That is not to say Muck thinks it is a good idea to tout a man who will be 85 by the next election as the future, because clearly, even now his best days are behind him, no matter what youthisizer he takes.
Zimbos are well aware of the Zany thinking when octogenarians are the new youths. In other parts of the world, they are not allowed anywhere in public offices. The current lame duck in the White House is evidence that people in that age group are not the future, and neither is the orange racist and narcissistic nutcase also campaigning to return to the most powerful political post in the world.
So, this poorly choreographed campaign by the Zany party, which Muck believes is being orchestrated by our owner himself, is not popular and unsolicited as the pleas for his extended stay.
The future belongs to those who will live in it, Muck says.
