Wilbert Mukori | A house divided cannot stand the test of time. A nation divided cannot thrive. Zimbabwe is a nation tiring apart because we have become a divided nation of the filthy rich ruling elite few, on the one hand, and on the other the desperately poor majority. The rich few live in massive mansions such as General Chiwenga’s C&M mansion and Mugabe’s Blue Roof palace, they have farms and many businesses. The rich are sending their children out of the country for their education and they go oversea for all their health needs.
Contrast this with the majority who have nothing. 90% of our people are unemployed. We can afford to build multi-million dollar mansions whilst even the nation’s big hospitals like Mpilo and Harare are so poorly funded they regularly run out of such basic requirements as clean running water and pain killers. 72.3% of our people now live on US$1.00 or less a day. This is not right!
Zimbabwe is not a poor country, we would not afford the megastar lifestyles for the ruling elite if we were a poor country. And yet the poverty of the overwhelming majority has swallowed up the opulence of the few so that, collectively, we are now the poorest nation in Africa.
There is a moral imperative, urge, to find out what went wrong and to put it right!
The root cause of our economic meltdown is simple enough to see, it is the 37 years of gross mismanagement and rampant corrupt. We inherited a robust economy in 1980, when the country attained her independence, but most of it has rotted and decay because of decades of underinvestment and neglect.
Two years ago, Mugabe admitted the nation was “swindled of US$ 15 billions of diamond revenue”. No one has ever been arrested. Not one cent has ever been recovered. We know the swindling has continued unabated to this day because, a year ago, Finance Minister, Patrick Chinamasa, told parliament he was receiving 1/6 of the revenue he expected from diamonds.
There is documentary evidence to prove that Joice Mujuru and her late husband tried to sell diamonds worth US$ 15.8 billions. The two were not the only swindlers. Mugabe himself pocketed as much as $2 billions in 2012 alone, according to an Africa Canada report. The ruling elite have bought their posh cars, build their mansions and afforded their lifestyles of unparalleled luxury on the back of the wholesale looting of the nation’s wealth.
Zimbabwe has been losing as much as US$ 15 billion a year from the rampant corruption alone. No nation can afford that level of economic haemorrhage much less a nation whose GPD is a mere US$10 billion like Zimbabwe.
Of course, the people of Zimbabwe have known for years that Mugabe and his Zanu PF government were incompetent and corrupt and were dragging the whole nation to economic ruins. However, for 37 years and counting, they have failed to do anything about it because the regime has rigged elections to remain in power frustrating the people’s democratic wish for meaningful political change.
We have the absurd situation where 72.3% of the population live on $1.00 or less a day whilst a tiny minority live 25 bed-room mansions with a luxurious lifestyle to march because for the last 37 years the majority have never had the political voice to cry. The essence of our struggle today is to make sure the majority of Zimbabweans have a political voice and that it is heard, loud and clear.
At the heart of our national economic meltdown and the growing schism between the filthy rich few and the desperately poor majority is the systematic denial of the majority of a meaningful say in the governance of the country.
“Mwana asingachemi anofira mumbereko!” (The baby that does not cry will die on the mother’s back!) so, goes the Shona saying.
Last month’s military coup saw the forced removal of Robert Mugabe and a handful of his senior associates in the G40 faction of Zanu PF. Many people have welcomed the change and some have argued that we should allow the new President Mnangagwa government the space and time to see if it will be any better than the Mugabe regime of the last 37 years. By all means, let us!
Given the real economic mess the country is in, there is no doubt that there are many things that President Mnangagwa can do reduce the mismanagement and corruption, even if these changes are significant what we must not lose sight of is the need for political change designed to restore our political voice.
We must not forget we are in this mess because we had lost our political voice. We need the political changes to restore our political voice otherwise the country will once again slip back into the same economic mess we are in. There is absolutely nothing that would lead one to believe that President Mnangagwa is doing anything to restore the common man’s democratic freedoms and human rights include the right to free, fair and credible elections. Nothing!
Indeed, if anything, President Mnangagwa is doing everything to consolidate his own iron grip on power. He has retained Mugabe’s de facto one-party dictatorship and has dismissed all calls to implement democratic reforms with total contempt.
“Zanu PF ichatonga! Igotonga! Imi muchigohukura!” (Zanu PF will rule! And rule! Whilst you continue barking (about reforms)!) He boasted on his return from exile last month!
President Mnangagwa has plans to improve the economy, whether or not any of them will add up to much, is doubtful.
Some people have said Zimbabwe could have become the South Korea of Africa. Sadly, that was not to be, we have become the North Korea of Africa in every respect – Police State with a belligerent and ruthless authoritarian regime. Considering how far this nation has sunk in this economic hell hole under this Zanu PF dictatorship and the over 30 000 innocent lives murder in cold blood for no other reason than they dared to seek for a more just society; the very least we can do is to demand the democratic reforms and dare not drop the ball.
The country’s economic meltdown has hit the ordinary people hard but it was not spare the Zanu PF ruling elite either. The shrinking nation cake and the ballooning greed of the ruling elite has forced the number of those at the feeding trough to be reduced again and again. Zanu PF member have been fighting amongst themselves for feeding access like hyenas. The recent firing of then VP Mnangagwa followed soon after by the coup that forced Mugabe to resign was the collimation of the factional war that has torn Zanu PF asunder.
The Zanu PF dictatorship is weaker now than it has ever been in all its 37 years in power. Zanu PF imploding has presented the nations with the next best opportunity, after the one wasted by MDC during the GNU, to push through the demands for democratic reforms.
If all this nation ever get from the Zanu PF implosion was the replacement of one dictator, Mugabe, with another, Mnangagwa, leaving the dictatorship itself untouched; then we have dropped the ball for democratic change. All the misery brought on by the dictatorship and the lives lost along the way would have been all for nothing!
20 Replies to “ARMY LATEST: The Filthy Rich Few Vs The Filthy Poor Majority”
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Unofurira vamwe Patrick ndakuona kkkk Iwe zvako zvaunonyora hapana kana error. Woti vamwe vazvikange neavo mamistakes. Hatidi svosvera sha.
Read again; without prejudice. I said earlier nobody has the solutions, only suggestions, which I made. Matters of governance go beyond the personality of individuals. There are many forces that exert pressures on leaders, some internal, others, external. If you also read the book, “Confessions of an Economic Hitman”, it will certainly assist in broaden your view on governance and the forces at play, that are well beyond the reach of the electorate or even the rest of government itself. You cannot, though, seriously think that forty years of endemic corruption can be erased by a few resolutions to stem corruption.
In any case, when you have some of the people who were part of the old cartels, snaking their way back into the system and becoming part of government, you realize that their main mission is to protect their loot. But it is too soon to condemn, I think. Give the “new” guys the benefit of doubt until they make a mess of themselves, or prove you wrong. Transparency is impossible in governance where your “leaders” are chosen for you by unseen forces. Ask yourself who decided for you who you should vote for? Did you hold meetings to choose them? Did you elect them? Or you just selected from the names presented to you? Are national elections really, “elections” or mere “selections”? But then, you will condemn me and say I am trying to be clever with words. So should I be unintelligent with words or just be “like everybody”? The bulk of the town-criers who scream for political justice, social justice, equality, equanimity, blah blah blah, do not even belong to any political party. They expect miracles to happen without getting involved in the process. Until you are part of the action, you will be wasting time intellectualizing these issues. It will only make them academic discussions but there will be no observable change to society only because we discussed it here. Elections are important in any “democracy”. But even more important is the COUNTING of the votes. THE MAN WHO COUNTS THE VOTES IS THE ONE WHO WINS THE ELECTION. So guess who will be counting next year!! Will you? Horrible, am I not? Truth is horrible. Fancy talk is attractive, but futile.
Well, that was not so hard to do was it? We have a nation in deep, deep trouble and we need to find a way out of this mess. We should not be obsessed about spelling and grammar, important that is. We do not want to be like Robert Mugabe who insisted on smart dress code for all his cabinet meetings and for 37 years he wore designer shirt, vest, tie, suit, shoes down to hot pressed socks. And yet accomplished nothing other than destroyed the nation’s economy and abuse and even murder our people.
Mugabe was more English than the English; his command of the English language and mannerism did not stop him become a corrupt and murderous thug! We should at least learn from the tyrant and get our priorities right. Right now, faultless command of the English language is not important!
You have still not offer one solution to the nation’s teething problem of bad governance. All you have done above is play with words to show just how clever you are with words. The 90% out of work are not interested in your cleverness with words nor am I!
The saddest thing about Zimbabwe’s so-called mega rich Black people is that they are not rich from an enterprising entrepreneurial drive, No!
Virtually all of them are rich through politics and are basically thieves. They have never created anything from scratch, that never existed before that has benefited the country. They are all rent-seekers!
This is why they all remained and thrived in chaotic Zim. Most genuinely enterprise creating business people left Zim. No country in the world has ever developed along such a self destructive path.
In the West, people build Businesses and then become Politicians to ensure the right economic environment continues for the sustainability of their business and national prosperity. In Africa its the other way round; people become Politicians first so that they can then build business from stolen state resources. And because these people are not real business people, their businesses cannot survive without politics. This is why most of these people never leave politics!
P.S. And my brother Wilbert, who started the debate, thanks. The above is also for you. Ignore your brother’s quest for an iron crease or language if it offended you. I am sorry. Asi usazvipamha. Mukoma anodzokorora.
And yet you admit we have, as a nation, made mistakes that must be corrected? Agreed. This is about correcting each other’s mistakes whether spelling or otherwise. It’s about suggestions, not solutions because we do not hold the reins of power. Firstly Zimbabweans must learn to take positions and defend them on matters of principle. But they do not. One time the whole youth wing of ZANU is singing their heads off about the “holiness” of Robert Mugabe; and next the same department denounces him as a dictator. From one side, political and human rights activists denounce the role and influence of defence forces in a democracy; and the next moment they march with uniformed forces and are ecstatic to take “selfies” beside them and the tanks. One time we shout that we have been delivered, after putting a man we deemed better than the one before; and the next we are stunned by our own conviction about how bad things have suddenly turned out. As that South African politician remarked in November, “If all these hundreds of thousands of people marched AGAINST Robert Mugabe, who in God’s name has been voting for him all these years?”. We have two faces, that is why we are exploited. We have devolved into a spineless, sycophantic praise singing, ethnocentric nation with no rudiments of any self respect or any understanding of what social cohesion and unity mean. We take the direction the wind blows because principle is lacking. Believe me, it’s not about the removal of ZANU that is the main issue. It’s about the removal of bad politicians from our midst. Those waiting to take the place of ZANU, have fared worse BEFORE they have even governed. They received millions of dollars to fight ZANU in 1999 and 2007. What did they do? They carved the donations among themselves (the rusting top brass) and bought farms along the Zambian Maize belt and filled them with beef cattle. They bought luxury vehicles that are also found in the Queen’s motorcade in England! They bought mansions in Rolfe Valley, Umwinsdale, Juliusdale, Vainona, Borrowdale, Chishawasha Hills etc and all that time they were shouting expletives and crass insults about how ZANU big wigs were siphoning money from the nation’s coffers (and they WERE stealing big!!). Meanwhile, their ragged, blistering, starving, hopeful and devoted followers hung on to every false declarations they made in public… on growling stomachs. Two faces. The same MDC “fighters” screamed about Mugabe’s long over-stay in the leading seat of power, but they surreptitiously ignore how tough Morgan has re-cobbled the party constitution and now serves as the longest serving opposition political leader in Africa. The difference with his nemesis rests only on age, for now. The young turks in the opposition are just as much sitting ducks as their ZANU compatriots who could not use the constitution to remove their leader. There is need for a NEW political party, free from any recycled politicians, whether in government or in opposition. The current lot is as vile as their mirror reflections in the other party. The opposition screams frantically about the missing billions worth of diamonds. They claim to have evidence of who took it and where. But alas! Not one among them has opened any lawsuit to start the game ball rolling and show the nation that they mean business. Reason? They can’t because they have begun to steal also before they have even smelt the leather in the seat of power! They reviled Mugabe for being a globe trotter. Here they are spending millions already in air journeys to confer with men who have nothing to do with our own freedom. That, Nomusa Garikai and Patrick Guramatunhu, is my position. I lick nobody’s butt to please, friend, family or foe. My answer, we are back farther than where we started. New party now or nothing.
Nothing. But it seems to really raise the hairs in your backside.
Patrick. If you look at my initial comment, I never attacked Nomusa’s contribution. The general thrust of it is agreeable to me. And I hinted at that in my response. I only mentioned from a GENERAL standpoint of the diminishing journalistic standards in language of the newspaper. My statement was duly triggered by the errors I saw in the last article before my comment, but you can see that there were similar precedents that brought my commentary to the boil. An “idiot like” me accepts your blindness in full my brother. But as I said before, if your brilliant idiocy were in journalism, you wouldn’t even have seen any offence in my pursuit. That was not a confession but I cannot go down that garden path with you. I have offered lots of suggestions on other articles but only idiots like you can pretend to offer solutions. So why don’t we let the matter rest and compare our idiocies as we move forward with the important issues of the nation?
“But it is my name, rather than what I wrote which brings the hairs of your head to bristle, I suppose,” you say.
What is so special about your name?
@ Billet Magara
Here we go again! Zimbabweans have a great hang-up about being the most literate nation in Africa and what is shocking is that they are also the poorest people in Africa with no less than 72.3% of the population now living on US$ 1.00 or less a day. For all their ability to read and write, having the highest per capita University graduates and the walls in many homes papered with certificates, diplomas, degrees, doctorates, etc. the nation has yet to pass first grade in common sense. We boast about our high literacy but do not have the common sense to realise that the real true value of knowledge is when it is applied to improve our lives.
What good is knowing that there are biharzia parasitic worms and a multitude of other water born diseases in rivers if we carry on bath and drink from the river?
Robert Mugabe imposed a smart dress code on all his cabinet members from his his cabinet meeting in 1980. He was to go on a preside over all the cabinet meetings for the next 37 years, he was too much of a control freak to allow any meeting unless he was there to chair it, wearing his designer suit, shirt, tie, shoes down to his iron pressed socks! His regime will go down in human history as one of the most corrupt and incompetent government composed of highly qualified individuals all smartly dressed! Billet Magara would be very impressed with the minutes of the cabinet meetings, he will find not one spelling mistakes or grammar error!
Poor Zimbabwe, we have been school to focus on appearance we have to learn from scratch that it is substance and not appearance that real matters. No wonder the country is in this mess, we have been trading our gold and diamonds for cheap shiny gold coated Chinese trinkets!
Why we must discuss our national problems in perfect English or not at all is truly beyond me!
Billet Magara, we want people to say how we are going to get the nation out of the political and economic mess. Please tell us how and stop wasting time correcting other people’s spelling mistakes!
@Magara
With all due respect, you have clearly got the wrong end of the stick! The thrust of Nomusa’s comment was simple enough – we have a serious, life and death situation is Zimbabwe which needs our urgent attention. We should keep our eyes on that ball and not allow ourselves be distracted by trivial matters.
“I took nothing from the article, except to cautiously point out the need to express fact without harming the image of the writer’s mind with sloppy errors,” you confessed about.
There were many very important issues raised in the above article, even if they were not expressed in the perfect English you would prefer, but only an idiot like you “took nothing from the article” because you are obsessed about spelling and grammar. And true to your idiotic nature, you waste time writing a whole thesis on who was the true author of all the stuff attributed to William Shakespeare as if the author has now become more important than the work.
You have not offered one solution to alleviate the suffering masses of Zimbabwe, it is that the nation is dying for. We want solutions on how to end the evil Zanu PF dictatorship and do not care from whom they come! If you are not going to write about that then shut the f&*% up!
I agree with you there the filthy rich few with the veto are holding the voiceless filthy poor majority as their hostages. The few ruling elite have captured all the state institutions to serve their selfish goal of gaining absolute power and hold it at all cost. The gap between the filthy rich and filthy poor has grown into an unbridgeable chasm as exemplified by the princely mansions of the ruling elite compared to the decaying and rotting houses in Mt Pleasant, Borrowdale and all the other low density suburbs to say nothing of the high density suburbs of Luveve and Mkoba worse still the rural home.
After decades of living in such posh mansion, eating four course meals and sleeping in bed with silk sheets, it is simply unthinkable for people like Chiwenga to even contemplate giving all this up. He knows that the only way for him to hold on to his mansion and lifestyle of unparalleled luxuries is by staying in power and retain his unfettered access to the nation’s wealth. The filthy rich will fight to resist political change because, in being filthy rich, they now have too much to lose.
The demise of Robert Mugabe did not herald the political change many in the street had hoped for. If anything the Zanu PF dictatorship has emerged out of the coup stronger than it has been for decades. Mnangagwa, Chiwenga and all the other coup members are being showered with rose petals of liberators when all they did was remove one dictator to replace him with another.
The dictatorship, of which the coup plotters are fully fledged members, had become so unpopular they sacrificed the one member of the dictatorship, Mugabe. This was nothing more than the cunning lizard which, when cornered, would shed off its tail. The tail will wriggle as if to get away. Whilst the snake or whatever was after the lizard tackles the tail the cunning own makes good its escape. No doubt it will dawn on many Zimbabweans that they carnival celebration of Mugabe’s demise was ill advised for all the got was the tail of the dictatorship and it has since grown another tail!
The ten dollar to the filthy poor and million or should that be the trillion dollar to the filthy rich question is how are will going to implement the democratic reforms to end this evil dictatorship?
Read my comment on Zimeye’s Violet Gonda’s interview with Hon. David Coltart, and swallow your sightless indignation.
Nomusa Garikai, you are groping in the dark for facts whose whereabouts you have no idea of. I am not clearly living above the $1 a day platform. I was hit and sabotaged by these same cretins you accuse me of identifying with. They are a vile and conscience-free lot of criminals. Nobody is vying for “perfect English” if there is even a hint of such a thing. The Shakespeare you refer to as a wonderful example of a good writer, was an illiterate street urchin who could not even string two sentences together. He did not write a single passage in all those brilliant works you fawn after. His daughter never even went to school. Sir Francis Bacon is the one who arranged for a brilliant (unknown at the time) BLACK AFRICAN WOMAN (!) to write the so called ‘works of William Shakespeare”. So don’t push your emotive, half baked advice in my face. In the commentary section, errors are widely admissible because the people responding are not branded professional journalists. In the main article, they are also admissible as long as they are NOT BASIC blunders. So no mater how much passion you contain in your fiery chest and what insulting barbs you reserve for my rightful contribution, it remains a fact. I took nothing from the article, except to cautiously point out the need to express fact without harming the image of the writer’s mind with sloppy errors. So as the air is hissing slowly out of your ego, bear in mind that everyone has the right to express their opinion. And if you don’t like them, do not write on any public platform in the MAIN article section. My horse is only a highland pony and is therefore short enough to be almost hard-to-see in the grass. So relax buddy. The granary of insults is not exclusive to you alone. As a matter of fact several people have already highlighted this development to Zimeye. But it is my name, rather than what I wrote which brings the hairs of your head to bristle, I suppose. Well, let your hate consume you.
We have allowed Mugabe and Zanu PF to ride roughshod over our freedoms, rights , hopes and dreams for far too long and now we are paying dearly for our folly. How to end the Zanu PF dictatorship is the greatest challenge of our time!
Wilbert is talking about a very serious matter, a matter of life and death for the 72.3% of our people now living on US$1.00 or less a day. You, Magara, are clearly not one of the millions who live on US$ 1.00 or less a day. But is it really hard for you to imagine, even for just minute, what living on US$ 1.00 or less a day. Now that you have left your conform zone; do you really think those miserable souls would care to hear about you and your “spelling and grammatical blunders” especially when you have absolutely nothing else to say about their miserable lives much less offer a way out?
If I was one of those miserable Zimbabweans, I would rather listen to Wilbert because he is genuinely addressing their needs.
For your own information Billet Magara, Zimbabwe’s political and economic mess affect us all; the filthy rich few with the veto on who should rule the country and the voiceless filthy poor majority; because the present situation of 72.3% living in abject poverty is socially and political unsustainable. Zimbabwe is sinking fast and we need to sort this mess out.
If you want to read something expressed in perfect English, read William Shakespeare or some such great writer!
I would much rather be save from drowning by someone speaking pigeon English than forsake his help whilst awaiting for one speaking the Queen’s language to perfection.
By the way S Africans are not is a mess because, with all the imperfections you have listed, they have a fairly functional system of government. I would rather have the schoolboy errors and none of last month’s coup, all the vote riggings and political murders. You really need to get off your high horse mate!
I really like Zimeye, but the number of schoolboy grammatical and spelling blunders in our articles is rising fast. Can the editorial team please pull up their socks? Some non-words are also being thrown into the fray and we wonder now how the world outside will view us. Are we going the way of some South African newspapers? They have headlines such as, “Man drowns, but is saved by neighbour…”. Or “Man commits suicide and runs away…”. Seen them?