By Earnest Adonai Mthimkhulu| In a depressing reaction to the national budget presented by the Finance Minister Prof Mthuli Ncube, basic commodity prices have soared in tandem, fuel queues have resurfaced in long snake chains and the massive populous of 27.37 percent of 261 188 people eligible for employment who are unemployed.
The grimmest sign that the economy is on the brink and off the rails is the failure by the finance minister to actually draft a budget, as expected by the general communities of Zimbabwe that solves the current cash shortages, sporadic rise of prices and solve the forex exchange confusion and not mix it with mixed confusions like what he has done!
From the Transitional Stabilization Programme which says much and seems to deliver less like the controversially archived ZIMASSET blueprint, it is clear that not only has the ZANU PF government geared to fail but also to impoverish the already poor communities especially young women and children in Bulawayo who make up 54% of the Bulawayo as stated in the 2012 statistics by ZIMSTAT.
The economic issue is a serious matter of concern especially to communities in Bulawayo who have been hit by a scourge of urban poverty noted through the constant practice of ‘unlawful’ urban farming amidst seed prices that have soared higher every weekend. What communities in Bulawayo and Matabeleland need is food and availability of cash on their tables not a document crafted to serve the Zanu PF agenda of political power and name cleansing.
If informal traders who rely on importing products and services for the past 20 years are cornered to pay duty using forex yet they get 10 years jail sentence for not only trading but also changing the ridiculous bond notes whose value has lost value how best do they then feed their families? What pains the most is that of the 653 337 Bulawayo residents, 63.2% are informal traders, with some who lost a lot of money when the Unity Village caught up an inferno.
Cowdry park residents have been clamoring for electricity for the past 14 years, the Burombo flat which was deemed unfit for human habitation by the health minister yet nothing was done; the vendors who have lost a lot of business due to the slow progress of the Egodini trading mall construction yet the finance minister releases a shabby budget that’s focused on re-invigorating ZANU PF propaganda and the nausea of factionalism and cartels they have been feeding the masses.
What most residents from Bulawayo expected was a budget dedicated to economic revival, re-industrialization of Bulawayo’s industrial hub which the drafters of the budget have failed to focus on.
Our nation’s economic situation does not need sophisticated econometrics to solve the challenges affecting the economy. It is simple, throw out the rascals who have created fuel cartels, tax the rich (including churches that have mushroomed in every corner of the CBD selling ‘holy products’ yet avoiding business tax) and redistribute income more aggressively inclined towards the middle-income class as these have become the tax payers and revenue producers for our industrial-ess country.
Emphasizing economics alone in solving the Zimbabwean economic strife will breed complacency because all the economic problems we are facing are political not economic. And attempting to counter capital populism and illiberalism just by tweaking the income distribution could amount to yet another example of technocratic hubris, that is if we are not in that situation already.