MUCKRAKER: Spiralling inflation! Now we know the enemy is within

Opinion
George Charamba

JUST when Nelson Chamisa was starting to believe news that he has no influence left in the country, it was reported this week that he is in control of the economy. This must have come as a massive shock to the man.

Prices are rising in the shops, clearly because businesses are refusing to operate at a loss, as any patriot is expected to do. But there is a more sinister agenda. This is according to a man whose job is to speak on behalf of the country’s owner, but who spends most of his working hours tweeting into the void, and chatting with a Zambian youth leaguer.

“Chamisa is mobilising business to defend his urban vote against Zanu PF encroachment,” George Charamba said.

This is very important news, coming from the spokesperson of the highest office in the land. All along, we thought the government was in control of the economy. Clearly, we were wrong. It is now confirmed that they have long lost control and Chamisa is, we are told, now running the economy. Even he must be shocked at this unexpected turn of events.

Silly questions

Still on prices, it was reported last week that our owners had sent in a crack team to investigate why prices were going up all over the place. Of course, some of us patriots already knew what was going on. It was all because of those businesspeople being led by the nose by Chamisa and his fellow foreign quislings.

In case some people at Shake Caramba Headquarters were beginning to ask silly questions about incompetence and so forth, our owner said in a Sunday Mail article: “We even wonder if at all we are dealing with business anymore or with the politicians disguised as company executives seeking a political upset. Equally, politicians seeking to engineer market failures for definite political outcomes will be dealt with as political opponents and through rules of appropriate politics.”

So, when we sent out our people to find out what was going on, we already had answers for them. But, somehow, they developed minds of their own. In a report, they blamed money printing for all this nonsense. They even said our plans to fix the problem, like our genius strategy of flooding our country with cheap imports, would backfire.

No doubt, it is that boy Chamisa again — that boy we have told you has no structures, no money and no strategy — who paid our people and told them what to write in a government report. Where is the CIO when we are being infiltrated like so?

Jealous people

By now, we all know that we have jealous people among us who do not want to see us prosper. This is especially so for the opposition, which has no policy — except the policy of crying as loud as possible so that the West can hear them.

Recently, our benevolent leader bought us a new set of helicopters. Some of the choppers will be used by our police force to capture criminals, and also monitor a few other errant miscreants from the air. Others will be used to evacuate our people from disaster areas, say when there are floods, and also for medical air rescue.

Of course, even those who have whined about the absence of air rescue services came out to cry, saying we have our priorities in a twist.

According to the opposition CCC: “Zanu PF’s grossly irrational purchase of Kazan Ansat helicopters at an inflated price when public hospitals are under-equipped and broken demonstrates the regime’s misplaced priorities and lack of true concern for citizens’ welfare. Vote CCC.”

Of course, they forgot to tell us that their main priority should they grab the feeding trough is to succeed where America failed by giving us bullet trains, airports everywhere, and to ban the innocent Zimbabwe Bird.

Laughable Garwe

There must have been a lot of shocked people in the ruining party structures this week when it was declared that bribery is not an acceptable way to campaign.

According to the reeling party’s Mashonaland East provincial chairperson, Daniel Garwe, vote-buying is causing chaos in the party.

“We saw it in the primary elections; some used money to buy seats. The dangling of money is not doing us any good, but is destroying the party. If you are rich and have money, bring it for developmental purposes for the benefit of the masses,” Garwe said.

Surely, this Garwe fellow must be new to the party. What is he talking about? We all know that, for Zanu PF, there are only two ways of campaigning for office. The first is hitting people on the head with a suitably heavy knobkerrie, slashing their backs with whips or machetes, or, as one Saviour Kasukuwere would advise, spraying pesticide in their faces. These are the most trusted ways of persuasion.

When this fails, the next best thing is bribery. And now we see senior people like Garwe telling us to simply campaign without using these tried and tested methods? How does he expect us to win elections? By simply selling our policies? What a laugh.

Poor reporters

Muckraker commiserates with journalists at the state-controlled Zimpapers, who have had to go public to tell their employers that the economy is not doing as well as they have been told to tell us.

In a memo to their owners, the reporters sounded like every worker in the Second Republic. They could no longer afford to travel to work, could barely afford basics, and don’t even have the tools to do their work with.

It gets worse. According to the reporters: “(Our newsroom) is now a haven of cockroaches, an embarrassment when visitors come through for meetings.”

This is the most accurate thing the Zimpapers reporters have reported on so far. Just like everywhere else in Mafialand, these are professionals who just want to do their jobs and go home. But, of course, our owners expect them to live with cockroaches to prove their patriotism, while our leaders eat on their behalf.

Unpatriotic journos

The reporters were not the only ones from Zimpapers, who were being unpatriotic this week. While our newspapers were telling us that prices are rising because of a political plot by our enemies, some of the accountants and executives at Zimpapers were singing a completely different tune.

In the company’s latest financial report, the company seems not to believe what its own papers are telling us. According to the company, prices are rising because of the exchange rate disparity imposed on the economy.

Says Zimpapers in a market update: “The period under review was characterised by local currency volatility, relatively high Zimbabwe dollar borrowing rates and depressed domestic demand … the quarter witnessed further widening of the gap between the official exchange rate and the parallel market rate that affected the general pricing of goods and services in the economy.”

Clearly, someone at the company needs to start reading their own papers a bit more. We cannot have such misinformed people leading such important institutions.

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