The Comptroller and Auditor General’s report tabled in Parliament earlier this month is the most damning evidence ever publicly produced of the ongoing kleptocracy that is Zimbabwe today. The staggering theft of public funds by ZANU PF ministers, military leaders and senior bureaucrats is shaking the ordinary people to the core. The theft of public funds is said to be ‘unbelievable’ in its enormity but in the realty of what Zimbabwe has become it is very believable. It simply goes hand in hand with the enormous theft of land, land improvements, growing crops and stock – including very recently some 8,000 crocodiles raised by a Chiredzi farmer – that has taken place in Zimbabwe in recent years. That it is being exposed to public scrutiny is what I find to be ‘unbelievable’ but perhaps the arrival of the MDC to Parliament has enabled this exposure to take place.
The report tells us that 10,277 youths were employed in the Ministry of Youth Development as so-called Ward Officers without nay authority. They were employed in the run up to and during the 2008 elections. It is crystal clear they were employed to ‘ensure victory’ for the ruling party in the usual way they do these things – holding night pungwes, beating up the local people, threatening death for voting ‘the wrong way’ and committing other like criminal acts. Mugabe and his coterie of thugs have never been more exposed for what they are.
But then the report tells of the brazen thefts of public property – generally motor vehicles ‘donated’ by the Reserve Bank Governor, the notorious Gideon Gono, to various ministries during the year under review. Some have simply not been accounted for by the ministries and departments concerned, others have been taken away by the drivers – mostly ministers in government, senior civil servants and military personnel. Add to that the theft of fuel where these same people entrusted with governing the country have been ‘allocated’ as much as 5,000 litres a month for fuel.
Now at last – well just perhaps – the people who continually like to defend Mugabe as a ‘hero of the liberation struggle’ will come to realise just what kind of heroes he and his cronies are – and have been all along.
South Africa should take note before they suffer the same fate. If you allow corruption to survive because it is ‘not really significant’, it just grows more heads like Medusa until it suffocates an entire nation of ordinary people.
The End is nigh? In a normal society one would think so. Zimbabwe is not a normal society.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Monday, November 9, 2009
Why is Africa not successful?
I learned something new today about the Psychology of Happiness and Success. There is an entire psychological school of thought devoted to this theory. The theory says:
1. If you are happy you are more likely to be successful than if you are unhappy
2. Optimists are more likely to be happy with their circumstances than pessimists.
3. Man is a social animal who is generally empathetic and will respond to the behaviour – good or bad, happy or unhappy, of others who surround him. As a proven statistic 85% of people will be influenced by the behaviour of those around them while the other 15% will not. We tried this in a brief experiment and it worked inasmuch as 85% of us were able to make the other 85% smile!
So beware of the company you keep and surround yourself with happy optimists.
The drift moved on to why is Africa not successful. Of all the continents, Africa has the highest misery index and the least success. It has been suggested by the School of Happiness and Success, no less, that the possible reason for Africa’s continuing failure is that as a people, they do not believe they can change things through their own behaviour. As in Zimbabwe, Africans tend to say ‘But what can we do?’ when faced with a government that leads them into a trillion percent inflation, bullies them, even kills them off one or more at a time and leads them into lives of misery, uncertainty and insecurity. And African governments, faced with failure to perform, blame outside influences – a la ‘Western Illegal Economic Sanctions’, droughts, world recessions, global warming caused by the West, etc, etc, etc.
But I wonder about this. The ordinary people are generally happy in the midst of some of the most appalling circumstances. Then there are some of the people who make a lot of decisions to help themselves and become successful beyond their wildest dreams – that is if you measure success by the amount of money in their bank balances or the numbers and size of the cars in their garages, their homes, whatever. Look at Phillip Chiyangwa, the senior members of the Army and Police, civil servants, judges, and ZANU PF politicians who now have several farms – each(!), plenty of expensive and luxurious motor cars and homes that would challenge Balmoral Castle (if not quite Buckingham Palace!) So given the right circumstances (power) they can be happy (successful) optimists – at the expense of course – of the ordinary people who are ‘fatalists’ if not pessimists.
Yet Africa as a continent and Zimbabwe as a country is getting poorer by the day so there is an ingredient missing amongst the successful Africans – perhaps it is empathy? They could be the 15% who you can’t make smile around the boardroom table?
Is this the psychological answer to Africa’s failure, I wonder?
1. If you are happy you are more likely to be successful than if you are unhappy
2. Optimists are more likely to be happy with their circumstances than pessimists.
3. Man is a social animal who is generally empathetic and will respond to the behaviour – good or bad, happy or unhappy, of others who surround him. As a proven statistic 85% of people will be influenced by the behaviour of those around them while the other 15% will not. We tried this in a brief experiment and it worked inasmuch as 85% of us were able to make the other 85% smile!
So beware of the company you keep and surround yourself with happy optimists.
The drift moved on to why is Africa not successful. Of all the continents, Africa has the highest misery index and the least success. It has been suggested by the School of Happiness and Success, no less, that the possible reason for Africa’s continuing failure is that as a people, they do not believe they can change things through their own behaviour. As in Zimbabwe, Africans tend to say ‘But what can we do?’ when faced with a government that leads them into a trillion percent inflation, bullies them, even kills them off one or more at a time and leads them into lives of misery, uncertainty and insecurity. And African governments, faced with failure to perform, blame outside influences – a la ‘Western Illegal Economic Sanctions’, droughts, world recessions, global warming caused by the West, etc, etc, etc.
But I wonder about this. The ordinary people are generally happy in the midst of some of the most appalling circumstances. Then there are some of the people who make a lot of decisions to help themselves and become successful beyond their wildest dreams – that is if you measure success by the amount of money in their bank balances or the numbers and size of the cars in their garages, their homes, whatever. Look at Phillip Chiyangwa, the senior members of the Army and Police, civil servants, judges, and ZANU PF politicians who now have several farms – each(!), plenty of expensive and luxurious motor cars and homes that would challenge Balmoral Castle (if not quite Buckingham Palace!) So given the right circumstances (power) they can be happy (successful) optimists – at the expense of course – of the ordinary people who are ‘fatalists’ if not pessimists.
Yet Africa as a continent and Zimbabwe as a country is getting poorer by the day so there is an ingredient missing amongst the successful Africans – perhaps it is empathy? They could be the 15% who you can’t make smile around the boardroom table?
Is this the psychological answer to Africa’s failure, I wonder?
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Violence and Deceit
There are a lot of disturbing events taking place since the ‘disengagement’ of the MDC from fraternising (or whatever it is they have been doing) with ZANU PF. Tsvangirayi and his MDC still seem to think that SADC and/or Jacob Zuma will come to their rescue. This seems to be misplaced trust in people and organisations who have consistently shown their colours to be nailed to the Mugabe mast.
So Tsvangirayi is back in town and nothing’s changed – ZANU PF continue to flout the terms of the GNU at will and are now apparently, getting bolder in the face of SADC inaction. Over the weekend an MDC property was raided – the police – as usual – in search of non-existent firearms supposedly buried on the property.
Today I read that the residents of Chiweshe Communal Lands are being attacked by ‘militia’ beating up ordinary people and specifically teachers. This is Chiweshe’s punishment for voting MDC in the last elections. In previous attacks shortly after the election buttocks were being flayed – so much so that the flesh was torn from the bodies and several people were killed, some apparently through being forced to drink paraquat – a deadly herbicide, and others killed through the crushing of genitals. The residents of Chiweshe, after that kind of experience, are surely running scared today in fear of their lives. Who will help them? Not SADC that’s for sure.
Then there has been the arrest and detention of two of the leadership of the National Association of Non-Governmental Organisations at Victoria Falls while they were boarding a plane to return to Harare after the completion of the NANGO Summer School. They are accused of holding a political meeting without authority, an offence under the draconian POSA Act which should have been repealed as part of the GNU agreement.
What’s it all about? My guess it is part of a ZANU PF strategy to ensure that the MDC do NOT re-engage ZANU PF. There is nothing they would like more than the total collapse of the GNU. Any ZANU PF strategy is of course either deceitful or violent or both.
When will the MDC, SADC and the players in this unfolding scenario learn this one single ZANU PF principle?
So Tsvangirayi is back in town and nothing’s changed – ZANU PF continue to flout the terms of the GNU at will and are now apparently, getting bolder in the face of SADC inaction. Over the weekend an MDC property was raided – the police – as usual – in search of non-existent firearms supposedly buried on the property.
Today I read that the residents of Chiweshe Communal Lands are being attacked by ‘militia’ beating up ordinary people and specifically teachers. This is Chiweshe’s punishment for voting MDC in the last elections. In previous attacks shortly after the election buttocks were being flayed – so much so that the flesh was torn from the bodies and several people were killed, some apparently through being forced to drink paraquat – a deadly herbicide, and others killed through the crushing of genitals. The residents of Chiweshe, after that kind of experience, are surely running scared today in fear of their lives. Who will help them? Not SADC that’s for sure.
Then there has been the arrest and detention of two of the leadership of the National Association of Non-Governmental Organisations at Victoria Falls while they were boarding a plane to return to Harare after the completion of the NANGO Summer School. They are accused of holding a political meeting without authority, an offence under the draconian POSA Act which should have been repealed as part of the GNU agreement.
What’s it all about? My guess it is part of a ZANU PF strategy to ensure that the MDC do NOT re-engage ZANU PF. There is nothing they would like more than the total collapse of the GNU. Any ZANU PF strategy is of course either deceitful or violent or both.
When will the MDC, SADC and the players in this unfolding scenario learn this one single ZANU PF principle?
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Guinea
I have been reading about the latest activities in Guinea in West Africa. I am deeply thankful that I live in Zimbabwe and not Guinea where they have experienced nothing but horror since the French abandoned them to their independence in 1958. Today, fifty-one years later, their self styled leader, Captain Moussa Camara who assumed power in a military coup as recently as December 2008 is celebrating his status with the usual African impunity and lack of caring for his people.
Yesterday we read and hear of violent public disorder and ‘Red Berets’ loyal to Camara running berserk with firearms murdering at least a hundred plus fleeing civilians and raping innocent women in broad daylight and in public view. Admittedly Zimbabwe has been almost there, but not quite and it seems unlikely that we will get to those depths. Or am I just another optimist in Africa?
What will African leaders do about this state of Guinean affairs? No doubt they will talk about it for a while and talk a lot, blame the French for colonising Guinea and the West for abandoning the ‘struggling masses’. Then they will allow events to unfold as Captain Camara directs, which you can be sure, will not be in the interests of the ordinary people of Guinea. Self respecting African Americans with roots in Guinea can be thankful their ancestors were removed as slaves.
Colonialism invariably gets the blame for everything. But colonialism was as inevitable to Africa as it was to Britain in the dark and middle ages, as it was to the Americas and Australasia and parts of Asia in the 17th and 18th centuries. While Britain, North America, Australasia and more recently India have grown into modern day economic giants and much of South America is not far behind, what went wrong in Africa? Perhaps it was that colonialism in Africa was never fully consummated? And when it came time for the ‘winds of change’ they blew like a hurricane across the continent. The colonials unashamedly and without hesitation washed their hands of any responsibility, fled the aftermath of their creations leaving a leadership gap of untold proportions and the inevitable agony and destruction to those they colonised.
How long will it take for Africa to rise from the ashes of their destruction? A long time for the destruction goes on without any sign of relief. Even South Africa is showing signs of following the recent Zimbabwean route to hell and Guinea, fifty-one years after independence, sinks lower into oblivion with each passing dictator.
Yesterday we read and hear of violent public disorder and ‘Red Berets’ loyal to Camara running berserk with firearms murdering at least a hundred plus fleeing civilians and raping innocent women in broad daylight and in public view. Admittedly Zimbabwe has been almost there, but not quite and it seems unlikely that we will get to those depths. Or am I just another optimist in Africa?
What will African leaders do about this state of Guinean affairs? No doubt they will talk about it for a while and talk a lot, blame the French for colonising Guinea and the West for abandoning the ‘struggling masses’. Then they will allow events to unfold as Captain Camara directs, which you can be sure, will not be in the interests of the ordinary people of Guinea. Self respecting African Americans with roots in Guinea can be thankful their ancestors were removed as slaves.
Colonialism invariably gets the blame for everything. But colonialism was as inevitable to Africa as it was to Britain in the dark and middle ages, as it was to the Americas and Australasia and parts of Asia in the 17th and 18th centuries. While Britain, North America, Australasia and more recently India have grown into modern day economic giants and much of South America is not far behind, what went wrong in Africa? Perhaps it was that colonialism in Africa was never fully consummated? And when it came time for the ‘winds of change’ they blew like a hurricane across the continent. The colonials unashamedly and without hesitation washed their hands of any responsibility, fled the aftermath of their creations leaving a leadership gap of untold proportions and the inevitable agony and destruction to those they colonised.
How long will it take for Africa to rise from the ashes of their destruction? A long time for the destruction goes on without any sign of relief. Even South Africa is showing signs of following the recent Zimbabwean route to hell and Guinea, fifty-one years after independence, sinks lower into oblivion with each passing dictator.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Goebbels knew nothing
This morning I had my car radio on as I drove to work and found myself listening to the morning news. It all started off fairly typically with a reference to the fact that the ‘State President and head of government and commander of the armed forces, comrade Robert Gabriel Mugabe while attending a summit yesterday on global warming at the United Nations and said that…………’ I was bored to tears but listened on.
Then in the midst of this ‘news’ bulletin the announcer told us that we were going to listen to some other reporter who would tell us about how the MDC created ‘Illegal Economic Sanctions’ against the Zimbabwean people. There was a pause, a deathly silence for about 15 seconds before a clear and audible voice told the listenership how an MDC Member of Parliament had now ‘admitted’ that an MDC conference in Nyanga several years ago was the brainchild behind the ‘dreaded and brutal’ ZDERA (Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act) that was enacted in the US State Congress to impose ‘illegal economic sanctions’ on Zimbabwe and thus lead the ordinary Zimbabwean people to economic destruction, while at the same time the MDC ‘retained the moral high ground’ by blaming ZANU PF for the problems that plunged Zimbabwe into the economic abyss between 2000 and 2009. This was, the speaker concluded, an act of economic sabotage aimed directly at the ordinary Zimbabwean people and was to be condemned from every quarter.
Even though I have been largely inured to the hostility of the ZANU PF propaganda machine, I was just a little shattered. I thought we had a Government of National Unity of some kind. How could this party political vitriol be emanating from the (unified) State broadcaster?
Later I picked up a copy of The Herald, the state propaganda daily news-sheet to see if there was anything in the print media on the subject. Nothing. But I did find a whole page attributed to Golden Guvamatanga (a pseudonym surely – perhaps for the notorious Gee-Gee?) that told the readership of the similarities between the MDC and the brutal and greedy Europeans who had recently been on a self-seeking glory trip to assess the damage caused by the illegal economic sanctions that they imposed on the poor people of Zimbabwe. The MDC, GG told us, were as greedy and avaricious as their European counterparts.
No wonder the MDC are unhappy with the skewed news coverage of the state press. And equally, no wonder that ZANU PF have resisted – and will continue resisting – the introduction of another national broadcaster and the revival of the Daily News.
Then in the midst of this ‘news’ bulletin the announcer told us that we were going to listen to some other reporter who would tell us about how the MDC created ‘Illegal Economic Sanctions’ against the Zimbabwean people. There was a pause, a deathly silence for about 15 seconds before a clear and audible voice told the listenership how an MDC Member of Parliament had now ‘admitted’ that an MDC conference in Nyanga several years ago was the brainchild behind the ‘dreaded and brutal’ ZDERA (Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act) that was enacted in the US State Congress to impose ‘illegal economic sanctions’ on Zimbabwe and thus lead the ordinary Zimbabwean people to economic destruction, while at the same time the MDC ‘retained the moral high ground’ by blaming ZANU PF for the problems that plunged Zimbabwe into the economic abyss between 2000 and 2009. This was, the speaker concluded, an act of economic sabotage aimed directly at the ordinary Zimbabwean people and was to be condemned from every quarter.
Even though I have been largely inured to the hostility of the ZANU PF propaganda machine, I was just a little shattered. I thought we had a Government of National Unity of some kind. How could this party political vitriol be emanating from the (unified) State broadcaster?
Later I picked up a copy of The Herald, the state propaganda daily news-sheet to see if there was anything in the print media on the subject. Nothing. But I did find a whole page attributed to Golden Guvamatanga (a pseudonym surely – perhaps for the notorious Gee-Gee?) that told the readership of the similarities between the MDC and the brutal and greedy Europeans who had recently been on a self-seeking glory trip to assess the damage caused by the illegal economic sanctions that they imposed on the poor people of Zimbabwe. The MDC, GG told us, were as greedy and avaricious as their European counterparts.
No wonder the MDC are unhappy with the skewed news coverage of the state press. And equally, no wonder that ZANU PF have resisted – and will continue resisting – the introduction of another national broadcaster and the revival of the Daily News.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Another deal in the offing?
Always interesting to see what I wrote this time last year! I wrote about the government propaganda machine and the view that ‘illegal economic sanctions’ were the crux of our economic crisis.
Not surprisingly, this morning I listened to ZBC and heard how the US Government was making preliminary moves to ‘lift illegal economic sanctions’ against Zimbabwe. Today’s report has something to do with Mugabe attending the United Nations in New York and he had some kind of meeting with some un-named US government official.
‘Illegal Economic Sanctions’ has been on the daily diet of all ZBC and ZTV listeners for well over a year now. The words Economic Sanctions cannot possibly be stated in the government propaganda media without the prefix ‘Illegal’. From hereon and to save valuable print, I will refer to them as IES. The IES, to remind the readership of this blog, are targeted sanctions against members of the ZANU PF hierarchy and clearly from the recent rants of that hierarchy, they are really hurting the individuals. We even had Mr Gono declaring that ‘if IES were lifted he would ‘consider’ resigning from his office at the Reserve Bank. All these thieves, for that is what they are, have ‘their’ money stashed away in Swiss and other banks locked up by the IES. The fact is that all ‘their’ money has been looted in one way or the other from the ordinary Zimbabwean people. But the thieves want it and they want it now. For them it will be an opportunity to escape and in so doing hopefully, avoid being arrested in Zimbabwe for their crimes against humanity. So the strategy now is to hold on to power at all costs until the IES are lifted and they can access their loot. The worst case scenario for the looters would be to not get their hands on their loot, not get out and end up being arrested for their crimes.
I wonder how this is going to pan out. You can be sure there is going to be a deal struck somewhere. You can be sure that there are a lot of people working on it right now from every angle. The thieves and their protectors (South Africa and SADC) from one side, the MDC and the western governments from the other. How can a deal be engineered in such away that nobody looses face and everybody gets what they want?
No doubt we will find out soon enough.
Not surprisingly, this morning I listened to ZBC and heard how the US Government was making preliminary moves to ‘lift illegal economic sanctions’ against Zimbabwe. Today’s report has something to do with Mugabe attending the United Nations in New York and he had some kind of meeting with some un-named US government official.
‘Illegal Economic Sanctions’ has been on the daily diet of all ZBC and ZTV listeners for well over a year now. The words Economic Sanctions cannot possibly be stated in the government propaganda media without the prefix ‘Illegal’. From hereon and to save valuable print, I will refer to them as IES. The IES, to remind the readership of this blog, are targeted sanctions against members of the ZANU PF hierarchy and clearly from the recent rants of that hierarchy, they are really hurting the individuals. We even had Mr Gono declaring that ‘if IES were lifted he would ‘consider’ resigning from his office at the Reserve Bank. All these thieves, for that is what they are, have ‘their’ money stashed away in Swiss and other banks locked up by the IES. The fact is that all ‘their’ money has been looted in one way or the other from the ordinary Zimbabwean people. But the thieves want it and they want it now. For them it will be an opportunity to escape and in so doing hopefully, avoid being arrested in Zimbabwe for their crimes against humanity. So the strategy now is to hold on to power at all costs until the IES are lifted and they can access their loot. The worst case scenario for the looters would be to not get their hands on their loot, not get out and end up being arrested for their crimes.
I wonder how this is going to pan out. You can be sure there is going to be a deal struck somewhere. You can be sure that there are a lot of people working on it right now from every angle. The thieves and their protectors (South Africa and SADC) from one side, the MDC and the western governments from the other. How can a deal be engineered in such away that nobody looses face and everybody gets what they want?
No doubt we will find out soon enough.
Monday, September 14, 2009
A Mining Conference
Tomorrow there is a scheduled mining conference in Harare and the big mining houses from South Africa and the rest of the world are due to hear how Mugabe is quite happy for the mines to be re-opened and for new investment into platinum, gold and coal. His previously proposed law that Government must own 51% of all mines in Zimbabwe is about to be changed and new laws promulgated to enable investment to come ‘freely’
Watch out! Mugabe has a plan, you can be sure, to loot the new mines just as he looted the old ones and forced them to close. He is not on this new trip for any other reason.
Watch out! Mugabe has a plan, you can be sure, to loot the new mines just as he looted the old ones and forced them to close. He is not on this new trip for any other reason.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)