The major problem we have is that our leaders are not honest. They would impose price controls by day and rush to sell on the black-market by night. A classical case was when a woman was found with her boot full of newly printed money. She tried to contact a very close adviser to the reserve bank governor, who later described her as his 'intimate casual girlfriend' or mistress in simple English.
Officials were brazenly using laws and by-laws to loot legitimate businesses. A law imposing price limits would be passed by evening and the following morning price control teams would fan out and confiscate goods from supermarkets accused of overcharging. The same goods would later find their way onto the blackmarket at much much higher prices, with the same officials pocketing the money.
A classical case was the case where companies and organisations were forced to remit of bank their foreign currency in local banks with the promise that it would be kept as foreign currency. On several occasions such organisations would wake up to find that their money had been converted to Zim dollars at the official rate which was a miniscule of the black-market rate.
The Zimdollars given to the people who worked for the money, couldn't buy anything while those who just took the money would now buy luxury cars including umpteen cylinder Barabuses. Recently one such organisation filed a lawsuit to try and recover their money.
The tactics used by the then Zanu-PF only government to manage the economy were heavy handed, devoid of intelligent analysis, and often based upon spurious unscientifically tested assumptions. I see exactly the same kind of ignorant heavy handedness in the current demands that banks bring back money from 'offshore'. The minister now leading the heavy handed charge, Tendai Biti, now belongs to the MDC.
The pattern of lack of scientific study remains the same. The pattern of leaving their own personal benefits untouched and even growing, remains the same. The pattern of jumping at the mote in another's eye while gingerly stepping around the log in one's own eye remains the same.
My long standing opinion is that the difference between Zanu-PF and the MDC is that between a wolf and a jackal. Neither can be trusted with a flock of sheep. Neither can be trusted to run Zimbabwe properly. Neither can be trusted to eradicate corruption.
Unfortunately the landscape of political analysis is monopolised by analysts who don't see beyond party names. The political landscape is full of people who are blind to all other facts except the name of the party. These analysts some of them acclaimed academics endeavour to reduce all political discourse to an Orwellian chant of "so'n'so good, so'n'so bad"
Animal farm is a story about animals who overthrow the leadership of humans and institute a slogan of 'Four legs good, two legs bad'. As the pigs who took over the running of the farm start to enjoy the comforts left behind by humans and learn to walk on their hind legs, the slogan us changed to 'Four legs good, two legs better!'
Before the GNU the opposition airwaves were full of chants of 'MDC good, Mugabe bad." Since the MDC leaders got into government and started to enjoy the wamth and comforts of power the chants have been slowly migrating towards 'Mugabe good, MDC better'. I would rather chant "MDC and Zanu-PF 'same differnce'".
A write up on Wikipedia about Animal Farm rightly says that the novel "portrays corrupt leadership as the flaw in revolution (and not the act of revolution itself), it also shows how potential ignorance and indifference to problems within a revolution could allow horrors to happen"
In Zimbabwe corruption is the grindstone that has been tied around the country's neck. Ignorance has been the scourge that has riven incompetent leadership of key institutions like the Reserve Bank with disastrous consequences. In difference by top leadership whose pockets are not affected, or are actually fattened, by mismanagement of the economy has allowed horrors to be visited upon the masses.
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