Two inflations one Zimbabwe

A basket of tragedy

The wicked man who rules Zimbabwe as a grubby dirty dictator must have interesting perspectives of inflation. Hardly a year ago, inflation was hitting a record 1,042.9%, then business quotations were not valid for more than 2 days - unimaginable - one year on, it has rocketed to 3,713% - it continues to fill me with amazement still where in the West an inflation rate of 4% would send jitters through the markets threatening all sorts of business confidence and possible collapse of certain financial instruments.

Poignantly, one report illustrates how traders are coping with these unprecedented inflation levels, a bar of soap gets cut into three and then each part is sold at slightly higher than a third of the price of whole.

Food stuff are now been re-weighed and repackaged into smaller quantities for more or less the same or higher price in what is referred to as the "Tsaono Basket", Tsaono meaning tragedy in Shona - a language spoken in Zimbabwe, Zambia, Mozambique and Botswana.

The greater tragedy of this is the fact that hardly 10 years ago, Zimbabwe was the food basket of Southern Africa where farms which mainly belonged to white Zimbabweans produced enough to feed the people and export to neighbouring countries.

These farms were seized in some mendacious black empowerment drive and given to so-called war veterans who knew diddly-squat about agriculture or farm management - the result is a country on the verge of great famine and starvation - Mr. Mugabe might have appeared smart with what he had done but he has ruined his country and he is oblivious of this fact.

More police, still no farmers

We now find that in readiness the elections next year the police force is to see an inflation of 100%, the numbers are to be doubled to double the oppression and repression of a people who only want to survive and seek a government that would meet the socio-economic needs that any world citizen deserves.

Any wise old man would see the problem with his country and suffering amongst his people to realise that the recruitment drive should be in raising people with knowledge about farm management so as to start to bring Zimbabwe out of the doldrums.

We need to ditch the patriarchal system of patronage in Africa that allows for nasty old men to impose their selfish megalomaniac will on a people thereby impeding progress and condemning their countries to preventable suffering and unnecessary poverty.

Mr Robert Mugabe was once one of the leaders of the liberation struggle in Southern Africa, but that is now history because there is no point in being ruled by people of the same colour and then encountering such great hardship because of misgovernment, corruption and nepotism.

There may be some who would begin to wonder if the times under white rule were not times of great freedom and prosperity.

If that is not a greater indictment of Mr. Robert Mugabe and his cohorts or gang, nothing else is.