Coins: Chinamasa reviving ZimDollar by stealth
By Wilbert Mukori
FINANCE Minister Patrick Chinamasa is proposing the introduction a special Zimbabwe coin to compete with the basketful of other foreign currencies already in use in the country. The administration is so desperate to avoid regime change it is even reintroducing tried and failed policies!
This is reintroducing the Z$ by stealth and we will be back to the days of 500 billion per cent hyper-inflation in no time! Printing money to fill the ever-growing chasm left by ballooning public expenditure in the face of a fast-shrinking revenue base is a foolish policy that has had disastrous consequences before and will have equally disastrous consequences now.
Mugabe is running out of options regarding what to do to end the economic meltdown gripping the nation. The only real way out of this mess is for him to step down and allow free elections – in short regime change. The Zanu PF leader cannot fathom regime change and hence the re-introduction of a tried and failed policy of printing money.
One meets their destiny by paths they took to avoid it. Companies are closing down and two million of our people are already living in abject poverty because of serious economic problems such as corruption and the lack of direct foreign investment. Hyperinflation will see goods disappear from the shops as happened before, making life even harder for everyone.
Whilst the system of political patronage in which Mugabe rewarded those willing to ride roughshod of the people’s freedoms and basic human rights including the right to a free vote and the right to life has delivered his primary objective of keeping him and Zanu PF in power for all these years, he must however, now admit that the system has a down side; it is the root cause of mismanagement and corruption.
The years of vehemently denying this have only helped these problems to multiple and spread. After 34 years, the chickens have come home to roost in their red-billed quelea multitude!
The criminal wastefulness of human and material resources due to the decades of gross mismanagement and rampant corruption are economically unsustainable. The economic meltdown gripping the nation today is a manifestation of this economic reality.
The only way to end the economic meltdown is by ending the mismanagement and corruption which, in turn, can only be rooted out by ending the political patronage system and there is no other more effective way of ending political patronage than holding free, fair and credible elections.
Of course Mugabe and Zanu PF cannot be certain of winning free and fair elections which is why Mugabe had adopted the political patronage system in the first place. Indeed in the present setting, Zanu PF is certain to lose in a free and fair election.
Ultimately Mugabe and Zanu PF will be forced to accept the political reality that avoiding regime change is politically unsustainable either through the circuitous route of being force to accept the economic reality that rampant corruption is economically unsustainable.
Mugabe is reintroducing the Z$ in a desperate attempt to avoid regime change, not knowing this is certain to fast forward the day of regime change. The only way out of this economic and political hell Mugabe and Zanu PF have landed us is through the door marked “REGIME CHANGE”! There is no other way out!
