Mugabe capping salaries a futile gesture
By Wilbert Mukori
After months of half-hearted denials and dithering on the exorbitant salaries and allowances of government owned and controlled institutions Mugabe has finally decided to cap the $ 500 000 per month for the likes of MSMAS CEO Cuthbert Dube and others to a mere $ 6 000 per month.
Before you ask; no the tyrant is not going to do anything to recover the wealth these fat cats have looted over the years. Doing that would start a fire that would certainly end up getting him in turn thrown out of Blue Roof.
The salary cap will stop haemorrhaging from the boardrooms but still the patient needs large financial injection to recover. And there is the thing; the regime is broke and no one will lend it a penny!
The one thing the rampant corruption stories have settled beyond doubt is that it was corruption and looting that have caused Zimbabwe’s economic melt-down and not the targeted sanctions. Zanu PF has vehemently maintained it was the sanctions that did all the damage.
It was the party’s denial of corruption that allowed it to grow into the monster now before us. The monster had now reached the point where it was sucking everything.
The PSMAS continued to collect membership subscription only the members were not getting the medical services when they needed them because after paying the exorbitant salaries and allowance Cuthbert Dube, Board Member George Charamba and all the other top dogs there was no money left to pay doctors who examined the sick members. Nothing!
ZBC paid its top dogs so much there was no money left to pay the lowly paid staff much less produce quality programs to the people who were continuous harangued to pay the exorbitant radio and TV license fees. The story is the same at ZESA, Air Zimbabwe and Councils across the land.
How anyone could expect the nation to prosper when corruption was taking all the wealth out of the economy is the mystery Zanu PF should now explain.
Capping the exorbitant salaries of the fat cats will stop further haemorrhaging of wealth yes but that is not enough. The patient has lost so much blood and starved of nourishment for so long they will need a blood transfusion and a drip feed.
Capping the salaries will stop the fat cats creaming off all the goodies in future but what about those that have been doing this for the last donkey years? Surely something should be done to recover the loot they stole.
Something could be done but not by this Mugabe government; any further action could open a big can of worms in which many senior party leaders will be roped in right up to Mugabe himself. Mugabe’s Borrowdale Mansion, the Blue Roof, has become the beacon of corruption others have set out to follow!
He certainly does not want the spot light turned on him much less to set the example of people losing their loot and end up with himself kicked out of the Blue Roof! No way!
So capping all future excessive fat cat salaries with nothing said about recovering looted wealth is all the nation will ever get.
ZESA, Air Zimbabwe, Harare City Council, NRZ, etc. all these bodies will need a big financial injection to get them back on their feet again. They will all be looking to government to provide that financial boost directly or indirectly starting with government paying its huge unpaid bills.
The Zimbabwe government is broke, it has lived from hand to mouth for decades now and it is up to itself eyes in debt.
It would borrow even more, of course, it is just that no one will lent it even a penny. IMF, WB and all other lenders know the regime does not pay its debt; no banker likes throwing money in a black-hole where not even light ever comes back!
Mugabe has taken great pleasure in giving the middle finger to the West at every opportunity the later has lost all patience with the tyrant. Even the Chinese who have not cared about how corrupt the regime was as long as their get what they want have too decided not to bankroll the regime’s extravagances.
There is no chance of the West softening they stance with the regime because they know in Zimbabwe’s mudded political waters it will not be long before corruption resurfaces again and the whole cycle start – deny it even exist until the national economic is once again back in intensive care in need of another huge financial injection.
The only way to stop the corruption and the nauseating cycles of denial and scapegoating is by removing this corrupt and repressive tyrannical regime.
The criminal waste of human and material resources by this Zanu PF has grown worse and worse over these last 34 years.
We have now reached the point where if the nation does not stop Mugabe he is going to push the nation over the edge. Like all tyrant he is never going to admit that he has failed and step down; we have to force him to or events will.
Events like street riots will force Mugabe to step down, yes; but the thing about such events is they are a child of chaos. A rioting mob is not control by reason by a burning passion to destroy everything they can lay their hands on. And more often than not more innocent blood will be shed!
This is not just Mugabe closing the stable door when the horse has bolted; the stable and the whole farm are on fire. The situation demands a lot more than the futile and empty gesture of closing the stable door!
