Hopewell Chin’ono: Mega Lies that reflect a rotting economy and an unchanged and incorrigible kleptocracy

By Hopewell Chin’ono

What is a Memorandum of Understanding and how does it relate to the so-called Mega Deals that only happen in Zimbabwe’s State controlled Media outlets?

A memorandum of understanding is a non-binding agreement between two or more parties, and we have had dozens of them that came to nothing.

A Memorandum of Understanding merely expresses an intention to do something, the key thing is whether there will be a committal agreement after the understanding.

It is a bit like chatting up a girl in a fuel queue and then she gives you her phone number and a hug, it doesn’t mean that you are now dating the girl, the equivalent of billions pouring into Zimbabwe.

It simply means that she is interested in talking to you, she might decide to date you or she might not be interested at all in going down that path after realizing that you are not a man of good principles and that you don’t keep your word!

Now the State controlled Media celebrates that sort of understanding as if muroora atopinda mumusha.

Each time Zimbabwe gets a phone number and a hug at a fuel queue, we hear about MEGA DEALS and Billions pouring into Zimbabwe via the State Media.

It is either they suffer from extreme bad journalism or from simply poor propaganda techniques or both, in other words they are bad liars!

Interestingly this desperation for any sign of economic progress is a good thing if it were followed through with cogent narratives and plans to do what is right and what can translate into proper economic progress for the country.

It shows that the government and its State Media knows that things are really bad in the country, that is why they manufacture Fake news or poor jokes.

However it also shows that they have NO real appetite to do the right thing, if they had they would have moved much faster with political and economic reforms since removing Robert Mugabe instead of feeding us with comical propaganda.

It also shows that although Robert Mugabe was a bad leader and president, he wasn’t alone in ruining the Zimbabwe.

He was aided, abetted and protected by the current ZANU PF leadership, so apportioning blame to Mugabe alone would be dishonest and a certified falsehood!

They were in it together and his surrogates have taken over the ship and are now doing worse using the gun as their protective shield.

We were sold that lie that Mugabe was the only bad guy after the coup that removed the dictator.

We were told that he single handedly destroyed the country, and to be honest I almost believed it but with the passage of time, I have come to realize that it was a group thing because 17 months after Mugabe’s removal, we are still in the same mess and style of governance if not worse!

The state media, regime apologists, Emmerson Mnangagwa loyalists and ZANU PF sycophants will carry on pretending that things are normal and getting better.

This should be expected because many of them survive from the dysfunctionality of our State and a broken economy.

They get foreign exchange at ridiculously low rates, they get tender deals, they get jobs and consultancies, they get fuel when it is scarcely available like now, they get land and the list goes on.

They have no moral compass at all to tell them that they are living off the nation’s suffering and you shouldn’t expect them to have any sense of shame anytime soon!

This is because Political and Economic Reforms will require transparency and professionalism, almost all these folks can’t survive in a competitive environment where a citizen is rewarded on the basis of merit and ability or skilled capability, and they know it.

Ndavana Gweja in their professions if they have any at all and as such, they will not want a better Zimbabwe where citizens thrive and get rewarded accordingly.

So the current governance system survives through a patronage mechanism that is used to reward such mediocrity!

Any person who is fully aware of their professional capabilities would never sink that low to give validation to a style of governance that is impoverishing the weak, the sick, the poor and the elderly!

The MEGA deals nonsense started with Robert Mugabe and it is still with us today.

The system of having dishonest intellectuals and industry leaders defending the rot is again not new, it has been with us since the crisis.

What has changed, you might want to ask the party sycophants and regime’s professional apologists together with the dishonest intellectuals who anchor such deceitful political and economic narratives.

Nothing at all except the removal of Robert Mugabe and the replacement of his travelers and bunch of hangers on with a new bunch that is equally dishonest chosen on the basis of ethnic alliances, rural home posts codes, historical corrupt enterprises and business cartels.

Corruption, incompetence, clan based nepotism and mismanagement of the economy are the only Mega Deals on offer in Zimbabwe as opposed to REAL political and economic reforms that would anchor a strong and successful economy that looks after all its citizens regardless of proximity to political power.

Beware of Mega Lies!

Hopewell Chin’ono is an award winning Zimbabwean international Journalist and Documentary Filmmaker. He is a Harvard University Nieman Fellow and a CNN African Journalist of the year.

He is also a Fellow at the University of Oxford’s Africa Leadership Institute.

Hopewell has a new documentary film looking at mental illness in Zimbabwe called State of Mind, which was launched to critical acclaim.

The recently departed music superstar Oliver Mtukudzi wrote the sound track for State of Mind.

It was recently nominated for a big award at the Festival International du Film Pan-Africain de Cannes in France and in the UK at the Heart of England International Film Festival.

You can watch the documentary trailer below.