Scams and schemes, frauds and fiddles!

Saturday 3rd February 2007

Dear Family and Friends,

It took two hours this week for the Governor of the Reserve Bank to present a monetary policy for Zimbabwe to encompass the next few months. After speaking for an hour Dr Gideon Gono hadn't got to the financial plan yet. He had spent the first sixty minutes exposing the corruption, scams, schemes, smuggling, wheeler dealering and the downright looting of the country by the elite. The audience were in their best bib and tucker, seated on padded chairs and with polished desk space in front of them. There were business men and women, government officials and a number of government ministers. There were, however, a couple of notable absences, one of which was the Minister of Finance and another Vice President Mujuru. In front of each person was a bottle of safe, clean, pure mineral water and the best brand of orange juice in the country - the one that most people can't afford anymore.

What the Reserve Bank Governor described for that first hour was a disgraceful catalogue that any country should and would be deeply ashamed to admit and yet there was almost no response from the audience. Dr Gono said that the "consequences of maintaining the status quo" were "too ghastly to contemplate". He spoke of massive maize scams, of fuel racketeering and fertilizer fiddles. He continually accused "those amongst us" as being the people engaged in these activities. He said that the smuggling of gold, diamond and other minerals had reached mammoth proportions and was akin to "mafia style dealings". Dr Gono was scathing in the extreme about the new A2 farmers many of who are high ranking government officials. He said they were given the best of the seized commercial farms and yet still failed to produce. He said the farmers were consumed with incessant "baby crying" as they begged for cheap fuel, seed, fertilizer and tractors. And when these A2 farmers, many of whom have other businesses and drive luxury 4x4 vehicles, have been given everything at massively subsidised prices, Dr Gono said they find a queue of scapegoats to blame for 6 unbroken years of dismal production. This far into the speech Dr Gono had said nothing that all Zimbabweans do not know already.

An hour an a half into his two hour speech and after we'd had the religious stories and the world history lesson, Dr Gono made the first monetary announcement. "There will be no devaluation" he said, and at that point there was a half hearted smattering of applause from the audience. People sat back in their chairs, faces took on a glazed look and from that moment it seemed as if everyone knew that nothing was going to change - how could it without political backing. Everyone also seemed to know that in just two days time another round of scams and schemes, frauds and fiddles would probably begin as almost all the remaining commercial farmers fall victim to the latest government eviction notices which take effect on Saturday 3rd February.

On the same day as the presentation of the monetary policy, news came of 19 confirmed cases of cholera from high density suburbs outside Harare. Film footage on television showed women scooping basins of murky water out of puddles - desperate after days of dry taps. This is physically just two dozen kilometres out of Harare but it may as well be a world away from the suited businessmen, the bottled mineral water and the orange juice. You have to wonder how it would go down if the next monetary policy took place there - among the mud and the flies, the sewage and the garbage. These are the people suffering the results of the scams and schemes, the looting and smuggling and you can only wonder how much more they can take.

Until next week,

love cathy