Jayprog

As Zimbabweans awaited the announcement of the 2007 Monetary Policy by the Reserve Bank governor Dr. G Gono, the country was filled with an aura of expectations in the air.

I glued my eyes to the TV screen for two solid hours also hoping that something new would be said, but nothing worth the solution to the current crises arose from this rather press conference that the governor addressed.

It was rather an economics history lecture in jargon and semantics to avoid the real problems facing this Southern African Country that is suffering from more than a decade of recession. I certainly knew that the devaluation of the dollar was not going to be much of an issue as many Zimbabweans expected.

The devaluation of the dollar is taboo as far as the Zimbabwe economics is concerned because anyone who attempts to devalue the dollar is an enemy of the ‘’state’’

I believe the main reasons why devaluation will not de addressed publicly is because;

1. The President made his views way before and no one can challenge that.
2. Responsible people who are said to be in charge of the economics of this country are afraid of losing their jobs because they have a case study of Simba Makoni who lost his job for the same reason of trying to steer the hornet’s nest.
3. Devaluing the Zimbabwe dollar is like killing the cash cow. Most ministers and senior government officials get the hard currency at paltry rates to finance their lavish lifestyles. An ordinary Zimbabwean would need Z$4 million to access US$1000 whereas a senior government official would only need Z$250 000 to get the same amount. From this simple calculation it then makes sense to protect the exchange rate at a fixed rate to support the politicians’ lives.

The Reserve bank governor has been reduced to a Semantics Technician based at the Reserve bank. It really took Dr. Gono a cool two hours to tell the nation that the Zimbabwe dollar is not going to be devalued something that he could have done through the local press at very minimum cost.

Dodging the truth is what is killing this economy and a real time approach has to be taken. Suppliers are using the parallel market rates and it has been proven that the government has it’s hands tied as far as price control is concerned and this is not helping the nation.

For the governor to say ‘’something’’ has to be done about smugglers and the little fines they pay is really short of saying that the government has failed. Personally I think the admission of guilty fine of $250 is justified because people have no money and above all it is the law gazetted fine.

The use of the word ‘something’ in a crisis is not good enough because everyone is looking for a definite strategy that revolves around specific parameters. It has become a norm in government addresses to say that corruption is rampant but the real corrupt people still roam the streets and it looks like no one wants to expose them, or is it that exposing them has become useless since they can easily find their way back home.

If this government is serious about tackling corruption, there are questions that have to be addressed first. The issue of too many expensive imported cars on the streets of Zimbabwe when there is an acute shortage of foreign exchange spell something is wrong. Where are these people getting the money when the nation is staving and the government is failing to pay reasonable salaries to doctors and nurses?

The culture of stubbornness and non-caring by some senior government officials should be dealt with first before any meaningful development can be realized in Zimbabwe. There are a bunch of politicians with selfish interests and misplaced priorities leading this country into turmoil. Things are crumpling and some people just chose to ignore the situation. There is a water crisis in Harare and one wonders, the health delivery system is crumpling simply because some individuals cannot come to sense and realize that a doctor and a nurse are critical in health service delivery.

True leaders should learn to be criticized and pluck a leaf from the wisdom of the poor villagers that elected them to power. Some Zimbabwean politicians have reached a stage where they are so confused that they think the people are meant to serve them whereas the opposite is the truth.