Jayprog

After the Libyan drama during Sarkosy's first days in office, Africa should have learnt a very good lesson on racism.

Now that Chad has done the same mistake, it is not surprising that the French child traffickers will be released as soon as they get into France just like the Bulgarian medical staff were released soon after arriving in Sofia.

The above cases involve children and the big brother UNICEF is mum alike usual because it involves the African Child.

The recent announcement by the Reserve bank of Zimbabwe governor Gideon Gono that the central bank could not account for Z$65 trillion out of the Z$67 trillion printed bearer cheques shows that there is something seriously wrong with the Zimbabwe accounting system at the central bank.

After a careful analysis of the figures it came to light that the shortage of cash was not mainly due to forex dealers as alleged but due to real economic causes. Imagine a country with inflation above 70 000% and street value exchange rate of 1USD: Z$2.5 million. This translates to a real value of USD 28.6 million running a country with a population of 15 million people. This translates to USD1.9 per citizen. 

Taking the above maths into the Zimbabwean economy, it means each citizen has a share value of Z$5 million and the good governor expects people to bank money that is not already sufficient for the citizenry alone. My calculations do not include companies and the government itself(a big spender).

The above analysis simply shows that the governor is fooling the nation and that he wants to blame people for the disappearance of his artificial money. The truth of the matter is that the Zimbabwean economy has a serious deficit of everything that one can imagine and money included.

Since the adjustment of all commodity prices to price as at July 18 2008, the prices have since gone up by more than 1000% against the same amount of money that was still in circulation as at 18 July 2008. As a result of this there is few money chasing very expensive goods and the money is bound to be a scarce commodity by simple economics since the products cannot be converted readily to cash.

The governor needs to abandon bush economics and let the market forces rule the economy. One way is to let the dollar free fall to the level that it settles on its true value against the major currencies. This setup will discourage speculation as the Zim dollar reflects true value. Another way would be allowing the introduction of other currencies into play to stabilise the rising inflation rate. This setup will easy money supply problems in the sense that the RBZ will not be tied to money supply since this will be from export earnings and other informal trade. The true value of forex is on a global index and the shift is not as astronomical as that of the Zim dollar.

In trying to find solutions to these problems, there are many noble ideas that come up but are not taken for selfish reasons that are not taken by politicians who want to profiteer from the system where there is a fixed exchange rate. It is worth to note that the majority of forex earned by the nation is accessed by politicians at 0.012 US cents per 1USD. This shows how lucrative the fixed exchange rate is for the politician.

The bottom line is to remove artificial money from the system to restore sense into the economy.

taxation is another thing that is making the economy go down. In real sense the private sector employees are the ones paying tax to pay the civil servants. The income tax reflected on the civil servants pay slips are artificial and as a results of many companies closing down and brain drain at its peak, the government is getting broke day by day.

No amount of talking and threats will solve the economic problem except facing the real issues. The recent introduction of a new breed of bearer cheques is sign that the system is failing, the central bank shelved the introduction of the   notes after realising that inflation was rising at a rate greater than printing the dollars. Very soon the paper on which the cheques are printed will run out and another disaster is looming. as I write this most Zimbabweans are angry because their holidays have been spoiled due to cash shortages all over the country.

Banks were busy issuing brand new $200 000 notes with RBZ ribbons and one wonders why this money is being issued when it is expiring in 9 days. it bring another thought, is the RBZ governor really serious about the whole exercise? Just like the price controls, it looks like the Price Control Task force has been disbanded. The use of bearer cheques can also continue beyond the deadline since there has not been any deposits coming to the banks anywhere. The new bearer cheques have an issue date of 1st July 2007 and no one knows why the good governor kept the whole bunch of the trading paper when people are suffering.

"If the intellectuals don't take the lead morons will rule this world" Like I predicted before the worst has happened.

Because many intellectuals in Africa are not so concerned with politics, they end up at the mercy of school dropouts. A simple look at the ANC top executive shows that most of those with decision-making posts do not have college degrees. This in itself is a cocktail for disaster for such a big economy. South Africa is a complex economy that needs a complex leadership.

If someone has ever betrayed South Africans, it is Thabo Mbeki a man who wanted to steal power from the masses through manipulation. As Africans we have learnt a lesson from this event that no one is above the power of the people. Thabo Mbeki cornered South Africans by strategically positioning himself for reelection and fortunately he lost.

Mbeki is so calculating but this time he met his challenge and ended up embarrassed. The plan was hidden and the ANC members saw the plot way before the Polokwane Congress. By insisting that he (Mbeki) should run for the presidency of the party, he had positioned himself in power by creating a crisis and making an assumption that people would vote for him instead of Jacob Zuma (the Kangaman) since Zuma’s image was already tarnished (allegedly by the Mbeki administration). But one important thing prevailed, that people would not bend rules to suit a selfish individual.

Mbeki betrayed South Africans by not affording them a broader array of candidates to choose from and he has done damage to South Africa. It is a fact that not all people who voted for Zuma really wanted him to be the president of the ANC, where one is faced with two bad choices, you can select a better one out of the bad. They did not want a dictatorship to be bred from ANC circles. The traits of dictatorship start from the mere fact of failing to accept that others can equally lead any organization.

This is not the first time that African leaders have tried to manipulate people, it happened in Zambia and Namibia but it surprises me why these leaders do not learn from their neighbors. The error of dictatorship is fast going to an end and leaders should just understand that they can not rule forever.

I am happy for South Africans that they have such an efficient democratic system that begins from grassroots (political parties) to the entire government, otherwise the whole process would have been a circus like what the SADC region recently saw a week before the ANC Congress in one African country that claims to be a pillar of democracy.

Mbeki should now do the humble thing of resigning before his term ends because it is clear that the majority of people within the ANC do not agree with his ideas and they want him to go. This is the reason they did not vote for him and moreover those who voted for him are starting to align themselves to the new leader Jacob Zuma to secure their political future. As such being president of South Africa is now the hardest task for Mbeki.

While it is constitutionally right for a leader to finish his/her term there is need to have the Nation at heart and avoid petty wars and confusions within the government ranks. In my opinion no wise politician would want to align himself or herself with a losing comrade and as such there is likely going to be a lot of insubordination and the worst can be expected. It is possible that the house of Assembly can give a vote of no confidence to force Mbeki out before2009.

From Mbeki’s recent writings, it is clear that he has a bitter pill to swallow and would like to see the fall of Kangaman before 2009. mbeki would like to use all the tools at his disposal as the president to fix the Kangaman.

The above scenario in another sense is good in that it prepares the new leader to deal with major events coming in 2010 and after.

Let the Kangaman rule and I bet the good ladies of South Africa will get the good life for a price. The Kangaman has a high libido that cannot be satisfied by one woman. The Sa tax payer will have to foot the extra bill of extending the State House to cater for the extra madams and mistresses.

Prepare to welcome the first clan into the neighborhood.