While in South Africa a few years ago, Muckraker’s scattered attention was drawn to a message written on the back of a certain van: “PLEASE DON’T STEAL!! Govt hates competition!”, a loaded message popularised by former American politician Ron Paul.
Muck was reminded of this message this week when the Owners of the country announced the setting up of an inter-ministerial taskforce purportedly to deal with some “rogue” businesses that are allegedly engaging in malpractices that range from currency manipulation to use of fraudulent scales to underweigh, unlabelled goods and everything in-between.
If the truth was to be told, this has been the standard practice by the country’s successive post-Independence governments, to deliver less or even nothing while at the same time brazenly stealing from the people they purport to serve.
In this case, one cannot rule out the fact that the latest move is informed more by the need to eliminate competition than by a genuine desire to protect consumers. They are feeling threatened by competition that might result in there being nothing left to steal.
Is there any worst currency manipulator than our Owners themselves? Is there any notorious seller of snake oil and bottled smoke than the Owners themselves? Are there any more resourceful thieves than them? Is there anyone more rogue?
Muck actually thinks that as things currently stand, it should be the other way round — business actually setting up a taskforce to tame a certainly rogue government instead of them closing down and/or moving to neighbouring countries as what has been happening.
Good move
Botswana continues to be a shining beacon on an otherwise dark continent. Its (outgoing) spy chief Peter Magosi has reportedly handed oversized corruption files on the former president Cde Mokgweetsi Masisi and his hangers-on to the country’s new President Duma Boko.
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The files are said to contain details of assets that Masisi & Co invested in around the globe and details of the corruption in government tenders that benefited the gang.
While it should be natural to pray that the allegations turn out to be false, Muck however hopes that in the event that these allegations turn out to be true, Botswana should also teach Africa a lesson on how to deal with thieves in high places.
Many people have expressed fear that such developments may harden the resolve of similar thieves in the region — no need for names here — to remain in office until death catches up with them. But Muck actually believes that the opposite is true.
Thieves should know that there is no impunity for them. In fact, it would actually be setting a wrong precedence to let thieves to go scot-free out of caution that others may refuse to leave office for fear of being rightly prosecuted. Doing it like that would actually serve to encourage the other thieves in high places to steal even more on the assurance that nothing would happen to them.
You see the vicious circle that it creates? Which is why Muck is happy to see Masisi being probed.
Meanwhile, Zimbos appeared to be disappointed that they did not spot our very own Sengezo Tshabangu in Gaborone last week for the inauguration of Boko as president. It says something about the real truth the outside world knows about is not the lie that we struggle to foist on them.
Cheering bullsh*t
Muck is disappointed that there are some supposedly normal Zimbos that are cheering on “rogue” war veteran Blessing Geza in his rantings against the term extension agenda.
The brother, who appears to be having a deep affection for the scatological — judging by his love for the word bullsh*t, is not opposed to ED2030 for any valid reason other than that this extension would affect their exaggerated sense of importance as war veterans.
He says the extension may result in no war veteran ever having moved into the State House. Now, separating themselves from previous and current State House tenants, whom he dismissed as nationalists and not war veterans, Geza tried to argue that it is now their own turn. Who also sees a dangerous sense of entitlement here?
Geza and those of his ilk are no solution to the problems that require solving about this country. In fact, with that agenda, he is just another problem. And this is our problem as a country: people who seek power for their own selfish and personal interests, not the interests of the country.
Muck has always believed that most of the people who fought in that so-called liberation war never did it out of national interest, but for personal and selfish interests. Most were mercenaries right from the start and they have remained that way, which explains why the gang has been holding the country to ransom.
The ban country
Zimbabwe is truly a ban country. Only last week, actress Tendai Jari in yesteryear local soap Studio 263, who is masquerading as Information Communication Technology, Postal and Courier Services minister, tried to impose a ban on WhatsApp groups by introducing strict conditions, including a hefty registration fee for group administrators, only to pretend to be clever by turning around and deny ever making the announcement after she had been laughed at for the joke that she always has been.
Then the police issued a memo demanding the enforcement of a previous order banning the use of cellphones by police officers while on duty. Please never ask Muck how the force hopes to enforce this strange ban, because Muck thinks he is still reasonable enough to understand the practical impractabilities of such a ban.
While it is confirmation of what we have always known, that some police officers are part of criminal syndicates, we hope this ban was extended to the other government workers in departments like the Register-General’s Office, hospitals, immigration and customs and many others where many hours are wasted as the officers scroll through their smartphones, chatting in family groups, following “silly stories” like one about an Equatorial Guinea casanova, etc, instead of doing what they signed up for and — most importantly — get paid to do.
Muck actually believes that because of smartphones, the government is operating at a tiny fraction of its capacity. This is a problem that needs more than just a ban “solution”.
Leading by example
One of the resolutions made at the reeling Party conference in Bulawayo was “to expedite efforts to de-dollarise the economy and promote the use of the ZiG as the country’s sole currency”.
As a patriot, Muck is very supportive of this idea. One surest way of “expediting” the efforts is making sure that the reeling Party leads by example: that from now on the rank and file of the Party insists on being paid, and transact, in the ZiG — and ZiG only!
That everything from their salaries, for the fuel that they sell, their top-of-the range cars displayed in car sales along Harare’s major roads, produce from their farms — and very soon the farms themselves — their tender scams, their facilitation fees ... everything, be settled in ZiG!
That way, who can ever challenge their brag about sovereignty? As long as the Owners of the country angrily reject their own ZiG, who do they expect to accept it? Supermarkets? Who then can blame the leading retail outlets for searching for the exits?
