Zimbabweans blaming vendors for the economic decay Derrick Wini Dari

 @ Derrick Wini Dari

Zimbabweans keep blaming the wrong people for economic decay

“There is a comfortable consensus forming in our economic conversations. The vendor on the pavement is the problem. The tuckshop on the corner is the problem. The hawker selling cheap imported wares is the problem. The argument is repeated by economists, ministers, columnists, and city fathers. And the question that always follows is the same: how do we formalise them? But there is a paradox hiding in that question that almost no one stops to examine. How do you formalise something that is already formal? The vendor is already inside the system, already contributing to the fiscus in more ways than they are ever credited for. It is a tidy story, then, but it is also wrong, and we have spent years trying to fix the one part of the chain that was never broken.

Let me begin with what is true, because honesty has to start there. Informality in Zimbabwe is now structural rather than peripheral. Roadside vending reflects distress rather than triumph. Cheap, often counterfeit imports are hollowing out what remains of our formal commerce. None of that is in dispute. The dispute is about who put us here, and who is being asked to carry the blame for it.

The Dollarisation Question

Consider the claim that dollarisation has done deeper, more irreversible damage than hyperinflation. The timeline does not support it. Deindustrialisation began in 1991 with ESAP, when manufacturing fell from 22.8 percent of GDP in 1990 to 17.1 percent by 1998. That is eighteen years before the US dollar arrived. And when it did arrive, it interrupted the collapse rather than deepening it: manufacturing swung from negative 17.1 percent in 2008 to positive 10.2 percent in 2009, and inflation dropped from billions of percent to single digits. The dollar did not kill our industry. It removed the smokescreen hiding a corpse.

What Really Killed Our Industry

What actually killed it was plant that was never retooled. To see how much that mattered, set Zimbabwe beside the nations that chose differently. In 1987 we were not far behind Malaysia in industrial terms, and ahead of much of South-East Asia in schooling. Singapore, South Korea, China and Malaysia then treated industrial upgrading almost as a national religion, reinvesting in machinery, in skills, and above all in research and development. South Korea today spends more than five percent of its economy on research and development; China and Singapore over two percent; even Malaysia around one percent. Zimbabwe's spending has languished at a fraction of one percent, much of it donor-funded. That is the most significant difference between us and them, and it has nothing to do with the dollar. While they retooled, we ran our inherited plant into the ground and called the breakdown a crisis of currency. DIMAF, the 2010 retooling facility, captures the pattern: Old Mutual put in 27 million dollars, Government defaulted on its share, and the terms were so tight that dying firms could not draw on it. By the 2010s, 63 percent of surveyed industries were operating below half capacity.

Other forces compounded this, and saying so strengthens rather than weakens the argument. Land reform collapsed agricultural productivity. The sanctions argument shaped our access to credit. Commodity swings, skills flight, power cuts and decaying infrastructure all played their part. Dollarisation itself entrenched import dependence and stripped us of monetary tools. But these forces compounded the governance failure; they did not cause the loans to go unpaid or the billions to go missing. And of all the causes, governance is the one entirely within our own hands. We cannot legislate away a commodity cycle. We can choose to account for three billion dollars.

Tracing the Real Pipeline

Now to the sharper charge, the vendor as the disease itself. The vendor is never the leaking point, and the easiest way to see it is to trace the pipeline a product travels before it reaches a stall. It starts in a foreign factory the vendor never commissioned. It passes a first gate, the inspection that Bureau Veritas has been paid for a decade to carry out before the goods even ship. It hits a second gate at the border, where under-invoicing and bribed clearance let it through; the Anti-Corruption Commission alone logged over 150 corruption cases at Beitbridge in four years. It passes a third gate, the licensed clearing agents, where insider breaches of the customs system itself have been documented. Then it reaches the importer-wholesaler, where the money actually escapes the country, because when that stock sells they take hard currency and send it back out to restock abroad. Only after all of that does it reach the vendor, who buys stock that has already cleared, or already evaded, every gate behind them, marks it up by a thin margin, and recirculates that margin here.

Pause on the phrase "breaching the customs system," because it deserves more scrutiny than it usually gets. A national system is not breached from within by accident. It is breached because it was built, or left, porous enough to be breached. And the asymmetry tells the whole story. The state can name and prosecute a clearing agent to the cent. Hold that against the three billion dollars of Command Agriculture money the Auditor-General could not account for, including close to a billion the Treasury paid directly to suppliers with no transaction detail recorded. We prosecute the small version to the cent and file the large version as an unexplained line in a report. And none of this is hidden. ZIMRA and the Ministry of Finance hold the records of who imports what, in what volume. The importer is named in a database. The vendor is anonymous on a pavement. Yet it is the anonymous one we blame, and the named one we leave alone.

Not Scandals, but Directors' Drawings

And none of this is new, nor did it begin with the dollar. As far back as 1988, the Willowgate scandal saw senior officials loot Willowvale Motor Industries, the state-owned vehicle assembler. The plant could build over four thousand cars a year but managed only fourteen hundred for lack of foreign currency. Faced with an industrial asset crippled by a forex shortage, the elite did not fix the constraint. They monetised the scarcity for themselves.

The pattern scaled. The 2007/08 Farm Mechanisation Programme procured roughly 200 million dollars of equipment, real tractors and combine harvesters, as loans to farmers. When the beneficiary list surfaced years later, it was a roll-call of the powerful: generals, judges, ministers, and presidential relatives. They did not repay. The debt was quietly converted from loan to grant and loaded onto the taxpayer through the Debt Assumption Act of 2015. The assets were real; only the repayment was fictional. Then Command Agriculture, launched in 2016, ran roughly three billion dollars of unappropriated expenditure with an 85 percent default rate, financed for years outside the budget through an oil-trading company handed the contract without an open tender.

Look at them all together, across decades and  political eras, and what emerges is something closer to directors' drawings than to public finance. The State was treated, by those with the keys, as a closely-held company they happened to run. What was called a loan was understood, by everyone involved, as something more like a withdrawal. The repayment was theatre. The default rates were not failures of recovery; they were the unspoken terms of the arrangement. Willowgate, DIMAF, Farm Mechanisation, Command Agriculture. Each touched the productive base. Each was drained from the top and the bill passed down. This is not a series of scandals. It is a habit of withdrawal, almost as old as the country itself.

*****

Very interesting. 

One reason why the street vendor is blamed for everything is because he/she is an easy target. The economic collapse has continued even as the war on vendors has intensified, proof the vendors are not the problem! 

Matinyarare finally paid bribe for years of anti-sanctions propaganda - proud he had a mother to sell! W Mukori

 Presidential advisor Paul Tungwarara says efforts to resolve grievances raised by some citizens are aimed at protecting the image of President Emmerson Mnangagwa and maintaining national focus on development.

In a statement issued on Sunday, Tungwarara said it was important to address concerns being raised publicly, particularly where individuals were using social media platforms to criticise the President over outstanding financial claims.

“We cannot tolerate a situation in which individuals continuously disparage the President under the guise of claiming outstanding dues,” Tungwarara said.

“Where it becomes necessary for us to intervene and resolve such grievances for the greater good of our leader and the nation, then we must do so decisively in order to silence unnecessary noise and refocus our collective energy on national development rather than daily propaganda, recordings and distractions.”

Tungwarara said several people who previously held grievances had since reconciled with the ruling party and pledged support for Zanu‑PF and President Mnangagwa, with some reportedly defecting from opposition ranks.

“Many individuals who previously held grievances have since reconciled, returned to the fold and pledged their support to Zanu‑PF and the President,” he said.

In laymen’s language; Zanu PF is doing what is has always done - bribe its opponents and critics!

Mnangagwa must have squandered over US$5 billion on bribes in the 2023 elections alone from the chicken and chips for hired povo crowd to cars for chiefs, US$ 400 000 and US$ 500 000 for all the country’s judges and ministers respectively. 

Money  that should be spend on the good of Rome is instead wasted on the glory of Caesar. No wonder we are failed state.

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𝗙𝗔𝗖𝗧𝗦 𝗔𝗥𝗢𝗨𝗡𝗗 𝗥𝗨𝗧𝗘𝗡𝗗𝗢 𝗔𝗡𝗗 𝗗𝗥 𝗧𝗨𝗡𝗚𝗪𝗔𝗥𝗔𝗥𝗔’𝗦 𝗘𝗡𝗚𝗔𝗚𝗘𝗠𝗘𝗡𝗧.

First, let me start by saying that I had never met or spoken to Presidential Advisor Dr Paul Tungwarara until he approached me online yesterday. During this public engagement, like a true leader, he extended a hand of reconciliation through the gesture of a vehicle, which he said was in recognition of the work I have done for the country.

He then invited me to a roundtable discussion to understand why I am publicly opposing CAB3, critiquing the President’s work, and expressing my separate frustrations regarding the government's non-payment in relation to my fight against sanctions.

We subsequently had another discussion offline, during which he explained to me that the President is not responsible for my non-payment for the sanctions work, but that responsibility lies with Kuda Tagwirei, whom was mandated to work with me.

Additionally, he informed me that he would engage the President and all stakeholders on the way forward. As a result, in the same way that talks between ZAPU and ZANU led to the Unity Accord, and discussions between MDC and ZANU-PF led to the Government of National Unity, we are going to have frank discussions and seek a suitable way to navigate our differing political positions around CAB3.

I also informed him that, contrary to the perceptions of some, I have no issue with the President, the First Lady, or the First Family. I have merely expressed the same constructive criticism on certain issues that I have raised since President Mnangagwa assumed office. And he has never taken issue with me criticizing him before because he has always been a listening President who allows open and frank discourse.

Zimbabwe is a failed state and one reason why we are a failed state is because the nation has more than its fair share of mercenaries masquerading as champions fighting for the common good! Mercenaries who have sold out the common good for the Judas Iscariot 30 pieces of silver. Whilst Iscariot repented and hanged himself Zimbabwe’s Iscariot have flouted their ill-gotten wealth. They sold out their own mother for a price and proud they had a mother to sell!

Our situation has been compounded by an ignorant, naive and gullible majority who have failed to see the difference even after 46 years and counting of being lied to, conned and dragged deeper and deeper into this economic and political hell-on-earth. 

Many of the mercenaries have turned philanthropists, sharing a fraction of their ill-gotten wealth with the poor; has made them national heroes! The penny has yet to drop that the mercenaries and the ruling elite masters are not only profiting from stealing from the masses but are doing everything they can to keep the masses poor and pendent on handout. 

The mercenaries and the ruling elite give with one hand and make a big song and dance about it and steal a great deal more than they give away. In Zimbabwe the mercenaries and the ruling elite have formed a formidable team the former are doing all the looting of the nation’s wealth, rubbing the common people blind, and the latter have used brute force to deny the ordinary people a meaningful say in the governance of the country. 

Mushoriwa issued "a blistering indictment on CAB3, a constitutional regression". Yeah, but to what end and purpose! W Mukori

 @ Edwin Mushoriwa

“On June 9, 2026, the floor of Parliament became the front line for the future of Zimbabwean democracy.

As the government moved to advance Constitutional Amendment Bill 3 (CAB3), Edwin Mushoriwa, the Member of Parliament for Dzivaresekwa, rose not merely to debate a bill, but to issue a blistering indictment of what he termed "constitutional regression".

In a speech that was both a legal defense and a moral plea, Mushoriwa argued that the proposed changes represent a move away from the hard-won gains of the 2013 constitution.

He challenged the government's narrative that the bill seeks to improve governance, asserting instead that it is a transparent effort toward the "accumulation and preservation of political power".

Mushoriwa's critique was particularly sharp regarding the proposal to extend parliamentary terms to 2030, a move he described as an "insult" to the voters of Dzivaresekwa and an infringement on the rights of future political challengers.”

Comrade sellout, please spare us the Judas Iscariot theatrical performances of love! You so-called “blistering indictment of constitution regression” is all meant to give CAB3 legitimacy. Your performance will not stop the bill being passed, that was never meant to be its primary purpose. Never! 

If you and your fellow CCC members wanted to end the Zanu PF dictatorship then you would not have participated in the 2023 elections in the first place. You all knew that participating was futile because:

1. 1) it would not stop Zanu PF rigging and winning because the process was so flawed the regime had all the opportunity to ensure it wins no matter what!

1. 2) you knew participating would give Zanu PF legitimacy because the regimes present the participation as proof the election was free, fair and credible - why would the opposition participate otherwise!

1. 3) Zanu PF has offered a few gravy train seats to entice the opposition to participate no matter how flawed and illegal the process got. It was the same greed that stopped MDC leaders implementing the reforms during the 2008 to 2013 GNU. 

1. 4) MDC/CCC leaders have conned their brain-dead supporters to participate in flawed elections to give Zanu PF legitimacy and earning themselves the 30 pieces of silver from the regime with the idiotic lies of opposition winning the rigged elections. Chamisa even evoked the name of God Almighty in his lies. “#Godisinit!” became his signature mantra.

1. 5) Both SADC and AU election observers condemned the 2023 Zimbabwe election process as flawed and illegal. Mushoriwa, Coltart, Mahere, Jameson Timba and the rest of the CCC winning candidates stopped SADC and AU denying Zanu PF legitimacy by insisting on taking up their gravy train seats! The fact that many of these leaders lost their seats soon thereafter to the Sengezo Tshabangu recalls, is another story. The damage of giving Zanu PF legitimacy was done by participating in the flawed elections and the winning candidates disregarding SADC and AU condemnation to take up their gravy train seats.

1. 6) the price of participating in these flawed elections was to give Zanu PF legitimacy and thus perpetuating the dictatorship and the nation’s suffering. This CAB3 is just the dictatorship flexing its tyrannical powers and dragging the nation deeper and deeper into the abyss. Mushoriwa & co. are playing their part of participating in the amendment bill process, giving their blistering speeches full of sound and fury signifying nothing. Nothing, that is except giving the process legitimacy. 

All the opposition leaders have known of the six points above. David Coltart confessed of the futility and the opposition greed. 

“The worst aspect for me about the failure to agree a coalition was that both MDCs couldn’t now do the obvious - withdraw from the (2013) elections. The electoral process was so flawed, so illegal, that the only logical step was to withdraw, which would compel SADC to hold Zanu PF to account. But such was the distrust between the MDC-T and MDC-N that neither could withdraw for fear that the other would remain in the elections, winning seats and giving the process credibility,” confessed David Coltart in his Book, The Struggle Continues 50 years of Tyranny in Zimbabwe.

Yes the breathtaking incompetence and greed of the opposition has always had the better of them and hence the reason they have participated in the flawed processes, “so flawed, so illegal, that the only logical step was to withdraw”. Incompetence and greed trumping logic! 

MDC/CCC leaders are Zanu PF team B in all but name; playing for team A to win and to have legitimacy. 

The brain-dead opposition supporters have yet to realise they are being conned to participated in flawed processes to perpetuate the dictatorship and their own suffering. Of course, they are brain-dead - how else can one explain why these people have failed to realise that MDC/CCC leaders have not implemented even one token reform in 26 years and counting! 

CAB3 will extend Mnangagwa’s stay in office to 2030 and grant the Zanu dictatorship even more dictatorial powers. The future is grime. There will be a lot of weeping and gnashing of teeth! Knowing that all this suffering could have been easily avoided if the MDC/CCC leaders had not connived with the Zanu PF thugs sold out is the heaviest burden to bear. 

Zimbabwe has a chronic shortage of decent housing it is insane that we should be demolishing the few decent houses. W Mukori

 Zimbabwe has a chronic shortage of decent housing in both the urban and rural areas and it is insane that those in positions of power and authority have again and again seen it fit to demolish the few decent houses that have been built. It is clear we have men and women in position of power and authority who have an invested interest in keeping as many our our people poor and destitute.

Poor and powerless serfs are easier to bully around and the ruling elite and their cronies are the overbearing landlords doing as they damn well please.

Both central government and local authorities have made it near impossible for ordinary people to get title deeds to even a few square metre of land on which the people can build a decent home. As soon as a decent house goes up the overbearing landlords will find an excuse to pull it down.

Last year parliament passed a law forcing every one with the old paper title deeds to have it converted to digital format. Many people see it for what it is - those in power going after those with pre-independence title deeds who had remained out of reach of the regime until now.

The urban dwellers have turned a blind eye to Zanu PF denying rural povo title deeds these last 46 years and now the nightmare has spread to towns and cities. The deed digitalisation law is a rude wake-up call!

The single most important question the people of Zimbabwe must ask themselves today is: "DO ZIMBABWEANS HAVE ANY LEGAL RIGHT TO OWN PROPERTY, ESPECIALLY TITLE DEEDS TO LAND?"

The right to own property is a universal right and Zanu PF is denying the people that right for selfish political reasons.

Indeed, the number issue in the fight for independence, as far as the rural blacks were concerned, was land ownership. It is tragic that 46 years after independence the rural povo continue to be denied title deeds.

It is tragic that 46 years years after independence nation is still fighting for some thing as basic as title deed to land. We should be attending to other matters like building a vibrant economy and keeping abreast with the fast changing technology. No wonder we are a failed state.

Still, we must now fight to dismantle this corrupt and tyrannical Zanu PF dictatorship and its equally corrupt and utterly useless MDC/CCC side-kick. We must replace it with a healthy and functioning democracy that will secure and guarantee the freedoms and rights of all Zimbabweans. It is not mission impossible!

History knows CAB3 is a Mnangagwa imposition. Even naive will soon know vision 2030 is a mirage. W Mukori

 CAB3 will pass and Mnangagwa will have his wish to stay in office for a further two years. He and Zanu PF will pretend CAB3 was the people’s wish. That is a lie! 

Mnangagwa and Zanu PF rigged the CAB3 process to impose their will on the nation just as they have done these last 46 years! 

Ordinary Zimbabweans have known that Zanu PF was a total disaster to the nation for a very long time; they have done nothing about it only because they have been denied the opportunity to do so. Zanu PF has rigged elections for 46 years and counting! 

The only time the nation came close to holding free, fair and credible elections was the March 2008 elections. When it was clear the people had rejected Zanu PF many of the party leaders including Mutasa and even Mugabe himself throw in the towel. Mnangagwa and Chiwenga did not. 

They launched Operation Mavhotera Papi, an electoral coup, whose immediate purpose was to wrestle power from Tsvangirai and his MDC friends. The long term purpose was to punish the people for having dared to reject Zanu PF. The punishment was brutal and barbaric; millions were forced to go into hiding, hundreds of thousands had their properties destroyed, they were beaten and/or raped, thousands lost their limbs and over 500 were murdered. 

The Operation Mavhotera Papi punishment meant to be a lesson that rejecting Zanu PF attracts severe consequences. In all elections since 2008, the party has increased its subtle vote rigging activities thus easing on the need for wanton violence. 

Still the regime has often resorted to violence, such as 1st August 2018 shoot-to-kill, just to remind the nation Zanu PF will not hesitate to use force to retain its iron grip on power. 

Mnangagwa entered State House riding on the coattail of the 2017 military coup; the ordinary people had no meaningful say in that. The people were conned to come out in support of the coup on the promise of democratic changes to force Mugabe to resign. As soon as Mugabe stepped down the promise of democratic changes was discarded. 

Mnangagwa blatantly rigged the 2018 elections as the Constitutional Court challenge of the residential result revealed. There were 16 Polling Stations (PS) with identical results for Mnangagwa, Chamisa, spoilt votes, etc. In all 16 PS Mnangagwa was not only doing well but very well. It was obvious these were double entries of result to top up Mnangagwa’s votes.

Chamisa’s team should have demanded the the seal ballot boxes of the 16 PSs should be opened. One can double entry a result but cannot duplicate a PS complete with the sealed ballot box! It was within Chamisa’s right to demand the opening of the sealed PS boxes - indeed they are kept for this very purpose.

Chief Justice Malaba, who presided over the Court, asked Chamisa’s team “why rely on speculative information” when they should have requested that the boxes be opened. “We did not want to drink from a poisoned well!” The sheer stupidity of that reply has to be one most foolish statement in Zimbabwe’s legal history! 

The foolish statement is itself proof of the political connivence of MDC/CCC leaders with Zanu PF. Chamisa & co. are Zanu PF team B, playing for team A to win and to have legitimacy for a share of the spoils of power. 

Mnangagwa blatantly rigged 2023 elections too. Both SADC and AU elections observers condemned the election process as flawed and illegal. 

It is nonsense to suggest that having imposed himself through a military coup and repeatedly rigged elections to stay in power Mnangagwa will for the first time ever allow the people of Zimbabwe to have a meaningful say on whether they want him to extend his illegitimate stay in State House beyond the stipulated maximum two term limit! Only an idiot would believe CAB3 was the democratic wish of the people of Zimbabwe. 

Only the ignorant, naive and gullible believe for one moment that Mnangagwa will ever revive the Zimbabwe economy much less deliver the economic boom promised with vision 2030. Vision 2030 is just another mirage just as Mnangagwa’s 2017 “Zimbabwe is open for business!’  and Mugabe’s 1980s “Gutsa ruzhinji!” were mirages. 

Mugabe and Mnangagwa’s voodoo economic policies are not the recipe for economic growth but the opposite. Corruption was bad under Mugabe but under Mnangagwa it has gone into overdrive and the criminal waste of the nation’s human and material resources is the number one reason Zimbabwe is a failed state. 

CAB3 gives Mnangagwa and Zanu PF even more dictatorial powers and so corruption is set to soar into the stratosphere! Only those who are benefiting from the looting are pleased with the passing of CAB3!

Implementing the democratic reforms, after the wasted 2008 to 2013 GNU opportunity, was tough. It is even tougher now after the passing of CAB3! And yet the need to implement reforms and end the Zanu PF dictatorship is more urgent now than ever. With each passing day this regime remains in office, the nation will sink deeper and deeper into this hell-on-earth!

"Mr Biti you just made the case for another coup." 2017 military coup set a dangerous precedence and CAB3 will not change that! W Mukori

 @ D Mafa

“OPEN LETTER TO TENDAI BITI

An Urgent Warning to Zimbabwe

2 June 2026

---

Mr. Biti,  @BitiTendai 

Today, on a public X Spaces, you said it out loud.

You said the Mnangagwa regime is now passing laws to stop the military from disposing of presidents who violate the constitution. You framed that as a problem. You said it as a man who wants the military to retain that power. You are not hiding it anymore. You are peddling it openly to ordinary Zimbabweans who are desperate, disillusioned, and waiting for Chiwenga to act.

Mr. Biti, you just made the case for another coup.

A lawyer. A constitutionalist. A man who has stood in courts and in parliament defending the rule of law. Today you told Zimbabwe that the military should retain the power to remove presidents. Today you told Zimbabwe that Chiwenga should clean up the mess he created. Today you joined the long and shameful list of opposition leaders who have decided that the gun is acceptable when it serves their interests.

ZEM puts this on the record today, 1 June 2026. You said it. Zimbabwe heard it.”

The military did NOT have the constitutional power to remove Mugabe in 2017. The most liberal interpretation of the constitution would say they army had the power to do so if elections were rigged and the president, per se, has no legitimacy. Zimbabwe’s army could never sustain such a position since they were involved in the vote rigging. 

CAB3 is pretending to remove the power to stage a military that was never there. The pretence is important in that it creates confusion and uncertainty in the minds of those who are considering another coup.

The 2017 military coup set a dangerous precedence and that cannot be put right without challenging the 2017 George Chiweshe judgement - some thing neither Mnangagwa nor Chiwenga have the guts to do. 

Tendai Biti said CAB3 could not go through without two referendums, as we can see, it is sailing through without even one referendum! Zimbabweans should have learned by now not to believe even half of what lawyers/Politicians like Tendai Biti, Chamisa, Coltart, Chinamasa, etc. say especially given their well documented track record as sell outs!  

Fcuk me! What else do these sell outs have to do before the penny finally drops that they are not to be trusted nor taken seriously. No wonder we are a failed state! 

Ian Smith was right, we are incapable of self government because we have the knack “to walk on sewage and thing it normal!” We have a knack for believing everything our leaders say regardless how stupid the lie and how many times it has been repeated!