Zanu PF to launch 2 million men anti-sanctions march - to square a circle!

In the period 2002 to 2008 the Zimbabwe economy shrunk by a shocking 84%, a world record. Millions of Zimbabweans lost their jobs as farms, shops and industries closed. Inflation soared to nauseating heights of 500 million %, another world first, wiping out individual savings and making pensions worthless.

In the same period Mugabe and the few close to him saw their economic worth multiple and grow 100, 1 000 and some even a 1 000 000 fold! Individuals who had not two cents to rub together found themselves the proud owners of assets worth thousands of dollars. People like Philip Chiyangwa and Minister Ignatius Chombo are billionaires in their own right. These people did not stop with the violent seizure of farms; they continued to cream off the public through dodgy schemes of loans, grants and handouts to buy seed, farming equipments, etc. arranged by the Reserve Bank Governor, Gideon Gono.

Mugabe has maintained Zimbabwe’s economic melt down was caused by the West’s imposed sanctions against him and 200 other in his inner circle. Zanu PF is reportly launching 2 million men campaign to press home its claim that it is the ordinary Zimbabweans constituting the 2 million who have suffered because of the sanctions.

Mugabe has never explained how targeted sanctions against him and his cronies had caused the dramatic and total collapse of the agricultural sector, the run away inflation etc. The government organised 2 million men match waving placards denouncing Western sanctions and the West, not even a 20 million men match will not square the circle that the melt down was caused by something else and not the sanctions.

I have a theory of what that “something else” is. Looting! The Zanu PF loyalists whose wealth grew exponential at the very time every economic indicator points to economic collapse must be the most extraordinary entrepreneurs able to defy all the established economic rules. The only people know to achieve this are in fact looters – they repeat where they never sowed. If all you invested is a few dollars to pay the thugs who drove the white farmer off the farm and the all the farm produce is yours; then yes, it is possible to get a 1 000 or even 1 000 000 fold on one’s investment!

What has been happening in Zimbabwe in the last ten years goes beyond the usual mismanagement and corruption. It is wholesale looting. No nation can stand such a wasteful onslaught, no matter how economical strong it happened to be.