CENTRAL bank chief Gideon Gono blasted Zanu PF hardliners for “making his job difficult” and only found ex-Finance Minister Simba Makoni worth of praise among the party’s top leadership, a former US ambassador to Zimbabwe claimed in a leaked diplomatic cable.

Whistleblower website WikiLeaks has released communications from the US embassy in Harare revealing potentially damaging details of various meetings between the then ambassador Joseph Sullivan and Gono between 2004 and 2005.

Sullivan claims during one meeting, the governor pitched himself as the “go-to-guy” if the West wanted to have any influence with Harare.

“Probably no (government) higher-up and Mugabe-confidant embraces (Zanu PF) ‘enemies’ - Western diplomats, the International Monetary Fund, the Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) - to the degree Gono does,” the ambassador wrote in the cable dated May 18, 2004.

The RBZ chief is said to have emphasised “his friendships with the MDC leadership (growing up with Morgan Tsvangirai, giving Welshman Ncube a leave of absence from the University of Zimbabwe [ahead of the 2005 elections], and teaching most of the leadership as college students).”

The meetings took place at the height of Gono’s apparent influence and power as the government’s main economic point-man with the country buffeted by violent political strife, runaway inflation and debilitating foreign currency shortages.

According to the cables, Gono claimed Zanu PF hardliners were frustrating his efforts to rescue the country’s then free-falling economy citing former information minister Professor Jonathan Moyo and Dr Joseph Made, then in charge of agriculture.

“The extremists give Gono headaches and prevent him from doing his job. He cannot engage with civil society, the MDC, and the international community with some of their public statements. Their misrepresentations also force him to cover their mistakes,” Sullivan wrote.

And during a “far-ranging exchange” on May 13, 2005, Sullivan says Gono “betrayed a keen sense of (his) self-importance, stressing the personal danger he had placed himself in for taking command of the Zimbabwean economy.”

The US envoy likens RBZ chief to the Charles Dickens character, Uriah Heep, for talking endlessly about his humble beginnings while touting his newly-found power and influence including “the confidence of President Robert Mugabe as his personal banker”.

In his book, ‘Zimbabwe's Casino Economy: Extra-ordinary Measures for Extra-ordinary Challenges’, Gono revealed he worked as a “tea-boy” at a Kwekwe Brewery before working his way up to become head of the country’s central bank.

Sullivan says the excitable governor “repeatedly mentioned his study of American presidents and produced tapes of President Ronald Reagan's speeches that he said he listened to in his car.”

The US envoy felt Gono was “maneuvering on both sides of the fence”.

Sullivan, however, warned: “Gono will face his toughest dilemma, whether to take his dissent public (like former Finance Minister Simba Makoni) or cower in private (like the present Finance Minister Herbert Murerwa and former Reserve Bank Governor Leonard Tsumba).

Another associate of the governor added: “Let he who has never had any encounter with the Americans throw the first stone as future revelations are unknown.”

But the revelations will give ammunition to the governor’s critics, including Indigenisation Minister Saviour Kasukuwere who said last week Gono must “resign or we kick him out” in a row over an ultimatum issued by the ministry to two banks which had failed to comply with black empowerment laws.