Mugabe cornered by events out of his control

Mugabe cornered by events out of his control

THE bad conditions in Zimbabwe have assumed a kind of stability in recent weeks and months. No one any longer expects anything positive to immediately happen, and the government no longer pretends it has any plan to deal with the multitudes of crises bedeviling the nation.

Since the central bank’s devaluation of the of the Zim dollar a few weeks ago prices of everything have predictably skyrocketed yet again. Central banker Gideon Gono’s recent prediction that the latest increase in inflation is short term and that the rate will fall to about 80% by year-end now seems astonishingly out of touch with reality. The official rate of 164% also seems plainly fictitious. While the post-devaluation Zim-US dollar exchange rate now stands at about 18,000:1, the street rate hovers between 40,000 and 50,000 to one.

We no longer hear any pronouncements about the now normal situation of fuel shortages. Most service stations are without fuel for far longer than they have it. It is now the norm for most to go without a delivery for weeks. Some have put their employees on half pay because they spend the majority of their work time just sitting around. Yet as long as the service stations are still in business, they must keep their staff employed because they could just be lucky to get a delivery with little or warning, keeping them limping along for a little while longer. Efforts have been made by the authorities to control the situation where service stations getting the heavily subsidized government fuel would sell some at the mandated Z$10,000 a litre, and then flog the rest on the black market at prices many times that. But despite these efforts many service station owners find ways around them.

The recent move to allow a few select service stations to sell fuel for hard currency is the inevitable beginning of the opening up of fuel procurement, which should have been done years ago. There is simply nothing the government can do short of completely opening up the importation and pricing of fuel to get rid of the problem. As usual, the dull Mugabe regime will be dragged to this reality kicking and screaming after huge damage has been done to the economy.

"The latest outrages against those remaining freedoms are plans for the government to muscle in on the running of private schools and to be able to withdraw passports on suspiciously flimsy ground"

CHIDO MAKUNIKE

First moves towards this have been allowing anyone who has their own forex “outside the country” to bring in fuel. But they are officially not allowed to sell it for more than the official prices, which are below the cost of free-market forex. In other words you are allowed to bring in your own fuel with your own forex, but you must sell it at a loss! Of course the importers who are doing this refuse to commit suicide and find ways around this, keeping the fuel black market going.

The officially designated forex service stations sell the fuel for US$1 per litre, which at the official rate translates to about Zim$18,000 a litre. If one were getting their US dollars at the official rate (Zim18,000:US$1) this would not be an unreasonable price. Although close to twice the Zim$10,000 per litre of other service stations, most Zimbabweans would be happy to pay this to get fuel regularly. But of course there are very few Zimbabweans with access to forex of any kind, certainly not reliably and constantly enough to make any difference. This means that these are service stations for the elite-NGOs, foreign embassies, a few corporations, etc. It is a type of fuel apartheid in which the ordinary Zimbabwean motorist is discriminated against for not having foreign currency!

But apart from this, it makes little sense for a holder of forex to buy his fuel at US$1 per litre, which translates to Zim$50,000 at the black market rate that counts for virtually all transactions regardless of what the government says. So much better to change his US dollars on the black market, get his Zim$50,000 for every US dollar and then try and buy the fuel at the majority “local currency” garages at the heavily, unrealistically subsidized price of Zim$10,000 per litre. Even if he surreptitiously offered the service station attendant Zim$20,000 per litre he would still be better off than going to the forex service station and paying effectively Zim$50,000 per litre with his forex.

Of course the subsidized fuel isn’t available very often but one could still save a lot of money by hiring a driver to drive to do nothing but investigate which few service stations have the subsidized fuel. I give all this detail to show how in setting its policies the Mugabe government is not terribly gifted in the brain department, at just taking into account what is happening around them. What they are good at is beating up citizens, repression, destruction and figuring out ways to reduce ever more of their freedoms.

Speaking of which, the latest outrages against those remaining freedoms are plans for the government to muscle in on the running of private schools and to be able to withdraw passports on suspiciously flimsy grounds. Of course both moves have aroused howls of protest but given a supine parliament, they could soon become law, creating far more problems for the country and the government that it can deal with now, exactly like happened with the disastrous “Operation destroy homes and livelihoods.” That in the latest of ill-advised moves showed any of the world that still doubted it what a vicious monster of a regime Mugabe presides over. Worse shacks are going up now in the many areas that homes and lives were destroyed in the madness of official violence.

One result of messing around with the freedom of movement would be to draw attention to the many children and relatives of leading regime members roaming around the world unfettered. The colleges and universities of the Western world have many of the offspring of regime members and that would be a rich source of putting the screws on their repressive parents.

Mugabe’s pleading for British prime minister Tony Blairs’s attention has become more shrill and desperate as Blair continues to stoically ignore him. After all the deeply personal insults Mugabe has hurled at Blair over the years, why he should find Blair unreceptive to his pleas is surprising. Mugabe now shrilly almost begs for Blair to notice him in a manner that is most demeaning. Mugabe’s loud rantings as his country lies in ruins makes him a real spectacle to behold, an object of international fascination for being such an entertaining though vicious comic of a ruler.

Some people would wish to see Zimbabweans throng the streets in protest against Mugabe’s ruin of Zimbabwe and be enthusiastically mowed down by his troops. That would give them the satisfaction that Zimbabweans “are doing something about their oppression.” For reasons of lack of the right leadership and the fact that Mugabe’s government is beyond the reach of moral suasion, this is not the best way to take him on. I agree with the many Zimbabweans who ignore the MDC’s calls for unexplained job stayaways and street protests. People are right to demand to know what a particular action is designed to achieve before letting themselves be led into the line of fire.
But what is often ignored, perhaps because it is a new type of struggle in post-independent Africa, is how Mugabe is losing the battle on many fronts that are not immediately apparent. Fighting and rendering despots effectively useless has evolved beyond taking up arms.

Mugabe may for now be firmly ensconced at the presidential palace but he wears his crown uneasily if not miserably. He is at least as much a prisoner of events as he is a director of them. He must cling on to a position he no longer can make work no enjoys because for him the alternative, leaving office alive, is too frightening given all the misery that can be laid at his door. His authority has been so whittled away at home and abroad that he has no room or wherewithal to do anything except oil his military machine. If power in an enlightened sense rather than just a physical one means the ability to facilitate, to build, to motivate, to move one’s country forward, then Mugabe has certainly been reduced to a paper tiger.

Of course even in that weakened position he is capable of doing a lot more damage than he has done and a meaningful victory can only be declared when a new dispensation reigns. But in terms of stripping him of the legitimacy and respectability that he has always been so desperate for, that important part of the battle has all but been won. If we accept that the battle to return Zimbabwe to normality will be a long hard won given the ruthlessness of its ruler, then this latest progression in showing beyond doubt the nature of the regime must be put in its proper context.

More of the world, even those portions of it that would have liked to support Mugabe for one symbolic reason or another, find it increasingly untenable to do so. That is why more economic, diplomatic and other doors are being closed off to him. This same progression of events and pressures have led to the fall of many mightier empires than the regime of Mugabe. We may be just at too much of an uncomfortable stage of the progression to notice how weakened Mugabe is in real terms.
CONTACT CHIDO: chidomakunike@yahoo.com
Makunike is a regular columnist for New Zimbabwe.com and a social and political commentator based in Harare
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