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$3 trillion: Price of sadism and arrogance
By
Mary
Revesai
I WAS sitting at a table at one of Harare’s sidewalk
cafes last weekend trying to absorb the full impact of the South African
newspaper, the Saturday Star’s banner headline screaming “Z$3
000 000 000 000”across five columns below its masthead when something
heart-rending happened.
A young disabled man I had not seen approaching my table tapped on my shoulder and asked politely whether he could finish the cold drink I was sipping. It was early evening and he said nothing had crossed his lips the whole day.
He explained that he used to keep body and soul together by scavenging in garbage bins but now even hotels and takeaway outlets were no longer throwing away anything worth retrieving. This is apparently because their cash-strapped clients now also eat every morsel on their plates and even grind down the chicken bones.
Compassion and outrage flooded me simultaneously. I felt no Zimbabwean should be reduced to this level of degradation in a country that has enough for all, if a small band of greedy, corrupt and self-interested individuals were not holding everyone to ransom.
After giving the young man $20 million to buy himself something, I went back to the front page of the South African weekly. Below its unusual headline of a three followed by 12 zeroes was a strap explaining: “This is the price for Mugabe to party, while his people starve.”
My encounter with the disabled young man made me more acutely aware of the incongruousness and insensitivity of spending $3 trillion on the lavish bash held in the border town of Beitbridge last weekend to celebrate the 84th birthday of Zimbabwe’s head of state, Robert Mugabe.
The event is organised every year under the banner of the North Korean-style 21st February Movement, an organisation dedicated to promoting Mugabe as a cult figure.
The staging of these lavish festivities was particularly cruel and arrogant this year because ordinary people are facing unprecedented economic challenges. The case of the young man referred to above demonstrates graphically how the plight of ordinary people in Zimbabwe can no longer be thought of in terms of mere statistics giving a rough idea of what is going on.
Behind the numbers,
which are shocking in themselves are millions of flesh and blood human
beings who have been robbed of dignity in the land of their birth. This
ugly reality can no longer be denied. It is obvious to everyone except
to the one person who needs to be upset and bothered by it the most:
the man who has governed the country for the last 28 years.
This year is not the first time Mugabe has demonstrated extreme arrogance
and insensitivity. Following his government’s spur of the moment
and inhuman demolition of abodes which rendered one million people homeless
and displaced a further two million under Operation Murambatsvina in
2005, Mugabe did not pause for a minute to consider the full impact
of this cruel and madcap action.
Instead, he went
on the warpath, wasting vast amounts of national resources to mount
a vitriolic and belligerent propaganda offensive replete with conspiracy
theories about plots to effect regime change in Zimbabwe.
Almost three years later, the Zimbabwean government is yet to deliver
the decent houses it claimed it would build under Operation Garikai/Hlalani
Kuhle to the victims of its cruel demolition spree.
After triggering
unprecedented human suffering and misery under Operation Murambatsvina,
any normal head of state would have paused to take stock of the situation
and to consider why the action had sparked such an outcry both at home
and internationally.
But without even missing a heartbeat, Mugabe proceeded as if nothing
had happened and instead blamed everybody else but himself for the uncalled
for commission of such a crime against humanity. The following February,
he marked his 82nd birthday with lavish festivities as usual.
Parastatals and
ministries struggling to remain afloat were obliged to spend large sums
of money on advertisements in newspapers and on television literally
swooning at the feet of the Dear Leader. What a difference it would
have made if Mugabe had forgone the extravagant feasting and adulation,
and directed that the same resources be earmarked for feeding the needy.
This year’s bash was held in an environment where inflation has
now hit the 100 000 percent mark although economic experts believe even
this is a very conservative estimate. Any normal leader who still remembered
why he was in power would have thought twice about parading such extravagance
amid the deprivation and suffering pervasive throughout the land.
Unemployment has hit record levels; the majority of the people live below the poverty datum line and can no longer afford or access the basics of modern existence. Most national institutions have been ruined and bankrupted and now exist only in name – they are no longer of service to the people of Zimbabwe.
But this did not stop one of Mugabe’s bootlickers from gloating about the obscene partying in Beitbridge that took place on the same day I came face to face with the disabled young man who was reduced to begging to have a sip of my drink and approaching many other patrons of the open air café begging for morsels of whatever they were having to assuage his hunger.
The Saturday Star quoted the Zanu PF secretary for youth, Absolom Sikhosana, as boasting: “The commemorations should also make a powerful statement that Zimbabwe is as vibrant as ever despite the suffering being caused by illegal sanctions imposed on the country by Britain and its allies.”
Experts say the true level of inflation is nearer the 1,5 million percent mark that was predicted by former United States Ambassador to Zimbabwe, Christopher Dell during his tour of duty. But it will be remembered that Dell was verbally abused, made cannon fodder by the public media and even harassed by the police for giving this projection and for having the nerve to point out that no government in history had ever survived in such a hyperinflationary environment.
Instead of looking at these realities for its own benefit and that of the populace, the government of President Robert Mugabe went into overdrive in a misguided attempt to prove the former American envoy wrong.
This is when the
regime embarked on the illogical price blitz last year under which it
decreed that the prices of all goods should be slashed by half regardless
of the consequences. The result was a disappearance of basic commodities
from the shelves and a skyrocketing of prices to levels three or four
times higher than before this incomprehensible intervention.
The question now is how long the people of Zimbabwe can continue to
endure such undisguised sadism. A government led by a more humane leader
would have taken advantage of Dell’s insights to quietly embark
on remedial action but alas, Mugabe’s response was driven by vindictiveness
and the need for self preservation.
But as the events unfolding after Simba Makoni’s decision to stand as an independent in this month’s elections show, Mugabe’s arrogance, insensitivity and imperviousness to the suffering of the people of Zimbabwe could very well prove his undoing. His unfathomable cruelty could very well be a case of pride going before a fall as predicted in the book of Proverbs in the Bible.
Mary Revesai is a New Zimbabwe.com columnist and writes from Harare
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