The Zanu PF attitude of denial is destroying us all

I was quoted $2,568,000,000,000,000,000.00 for a spare part this morning. Can you imagine nipping into Tesco or Walmart and being presented with a bill to that value? It’s mind boggling.

Of course, most companies do not accept cheques and the cash is unavailable (companies are still restricted to a daily withdrawal of $1,000,000.00 and individuals $500,000.00 per day) which means I have to pay for the spare in foreign currency.

The company is not licensed to take forex, and so the whole transaction is illegal. The majority of the country is operating in this manner. We are at the stage where minimum wage earners are now demanding forex as they cannot purchase food if they receive wages in Zim dollars.

The new way of getting around the legal aspect of not trading in forex is to not quote in US Dollars but to use the word ‘UNITS’. We now have medical aid ‘units’, security company ‘units’, freight company ‘units’ and the list goes on.

One unit is equal to one litre of fuel. One litre of fuel is generally equal to USD1.

The other ‘legal’ way is to quote directly in fuel coupons. Again, one litre of fuel is equal to USD1. The only way to purchase fuel coupons, is to pay for them in foreign currency.

But none of us are dealing in foreign currency….oh no, because that would be illegal.

What a farce this has become.

Zim dollar transactions are few and far between. Zim commodities are few and far between. We are now 100% dependent on our neighboring countries for survival.

Last week Gono instructed the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority that they have to accept cheque payment from their customers. I am one of those customers and I have still not paid my bill. I phoned ZESA this morning to ask why they keep rejecting my cheque and the reply was ‘we are waiting for a directive to allow us to accept cheques’. Cheques were never illegal tender, only useless tender, so why should they need a directive to reverse a decision that should not have been made in the first place?

Catch 22. They cannot continue to provide a service if they are forced to deal in Zimbabwe dollars.

This regime is sinking the ship because of its continuous attitude of denial.

The government hospitals are collapsing or have already shut their doors, clinics and chemists do not have drugs, including much needed ARV’s as we have one of this highest aids rates in the world, the electricity supply is erratic, the telephone systems are dodgy, street lights are ancient history, traffic lights are fused and cannot be repaired, road signs are destroyed and cannot be replaced and our roads are pock marked with potholes. Not to mention the damaged sewer systems and the cholera epidemic that is killing hundreds of people and now spreading across our borders.

The human atrocities are horrific.

Imagine on your way to Tesco or Walmart, you see a man transporting his wife to a hospital in a wheelbarrow because she is too weak to walk and you know that once he gets there he will face closed doors. And once she dies, because she will, he will not have the money to bury her.

This is what mugabe, gono and the regime have done and continue to do to the innocent people of Zimbabwe.

Their solution? Just to say let’s TALK about it! It’s not good enough.

This entry was posted by Chipo on Tuesday, November 25th, 2008 at 1:15 pm. You can follow any comments on this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.