Zimbabwe officials run around like headless chickens while inflation rises 27% PER MONTH
December 6th, 2006
A feature of the golfing calendar is corporate sponsors, often by leading banks. This is despite Zimbabwe achieving the worst economic indicators in the world. Life goes on.
However, I played the other day and settled into discussion following the game. Most players were businessmen and a good number from the commercial sector earning a living from the supermarket business.
The talk was about who had been visited by the CIO (Secret Police) CID and also Reserve Bank personnel.
Virtually everyone had been threatened and intimidated by these people most of whom were rude and aggressive to them. In one case, a business was visited three times in one day!
In another, a store keeper was threatened with closure if he didn’t sell sugar at the controlled price which, incidentally, is 25% below the purchase price from the refinery’s distributors.
Then there was another who had his cash confiscated because he had “too much in relation to his business†!
This was the same week that two bakery executives were jailed for four months for putting up prices “without Government approvalâ€!
This is in an environment of doing business with an inflation rate of around 27% PER MONTH and rising!
In such cases, there is little or no recourse to law and everyone simply becomes a victim of state thuggery.
