In their book, Permeant Crisis, Pearl Reitter and Chad Wellmoth, assumed that by its very nature, a crisis is a temporary situation which demands a break with the past.
If Reitter and Wellmoth were correct, Zimbabwe would have graduated from Gukurahundi (1987), from the land crisis, 2002, from the government of national unity (2008-2013) and from the overthrow of the tyrant Robert Mugabe (2027).
Now in 2025, we face another crisis and no easy solution seems to be in place. Even from my distance, I can feel the enormous pressures facing president Emerson Mnangagwa (ED as he is lovingly called by his supporters) to change course.
A crisis by its nature brings about a change and a departure from the past. In fact, the situation gets worse. There are Zimbabweans, 40 years old who have never had formal employment. There are four million economic refugees abroad. I was surprised to hear that 70 percent of our doctors and nurses have left the country.
The closure of mega grocery stores like N. Richards and Muhamed Mussa have caught the attention of the politicians.
Brother Tendai Biti, in his dialogue with Trevor Ncube suggests that anybody with the sense of a rabbit can see that something ought to be done. Yet, nothing is done that effectively alleviates the situation.
Things get worse.
My suggestion is that, Zanu PF, having successfully destroyed the opposition party, finds itself in an impossible position of remedying its own mistakes.
Not only that, the people, as I shall show below, who are placed in positions to solve these problems are themselves serious malefactors.
They are interested in hiding the symptoms of failure, as they are themselves beneficiaries of the status quo.
To expect anything different, is what professors call an unserious argument.
Take the example of Chinese mining in the sacred mountain called Dombo Shava. The lead Chinese waves a piece of paper from the president, and he manages to laugh.
The Chinese have already put up a fence around the caves-to tell of Gomo rinoyera (sacred mountain) only brings a sarcastic laugh. The blasting and the dust will begin in the near future.
Some clever jurist manufactured a fake judicial theory that all the land in Zimbabwe belongs to the president.
We did not know then that armed with these pieces of presidential papers, two Dutch brothers could cause the displacement of 20 000 Tshilonga villagers from their homes to make way for Swiss grass farms.
Similarly, Mutoko villagers were faced by a Chinese quarry miner waving a piece of paper. The grey quartz in yonder mountain was his to take-the chief was compromised.
Brother Tendai Biti has described the horrific effects this state of permanent crisis is having on the social fabric.
He says 10 years ago one Superior Family Court handled most of the divorces. Now, the numbers have overwhelmed the system, almost ten times what it was.
I can confirm that going abroad is almost a guarantee that a marriage will fail. The number four million abroad means that one quarter of the population is in some state of perpetual crisis.
The crisis continues on a daily basis; the natives find themselves strangers and defenseless from the Chinese and foreign compradors.
Why there has been no solution.
The purpose of this letter is to show why the situation has been allowed to persist for 45 years. I want to share my ideas with Brother Biti.
Since Zanu PF has successfully destroyed the opposition parties, in every case described, the malefactors have been called upon to solve the problems which they have created.
The malefactors, therefore, pretend to cure the symptoms, but not the causes, which will soon re-appear. Take for instance, the crisis of the Zimbabwe dollar.
The governors at the Reserve Bank and the compradors (pronounced comprador-res) at the Ministry of Finance are the chief malefactors in the on-going drama.
There is a story by Ace Lumumba to the effect that when they were printing the Zee dollar in Germany, they would separate one tanker in Beira for use in the under-ground foreign exchange shenanigans.
To avoid the issue that foreign exchange problems started and ended at the Reserve Bank is not a serious argument. The money touts pry their business at the inter-national business center in Bulawayo.
They know the police by name, they have more than five currencies in new money and after everything is said, they are very young-in their teens.
My information is that these three brothers, Dr. John Mangudya, Dr. Mthuli Ncube, and Brother George Guvamatanga meet every Tuesday in order to put Zimbabwe’s monetary policy in order. Mangudya is the brother who introduced the Zimbabwe bond and swore before God and the saints that it was equal in value to the US dollar. If this proved otherwise, he would resign his post.
Ncube is the one who, before assuming his present position said these words: “It is obvious that where there are two currencies, the stronger one will prevail.”
The News Hawks say this about Guvamatanga. “Finance Secretary… has bought a series of upmarket residential properties in South Africa raising moral, ethical and accountability questions as a senior officer” ( September 2024).
These three brothers have been at the centre of our monetary and fiscal crisis in the last ten years. To argue that they can put matters straight is to be unserious.
Lights go out in Zimbabwe.
The electricity black outs in Zimbabwe coincide with the career of one Sidney Gata. A brother-in-law to Robert Mugabe, he was appointed general manager at ESA (1981-1985) while a freshman at 34 years of age. He transitioned to chief executive officer (1986-1991).
Justice George Smith Commission found that he was “unfit to hold the position of chief executive officer.” Yet between 2000 -2003 he held positions of chief executive as well as chairperson of the board.
This is an anomaly because the chief executive answers to the chairperson (to himself). After dismissal in 2006, he received severance payments of Z18.3 m (2007) Z59.6 (2008) US 292 723 (2015-2o16) plus two Mercedez Benz vehicle, one SUV and a home in Umwinsdale.
Having divorced Mugabe’s sister and married a romoured relative of Mukuru (our ED), he bounced back as Chief Executive and Chairman of the Board in 2019.
I suggest to Brother Biti that by leaving the business of running Zimbabwe to these unserious brothers, who are serious malefactors, cannot produce a serious result.
*Ken Mufuka is a Zimbabwean patriot. He served as a Zapu representative in the West Indies in his previous life.
