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Death knell for indigenisation tolls
Ray Matikinye, The Zimbabwe Independent
May 27, 2005

http://www.theindependent.co.zw/news/2005/May/Thursday26/2411.html

ZIMBABWE’S capital Harare looks pristine and decongested after decades when it resembled a metropolis about to suffocate under piles of garbage.

Despite its alleys still reeking of urine and the occasional evidence of human waste in downtown areas, critics say the general cleanliness belies deep-seated resentment among those whose source of livelihood was sacrificed to achieve the feat.

Informal traders last week relived scenes reminiscent of the agony and pain squatters at Mbare Msika endured a few years ago when they were forcibly moved to Porta Farm on the outskirts of the city.

But this time there was no visiting royalty whom the authorities did not wish to witness deteriorating living standards in their former colony. Council officials were responding to a clean-up call of the city environs by residents agitated by years of neglect.

When Reserve Bank governor Gideon Gono presented his monetary review policy with unexpected forthrightness, no one expected he would propose construction of additional jails to take in parallel market traders who he blames for playing havoc with his turnaround programme.

Novelist George Or-well would describe Gono’s proposed solution as a law of the suspect "that strikes away all security for self-reliance and delivers any good or innocent people who have committed petty offences into prison without assurances that their case will ever be heard".

A hard long-standing foreign currency crunch has generated crisis-level fuel and food shortages with government officials appearing clueless on how to solve the problem.

"We are aware of the iniquitous parallel market rates for foreign currency and goods in short supply currently prevailing in this market and find it ludicrous that Zimbabweans are forced by circumstances to trade their toil, sweat and blood at these ridiculous levels," Gono said.

At the moment, Zimbabwe is failing to cope with a burgeoning prison population that it can neither feed nor clothe.

And years of economic stagnation and an indigenisation programme that has empowered Zanu PF apparatchiks have turned most of Zimbabwe’s unemployed into subsistence traders who have cluttered pavements and streets in major towns with their wares. Experts put Zimbabwe’s unemployment rate at 80%.

Gono seems the kind of well-meaning bureaucrat who thinks Zimbabwe’s crisis-laden economy could be remedied if he amended a few by-laws and abolished a few anomalies.

On the eve of Gono’s monetary policy review, police blitzed street vendors and flea market traders who are part of a growing informal sector spawned by joblessness, flattening their stalls in search of scarce hard currency.

The tear-jerking demolitions impoverished thousands who make a living on the streets of the capital.

Men, women and young adults trying to make an honest living were caught up in the indiscriminate blitz as Gono tried to mop up any hard currency he could lay his hands on.

Economic experts say from the onset Gono had his priorities upside down. He tried to be a deus ex machina, trying to solve everyone’s problems by showering money in every direction.

His approach to solving Zimbabwe’s decades-old economic problems seems to appeal to a change of spirit rather than a change of structure without any definite remedy.

An appeal for a change of heart is the alibi of a bureaucrat who does not want to endanger the status quo.

But the victims in the capital blame Chinese nationals who have set up shop in major towns and cities for their plight.

"They want to destroy the competition by taking over flea markets themselves," complained Cynthia Masuku, who was caught up in a police blitz at Rezende Street in the capital.

Masuku claims she lost $2 million kept in her trunk when police raided the flea market. "People should just boycott their (Chinese) shops. They are the source of our problems."

Simbainashe Nyekete, another flea-market operator along Julius Nyerere Way, said: "This is a new form of colonialism. Soon we will have to fight to dislodge these Chinese from our midst."

Millions of dollars worth of timber and other furniture-making material went up in smoke in Glen View suburb when police torched stalls there.

In the vagueness of reasoning that could be likened to curing pimples by cutting them, Gono’s and government’s utter lack of compassion for the small man were apparent.

"We were victims of intentions to punish the poor man. Government knows the big-time culprits of foreign currency leakages but would rather go for the powerless," complained 28- year-old Arison Rukweza, who said he was a qualified machinist who turned to repairing mobile phones and vending when he failed to get a job.

Sithembiso Nyoni, the informal sector minister, condoned the demolition of informal traders’ stalls saying this had been necessitated by the emergence of criminal activities in the informal sector.

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