Zimbabwe Information Center in North America
A project of the North American Coalition for a Free Zimbabwe (NACFREEZ)
MDC
By Stanford G. Mukasa
Letter from America
February 5, 2007
Is Gono genuine or grandstanding?
It never rains but it pours on Mugabe and ZANUPF!
Barely reeling under the Edgar Tekere’s knock-out blow of a revealing book that portrayed Mugabe as far less a hero of the liberation struggle than depicted, Mugabe and ZANUPF are tottering under another blow from Reserve Bank Governor Gideon Gono.
Like a recent Pauline convert to common sense, Gono has now put his finger on the real problem afflicting Zimbabwe.
He has said what other ZANUPF ideological apostles have been whispering in the dark – namely Zimbabwe’s problems stem from the crisis of governance.
Like Julius Caesar, Mugabe might as well as face Gono and say “Et tu Brute, sorry, Gono!”
The chickens are now coming home to roost for Mugabe and ZANUPF. In the "Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner" by English poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a sailor kills, for no apparent reason, an albatross which brought good fortune to the sailors.
What follows is a series of disasters leading the sailors to hang the albatross around the sailor’s neck. In a similar vein, the Zimbabwean crisis now hangs around Mugabe’s neck like the dead albatross.
Gono took a swipe at ZANUPF bigwigs when he, ironically using the State owned media, ridiculed Mugabe’s propaganda refrain that, like a broken self- repeating record, sonorously referred to sanctions and imperialists as the sole cause of the country’s problems.
Gono appeared to be sympathetic to the masses when he talked about the spiraling cost of living. Gono’s speech was fuel or justification for the wild cat strikes that are mushrooming around the country.
Here is Mugabe’s personal banker who was now being seen by the ZANUPF apparatchiki , as the Biblical Judas Iscariot, bent on betraying Mugabe and ZANUPF.
But was Gono genuine? Had he truly been converted and fully grasped the real cause or source of the problems confronting Zimbabwe today?
There are two possibilities.
The first is simply that Gono is experiencing a rude awakening and realizes he is on a wild goose chase.
Every measure he has taken, every breath he has made, every move he has taken, every dream he has had to address the economic problems has been a dismal failure. Unlike King Midas, everything Gono touches turns rotten instead of golden.
Gono now realizes he is running in circles and very close behind his boss, the madman from Ngomahuru who, as the late Edison Zvobgo used to refer to Mugabe, had been given a baton to pass on but ran into the mountains where he is still running wildly.
Could it be that Gono, as 19th century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche put it, now has a good grasp and knowledge based on experience of how to address the economic problems that have wreaked havoc in Zimbabwe?
The second and more likely possibility is that Gono, like other disgruntled ZANUPF officials, is playing to the public gallery.
These could be his opening shots in a bid to enter presidential elections next year, notwithstanding the fact that Mugabe has said he will not step down until 2010. He is probably aware that the bickering within ZANUPF will continue until elections.
But more important, Gono knows that ZANUPF no longer enjoys the support of the majority of the Zimbabwean people.
He also knows that, while his name keeps coming up in conversations as a dark horse that could be pulled, like a magician’s rabbit, at the last minute to replace Mugabe, he will face a formidable opposition from the fractions within ZANUPF.
Only a few months ago the same Mugabe said he will have retired by the time of the presidential elections. And recently, in a characteristic U-turn, Mugabe said he wanted to stay beyond 2008 because he could not find a suitable successor and that he feared ZANUPF would be in shambles without him.
In view of this, Gono’s road to the State House is full of political landmines. In the first place, the people of Zimbabwe are not likely to embrace him politically. Gono’s economic policies have led to a free fall economy and severe hardships among the people.
The agony of the Gono-imposed life of bearers’ checks and economic policies that change overnight has cost Zimbabweans billions of dollars, particulalrly after the old currency was rendered invalid.
Gono may have sounded like he was trying to punish the top money traders especially in ZANUPF. But he has viciously, and with utmost deliberation, economically depressed Zimbabweans the way former information minister Jonathan Moyo politically dragged Zimbabweans through the mud and stripped them bare of their basic freedoms and rights in his hey days as Mugabe’s propaganda mouthpiece.
Neither Moyo nor Gono are likely to find ready supporters in numbers large enough to assure them an electoral victory at the next presidential elections.
Zimbabweans are also aware how Gono has accumulated a personal wealth and a lifestyle that boasts of very expensive top-of-the-line Mercedes Benz.
It is reported that Gono is building a 200-bedroom mansion, now travels in a mini convoy and has been taking or plans to take flying lessons with the possibility of buying his own private jet.
Whether these reports are true or not they are doing their rounds with sufficient credibility to tarnish Gono’s political image.
Gono appears to have taken upon himself the task of reforming ZANUPF. He has somehow attracted the attention of the international community.
Some officials in the international community now see Gono as the hope for a new political order that will combine at its leadership helm the moderates in ZANUPF and members of the opposition movement. This idea has been discussed for several years now. It now essentially forms the framework, at least from the international community perspective, for a resolution of the crisis of governance in Zimbabwe.
But Gono is repeating what the opposition movement has been saying for years. The only difference is that Gono can say what he wants live on State TV and radio and get away with it. Whereas opposition members are denied the right to use the public airwaves to express the very same criticism of Mugabe’s disastrous policies.
The seizure of commercial farms for political expedience by Mugabe was one of the greatest economic crimes in Zimbabwe’s history.
It is amazing that, for Mugabe, who claims to have among others, an academic degree in economics, should have failed to realize that politicizing commercial agriculture would destroy the national economy.
Mugabe was able and willing to sacrifice the nation’s economy at the political altar of the 2000 elections. And it has taken Gono, the governor of the Reserve Bank seven years to realize that no amount of fiscal and monetary policy and policing will make any meaningful and positive change to an economy that is now being controlled as an internal party affair by Mugabe and ZANUPF.
The strangest thing is Gono, who is widely traveled, has presumably a modicum of knowledge of the international monetary and economic system, has been exposed to economic policies in a number of countries and globally, has interacted with international financial institutions and is presumably widely read and knowledgeable about trends in fiscal and development policy should still be the flag carrier or errand boy for ZANUPF’s disastrous economic policies.
Yes. He has called for political reforms. But his criticisms, though relatively significant, appear to be a footnote to his daily economic tribal dance with ZANUPF.
How then does one explain this criticism of ZANUPF by Gono while he is sitting next to Mugabe at the ZANUPF gravy table?
To answer this we must address an even broader overarching question : Why are more ZANUPF officials becoming critical of Mugabe, especially his decision to stay in office beyond 2008? Does this make them new partners with the opposition movement?
Many years ago Karl Marx said the ruling class is the sum total of fractions each with their interests. They are constantly in a struggle for resources, influence and political control of the State system.
In this intra-fractional struggle among the ruling elite there will be semblances of democracy. But these are artificial : for they are used to garner public sympathy and support just enough to win power and influence.
Thereafter, the masses are tossed, like, as Tendayi Biti would put it, used condoms into the political trash bins and become a forgotten generation.
There is , therefore a real possibility that Gono‘s crocodile tears over the plight of Zimbabweans is, as I have said earlier, grandstanding – setting a stage for his political ambitions.
Gono and his likes live very comfortable lives. They have everything they need, except one thing. They need the political power to protect their personal interests and resources looted from the State.
How else does one explain the fact that they are able to buy in cash luxury cars, build mansions, live exuberant lives on their Zimbabwean salaries? And for those who have businesses chances are a good number of them got them through their political connections within the ruling elite.
Considering the fact that the vast majority of ZANUPF leadership and top officials are physically, intellectually and mentally incapable of creating wealth, have no entrepreneurial experience, it would be interesting to find out, as former Tanzania president, Julius Nyerere, used to say, how they got their wealth.
ZANUPF top officials or apologists are what someone described as “errand boys of capitalism” who consume what they do not produce. They are greedy, have a high taste for life, are lazy and, like overgrown babies, they are and have been breastfeeding on the State resources for 27 years and still counting! Imagine a 27-year-old still breastfeeding and absolutely refusing to go to work to fend for himself or herself.
This is what ZANUPF top officials have been since independence.
Sadly, and considering lack of dynamism and clarity on the struggle for independence from the civil society leadership, Zimbabweans have to enter into some working alliance with these disgruntled ZANUPF elements in the classic Mao dictum : "An enemy of my enemy is my friend."
These disgruntled ZANUPF elements can, for selfish reasons, be useful in the struggle for the restoration of democracy and the rule of law. But Zimbabweans must be on guard at all times that they do not mortgage their basic human and political rights and freedom to a new breed of oppressors.
For this reason, Zimbabwean civil society must maintain a vanguard movement that will ensure that their civil institutions like the trade unions, women, youth and student organizations are intact and viable in the post-Mugabe era. They will be needed in the event new dictatorial regimes emerge after Mugabe.
Part of the program for emancipation by the civil society should be to strengthen and institutionalize its vanguard movement.
It was this vanguard movement that was mobilized very effectively against attempts to rig the elections by the deposed former dictator of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos, in 1986.
Members of the vanguard movement organized themselves into vigilant groups who slept at polling stations and, despite the threats from Marcos’ soldiers, linked hands and literally protected the ballot boxes from being interfered with.