Keep your coins Gono, we want change
Wellington Chibebe, the secretary general of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) has just issued a statement on Gono’s recent monetary policy announcement. Chibebe rightly calls Gono’s efforts a damp squib. He also calls on workers in Zimbabwe to exercise their “right to be heard”. I’d be quite interested to know the ways in which Chibebe expects them to do this seeing as workers legs are so busy being exercised walking to work that there’s not much energy left over for anything else.
Chris McGreal writing for The Guardian describes how Zimbabweans have become involuntary members of “walking clubs”.
“We are lucky to have jobs but the bus fare in one day is more than I earn in a week. So we walk,” Grace Sibanda says. “We walk together because it’s not safe. They wait in the bushes by the road and attack you if you are alone. They don’t want money. We don’t have any. They want my food.”
We all know that the new daily cash allowance of Z$2 trillion won’t keep up with Zimbabwe’s run-away inflation. Sure we might have a few days relief but pretty soon it will be back to square one especially when Gono continues to blame the complete decimation of our economy on “illegal sanctions”.
You can read the full text of the monetary policy statement on Kubatana. Flip an old coin and bet whether Gono’s zeroes come knocking on his window again . . . heads they do, tails they do.