Zimbabwe Sleight of Hand

If you think you have heard everything regarding the despots of the third world, prepare to be shocked. Mr. Mugabe of Zimbabwe fame has recently ordered the arrest of a resourceful scam artist in that unfortunate nation who had him and his cronies fooled for a while.

When Nomatter Tagarira, a spirit medium, claimed that she could conjure refined diesel out of a rock by striking it with her staff, ministers in Robert Mugabe’s Government believed that they might have found the solution to Zimbabwe’s perennial fuel shortage.

After witnessing her apparently miraculous gift they gave her five billion Zimbabwean dollars in cash (worth £1.7 million at the start of the year but now worth one seven-hundredth of that) in return for the fuel. Ms Tagarira was also given a farm, said to have been seized from its white owner during Mr Mugabe’s lawless land grab, as well as food and services that included a round-the-clock armed guard on the rock in the district of Chinhoyi 60 miles (100km) from Harare, the capital.

More than a year later officials realised they had been duped.
“It’s an outlandish story but the people [African bushmen] in government who believed this are the same ones who believe that Mugabe’s official policy of printing money will end inflation,” said an economist, who requested anonymity[...] According to the police docket at the court, Ms Tagarira, 35, discovered a large bowser [storage tank] of diesel last year, suspected to have been abandoned in the hills of Chinhoyi during the country’s civil war in the 1970s.

She laid pipes from the bowser to a point at the bottom of the hill. Whenever she assembled an audience, she would strike a rock and an assistant at the top of the hill would open the tap and lo, fuel would pour out. The bowser eventually ran dry but that didn’t stop Ms Tagarira. “They would buy diesel from lorry drivers and keep it in the pipe on the pretext it was coming from a rock,” the docket said.

By June the Government had decided the claims were plausible enough to warrant an official investigation. However, where a single geologist would have sufficed, they dispatched a large “task force” of politicians [more African bushmen] and members of the security forces, led by the deputy commissioner of police.

The task force duly reported to Mr Mugabe’s politburo, the most powerful body in the country, that the liquid appearing at the rock had been siphoned into lorries and that they had driven off without problem.

However, it was when a second “task force” of ministers was sent by the politburo a month later that Ms Tagarira’s ruse ended. She “failed to prove the existence of the fuel”, it said. She disappeared and was arrested this month. “It is not the woman who ought to be arrested, it is the idiots who authorised this criminal waste of public money,” said a lawyer, asking not to be named.

This is probably the scenario of what will occur as soon as Hugo Chávez reaps the consequences of his expulsion of the foreign expertise in the Venezuelan oil fields (unless of course he is able to recruit help from Mr. Putin whose Russian "experts" can succeed in equaling their achievements in the Cuban oil fields).

Hat tip: Daniel and Sheik yer Bouti

Venezuela: Zimbabwe Redux?

Now that the Venezuelan petroleum industry, broadcast media and soon the food retail enterprises are to be controlled by the future President-for-life Hugo Chávez, will the once prosperous South American nation follow the pattern of other cleptocracies such as Zimbabwe?

The collapse of Zimbabwe's economy has finally taken its toll on President Robert Mugabe's regime. It is facing a disintegrating army and police, a wave of strikes, power black-outs and the breakdown of every essential service.

With inflation running at 1,281 per cent – the highest rate in the world — Mr Mugabe finds himself locked in a vicious circle. Zimbabwean children have stopped going to school because of a steep rise in fees

It takes only a few weeks for the value of every pay rise given to civil servants to be wiped out. But the bankrupt regime can only cover the cost of further wage rises by printing money – which fuels inflation still further and creates pressure for yet more pay increases.

Tension on the streets of the capital, Harare, is mounting as people scavenge to earn extra money for food and transport. Some of those fortunate enough to have jobs cannot even afford bus fares.

In what was once one of Africa's most prosperous economies, a 35-year-old primary school teacher with six years' service earns $26 a month.

The woman, who wished to remain anonymous, said: "My take-home pay is not enough for transport to work, so I am not going to school this week."


She is not on strike, although many of the 110,000 state teachers have started a "go slow" and are absent from classrooms. This has left parents to fill in as home-teachers.

Zimbabwe's four largest hospitals are crippled by a seven-week strike among junior doctors, who earn only $12 a month after deductions. All civil servants received a 300 per cent pay rise in January – but inflation has already eroded this gain.

Cholera has broken out in Harare because the water treatment plants are collapsing. Power black-outs are increasing and one town, Chitungwiza, gets only four days of electricity a week.

Mr Mugabe responded by saying that any protests "will not be tolerated".

But he relies on the army and police to suppress challenges. Sources in the army say that soldiers – while far better paid than teachers or nurses – are still enduring "desperate" conditions. Most of those below the rank of colonel earn less than $1 per day – the international measure for absolute poverty.

"There is plenty of indiscipline because we are hungry," said one captain.

Mr Mugabe's elite Presidential Guard, which has extra perks and higher salaries, is also disgruntled, according to the military source.

But the economic collapse has created opportunities for the corrupt elite around Mr Mugabe, who have already benefited from the seizure of white-owned farms.

Senior figures in the ruling Zanu-PF party can buy US dollars from the Reserve Bank at the meaningless official exchange rate – and then sell them on the parallel market at a 2,000 per cent profit. They can buy fuel from the state at one twelfth of the market price. This gives a powerful core of Zanu-PF figures a vested interest in keeping Mr Mugabe in power.

The president, who turns 83 later this month, gambles that by keeping this wealthy handful happy, he can survive the economic collapse and extend his 27-year rule.

Splits in the opposition Movement for Democratic Change have made Mr Mugabe's task easier. But continuing this balancing act indefinitely may not be possible, especially if discontent spreads in the vitally important army and police force.

"I have never seen a crisis of this depth before," said John Robertson, an independent economist in Harare. "There seems to be no solution in sight." Daniel Ndlela, another economist, said: "This is an unsaveable situation. It is by far the worst since independence.

"It will collapse, as the government will talk a lot but it won't change its ways. When and how this collapse will happen, that is the question."

It has taken 27 years for Mugabe to destroy the country's economy and political infrastructure and he had no oil resources to rely on. Hugo Chávez has considerable oil resources and is ginning up fear of "Yanqui Imperialism". Place your bets. Today's "official" exchange rate: USD $1= ZD 250,000.00
ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

Going Going GONE?

Augusto Pinochet , former dictator of Chile died last week and we have been treated to considerable vilification of him in the so called mainstream media .
It seems that about three thousand individuals lost their lives or simply disappeared during and immediately following the Chilean Revolution of Sept 11, 1973. This includes the President, Salvador Allende who was most likely shot by his Cuban bodyguard when he decided to surrender during the attack on his palace on that date What is invariably omitted in the recent data is the fact that due to the actions of Allende in violating the Chilean Constitution and laws while attempting to establish a communist dictatorship in Chile the Chamber of Deputies ordered the Chilean military to remove Allende from office. Pinochet, who happened to be the commander of the armed forces was the one who carried out the order.

After some years as dictator and rescuing Chile's society and economy from socialism by among other things privatizing the government retirement system, he peacefully relinquished power. When Pinochet left office, Chile had the strongest economy in Latin America.

Contrast the above scenario with the history of the Cuban Revolution and Fidel Castro the Communist dictator for the past 47 years: "Within three months of his entry into Havana, Castro's firing squads had murdered an estimated 600-1,100 men and boys, and Cuba's jails held ten times the number of political prisoners as under Fulgencio Batista, who Castro overthrew with claims to "liberating" Cuba". Cuban citizens to this day require ration books to purchase scarce food while Cuba enjoys the most fertile soil on the planet.

Castro is expected to be joining the ranks of the departed in the not too distant future. It will be interesting to compare the media fawning accolades for this butcher to the treatment they have given to Pinochet.

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ