Oneword

Let them eat cake


A brand-new contribution in your favourite online community in this brandnew year. Welcome it. There are brickbats and kudos (where such are deserved). And, hopefully, you will chuckle about some of the stuff penned down.

Let’s start with this with the skunk of the Western World: His Excellency, The Terminator of Zimbabwe, Bumbling Bob the First (and hopefully the last).
With the news last year that the baked bread was getting as scarce as sausage in a dog kennel (the other bread Gideon Gono keeps churning out on the government’s money press), it is probably a good way to quote Marie Antoinette.

Remember – that led to a revolution!

His economic shenanigans during 2007 were such that even non-economists just shook their heads. The gaffe of first selling stuff at half-price where only the privileged few could suddenly buy en grosse and then the price freeze. That took the cake (if I may say so) and all the cherries on top.

Of course, inflation would come down. There was simply no money and nothing to buy even if there had been money. The only ones with money – even now with inflation running at over 24 000! % - are the makakunyas of Zimbabwe; those with massive foreign holdings and no worries about tomorrow. If the house of cards that is Zimbabwe today does crumble, they will get out anyway. The devil always looks after his own.

The only ones to bear the brunt of the coming financial and economic fire storm that will inevitably engulf the country, will be John and Jan Plain Citizen. They will have to suffer like the Russians peasants suffered under Soviet Union and Lenin, Stalin and Malenkov and Khrushchev and all the others – one devil after the other.

Only some seventy years later did those animals (in all senses of the word) that were more equal than others in the Workers’ Paradise that was the USSR, suffer the fate of all tyrants and despots. None to soon either!

Although it cost West Germany billions upon billions to wake the Sleeping beauty behind the wall of shame in Berlin and bring it up to date; that was also done.

Today It is only in Sinbabwe that unholy terror and massive mismanagement is praised and awarded. There are more than enough sycophants who cow-tow to that senile so-called leader. That word, too, sounds quite relevant. There was one such person in the West who caused a global conflagration a mere 68 years ago.

Hopefully everything that happened then will not happen to the poor Zimbos. They should rather be given their god-given chance to join the rest of us in Africa (except maybe that lesser shining light in Equatorial Guinea) to march forward to true economic delivery from the weals and woes of the rich, industrialised nations, like the US and the West and India and China.

Talking about the latter. They are not saints and yellow Father Christmases. All they want is our minerals and other riches. Once they have that, we will be thrown by the wayside like a lemon that has been completely squeezed dry … and don’t let anybody fool you about the ultimate aim.

Those (relatively few) Dollars, Pounds, Euros and Yuans thrown our way are peanuts for them in the long-term. Beware of Worthy Oriental Gentlemen bearing gifts (in German that last word sound most appropriate!).They have ulterior motives to their ulterior motives.

Then, Comrade (sorry: ex-comrade) Ya Nangoloh opened his mouth just a little bit too wide during the year, too.

He dared to verbally attack (threaten) our grand Tatekulu in retirement, the founding father of Namibia, Sam Shafiishuna Nujoma, with the International Court of Justice. I can just see Phil, with his tongue in cheek, being very daring and very cheeky indeed. I doubt whether even Phil, who is known for his verbal exuberance and irreverence, was very serious.

But, man oh man!

What a reaction his little statement elicited! One would have thought the first of April 1989 was back all over again, but multiplied by a factor of ten.

Everybody who was somebody and all those who thought they were somebody and even those who everybody knows are just nobodies and busybodies climbed on the bandwagon and all over poor old Phil. Speech writers everywhere were suddenly totally overwhelmed by the popularity they enjoyed and - for a time at least - could justify the horrendously high salaries they were being paid.

It was the best of times.

They could once again take out all those hackneyed, hollow phrases of yesteryear they had (at last) reluctantly put away in their bottom drawer and dust them off, polish them, whet them, aim them and fire them.

What a lovely time! Nostalgia par excellence.

All of a sudden those whose bravery was deeply rooted in their vocal chords, could wax lyrically about the slimy imperialist, the running-dog of rampant capitalism, this dungeonable, traitorous person who dared to voice such blasphemy and impugn a latter-day saint.

It resounded several around the world and even those who had already forgotten about which side they were supposed to be on, climbed back on their blandwagon and lambasted Ya Nangoloh.

It makes me wonder what would happen if someone were to go ahead and utter a real, valid threat against our old man? Probably the whole NDF, the Police, the Special Protection unit, the Youth League, Nanso and all those poor, unemployed ex-combatants would gird their flabby loins and march or at least waddle on whoever disrespectfully dared to oppose the gospel of Sam.

For a moment, I thought that “Indira Gandhi” would stutter and roar once again; this time not aimed towards boer planes.

Well, in the end, I think, everyone got what they wanted: Phil his publicity and the ruffled feathers and the opposite side an opportunity to utter all those threats and dire warnings they had not been able to utter for 17 years.

A perfect example of trying to kill a teeny-weeny mosquito with a nuclear device.

Had I bet on it with a guy who did not know our Africa as well as I know Africa, I would have made a mint. Against all opposition from the people who have the money and control the purse strings (the EU), His Bobness was, after all a “welcome” guest at the December AU/EU summit. The enemy of your enemy .......
For instance, the amount of time expended on the summit in Portugal and whether or not Mugabe was now, after all, invited was totally disproportionate to the probable benefits to the people, in terms of whether they would, afterwards have more reliable water and power supplies, for instance.

It was, also, hardly likely to improve the clout of the Zimdollar in relation to the major currencies of the world, nor did have an impact on the muck of hyper-inflation in which most of them are drowning today.