Financial Gazette
(Harare)
Rangarirai Mberi
17 January 2008
opinion
Harare — Don't expect anything normal, or you'll be disappointed
WE were warned, weren't we, by the Chinese? The year 2007, their zodiac said, was going to be the Year of the Pig.
"We will see our growing herd of greedy porkers getting even more aggressive at the national feeding trough," is how, in our 2007 look-ahead last January, we tried to interpret what a Year of the Pig possibly meant.
Now look how that year ended; a top comrade of the world's most revolutionary party running off to seek shelter in the grubby arms of Albion herself, the mother of all imperialists. And then this whole other filth about casual girlfriends and the mystery $10 billion. Pig stuff.
Now, Chinese astrologers reveal, 2008 will be the "Year of the Rat".
Yes, that's right, the same vile little animal those mean CNN people claimed last year we had a million recipes for; rat fried, rat roasted, rat baked, rat violently dismembered and served in boiling stew.
In mafia talk, to "rat" is to sell out. Which, perhaps, explains why the year has begun with government snitches, eyes to the sky, waiting upon the return of the head honcho from the Far East so they can "rat" on those planning a rebellion.
So what is to be expected in this Year of the Rat?
Given how oddly this year has begun, it is safe not to expect, in the rest of the months ahead, that things will again make sense.
Don't expect anything normal; that there will be money in a bank, that there will be fuel at a fuel station, buses at a bus station, water from a water tap, power from a power socket.
Normalcy is so out of fashion.
Look at how, for instance, there is more money at one bus station in Harare than there is at any bank.
Like rats, we will all race to gather what little morsels we can from under the giant table where last year's pigs still dine, and then timidly retreat quickly into our little holes without making a noise.
As Bob Marley sings in his Rat Race, "it's a disgrace to see the human race in a rat race".
Because of how silly things can get in Zimbabwe, it's a lot safer to predict things that are not likely to happen; instead of getting a bunch of soggy-bottom politicos to hire a spirit medium with three names to throw a few old bones and predict the future.
A lot of what we said we would not see in 2007 either did happen, or nearly did.
Last January, the report we said first we would NOT see was this:
"ZANU- PF secretary for administration Didymus Mutasa has called a special congress of his party to elect a new leader after President Robert Mugabe turned around and said he would now retire at the end of his current term."
Wrong. ZANU PF did, in fact, call a special congress.
The big difference, though, was that while in our look-ahead we quoted officials as not saying the congress was to "choose a new leader", it turned out nobody had a solid explanation as to why a "special" congress was being held.
First, Joice Mujuru, while on a pilgrimage to Cuba to reawaken the old revolutionary fire at the tomb of iconic female radical Vilma Espin Guillois, told The Herald congress had been called to elect leadership.
Then some bright spark discovered the word "endorse", and it all went downhill; a million jaywalkers marching, and a lot of other mischief, some of which led to the rather depressing sight of a President grabbing the mic like an emcee at a rap battle.
We also predicted another headline we would not see was this: "Sekesai Makwavarara has been fired as Harare commission chairperson". Wrong again. The poor lady was, in fact, shoved down the pothole.
We were also unlikely to see, we wrote, Morgan Tsvangirai apologise for his indiscretions. You can laugh out loud here, especially if your name is Lucia. Or if your party ever held a congress over sauce-stained, "check-check" tablecloths in a downtown Bulawayo bistro.
So, then, what headlines should we not expect in this Year of the Rat?
Front of the Disgruntled
A hoax
The major alleged promoters of a new party that was to emerge before elections have denied they ever formed a party.
One of them, a top man who heads a geographical area approximately east of the capital, or thereabouts, scolded a journalist for asking about his rumoured role in this whole split thing: "If you can answer the question of who supplied those 220 or so 4x4s to ZANU PF for its campaign - at an obviously inflated US$46 000 each, but whoever looks at the books at our Jongwe House - then you can answer your questions as to whether a wise businessman like myself would ever leave the reeling party."
Mugabe Quits
President Robert Mugabe, fresh from winning a sixth term in office after he got 99.89 percent of the vote on a shrewd campaign platform of rock-sourced diesel technology, free internet, health for all by the year 20000, and invading Britain and bringing that Butau chap back home, has announced his retirement after leading the country through 14 years of relative plenty, and 14 others of, well, not-so-plenty.
Journalists, and currency dealers, and Lovemore Madhuku, and NGO types, wept openly in the streets at the news, wondering what would become of their lives now.
Morgan Cured Arthur Appears
Morgan Tsvangirai says he has finally found a miracle cure for the odd condition that, without reasonable explanation, leaves him utterly blind every October.
Meanwhile, Arthur Mutambara, responding to complaints he was invisible, says he will be more visible in 2008.
Asked about the disappointment of losing the elections, Mutambara was barely audible, speaking over Skype, and shouting above the din of the Consumer Electronics Show at Las Vegas, Nevada, when telling a reporter that Intel's latest wireless silicon platform, Menlo, which will include WiMax, WiFi, and 4G cellular technology among its radio capabilities, would be kept under wraps for at least another six months, which he said has been his single biggest disappointment so far this year.
And in business news...
Government, in response to irritating questions as to why there are no longer any old currency notes around, with every note in circulation always crisp new and smelling of fresh ink, has revolutionalised its extensive cash printing strategy.
No longer will the printing press run in continuous 24-hour shifts. Notes will only be printed to order, like "hello, this is Clown Banking, can you give us four trunks of $250s, three bags of your $500s, and a truckload of some of those unpopular $750s".
Should the need be urgent, banks are free to print their own.
In other news, Godwills Masimirembwa has ordered banks to trust their customers more. "Customers trust banks with their money, yet banks nail their pens to the walls. What's that? Shouldn't trust go both ways?"
On the stock exchange, Zeco Holdings rose 890 percent yesterday after rumours of the purchase of a private jet to add to its already vast array of metal assets.
Copyright © 2008 Financial Gazette. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
Read comments. Write your own.
