Zimbabwe: A whole nation held at ransom by three men

The progress of Zimbabwe is being hindered by three men, Gideon Gono, the governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, Johannes Tomana, the Attorney General and Mugabe the Zimbabwean GNU President. Gono and Tomana were appointed by Mugabe a few weeks before the birth of the GNU and he is refusing to meet the MDC's demands to have these two men fired for the sake of progress in the country

For those of you who are not in the know, Gideon Gono is the notorious banker under whose term as governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, Zimbabwean dollars were being printed willy nilly without regard of internationally accepted rules of economics resulting in inflation in Zimbabwe skyrocketing at the speed of light to extremely high levels. He is the same man who promoted black market foreign exchange rates by printing a lot of Zimbabwean dollars and using them to buy all the foreign currency at the black market so as to get all the hard currency that Zimbabweans
in the diaspora had sent to their loved ones. I suppose he was accumulating the foreign currency in preparation for the dollarisation of the economy that only he and his ZANU-PF cronies knew he was going to implement in the near future. Where all that foreign currency he accumulated from the black market went to is a mystrey, because Treasury is being said to be broke and Transparency International which wanted to audit the Reserve Bank books was barred from doing so under orders from the High Office. He is the same man who is said to have helped the dictator and his
cronies to transfer lump sums of foreign currency to banks outside the country, money which should have remained circulating in Zimbabwe and helped boost the economy. He is the same man who set up the RTGS banking system that saw many Zimbabweans being lured to exchange their hard currency using that system and by so doing being conned off their money because once the Zim dollar RTGS equivalence was deposited into their bank accounts Gono's bank withdrawal limits made it impossible to access the money in full and because of hyper-inflation each day the money
stayed in the bank would reduce it more and more to uselessness. He is the same man that reduced most Zimbabweans to paupers last year by setting very low bank withdrawal limits per person per day such that the money one was allowed to withdraw per day was not enough to buy a loaf of bread. Let me bring to your attention that because of those very low bank withdrawal limits many Zimbabweans died from hunger or from lack of medical treatment because the money they would get from the bank was not enough to buy food or buy medicines. He is the same man who tends to buy
loyalities using Treasury money, a man who gives priority to buying cars and plasma televisions for ministers, member's of parliament, judges and doctors than to buying chemicals to purify the recycled water used by Harare residents, the result of that was cholera ravaging the lives of Zimbabweans. He is the same man who is notorious for frustrating most prominent Zimbabwean business men, (eg Mutumwa Mawere who owned Shabani & Mashaba mine) such that they ended up fleeing the country and leaving their assets which would then be seized. He is the same man who
authorised businesses to sell their goods in American dollars and Rands without at the same time instructing employers to pay their employees in US dollars and Rands such that most employees who were being paid in useless Zim dollars spent three months struggling to survive.

These are but only a few of his misdeeds, I am sure they are many more that are skeletons in his cupboard. Considering Gono's record, no man in his right mind would want to keep him as Governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe and no donor or international financial body in their right mind would want to risk giving money to any bank he is in charge of or any government he is a part of and they have said so in no uncertain terms. MDC-T and MDC-M want him either to resign or be fired by Mugabe who appointed him and rightfully so given his track record but Mugabe insists on keeping him as the Governor of the Reserve bank of Zimbabwe for reasons best known to himself but which can only be clandestine, otherwise it wouldn't make sense.

Tomana is said to be a ZANU-PF political appointee and that brings the independence of the justice system in question because the office of the Attorney General is an office that is supposed to be neutral and anti-partisan. For the sake of a free and fair justice system MDC-T and MDC-M want the Attorney General to either resign or be fired by Mugabe who appointed him.

A whole nation held at ransom by three men who had they been ethically and professionally minded and had any sense of pride or shame would simply have resigned and let the country move on the minute they knew that the majority of the Zimbabwean population no longer wanted them to continue holding on to the positions of authority that they have. Gideon Gono & Johannes Tomana are opting to cling to their political appointments just as the man who appointed them is clinging on to power at such an antiquated age. I shudder to think about the selfishness of these three men, who are putting their own interests above those of the rest of the Zimbabwean population.