By Cde Patriot Sunungura
The Second Republic last week in bold defiance of economic gravity, announced
that Zimbabwe’s inflation has dropped to single digits for the first time in 29 years.
The declaration appears to have been inspired by the long-standing ZANU PF school of thought best represented by Rotina Mavhunga’s famous “diesel from a rock” theory of economics.
Finance minister Mthuli Ncube triumphantly unveiled this new era of “stability!”
True Patriots, apparently this stability reportedly being enjoyed by a small, well-connected circle within the ruling elite.
This celebrated inflation stability, however, sits comfortably alongside mass unemployment, poor civil servant salaries, shrinking household incomes, and deepening poverty for ordinary citizens.
For a professor of economics to hail these conditions as stability, one is tempted to conclude that Cde Ncube may have obtained an additional qualification from the Chitepo School of Ideology.
Increasingly, the learned professor resembles less a finance minister and more the Second Republic’s chief spin doctor that is focused on narrative management and image bandaging rather than the painful arithmetic of daily life.
Curiously, the nation was also told in 2018 that inflation stood at a modest 4.2 percent.
This latest inflation miracle is, of course, measured in ZiG, a currency that citizens mostly encounter as change, nostalgia, or theoretical tender.
For a regime obsessed with achieving upper-middle-income status by 2030, perhaps Cde Ncube is simply ensuring the destination is reached the only way possible.
If not in reality, then at least on paper.
