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What a people, Zimbabweans! Zimbabweans have shown that they are resourceful, diligent, intelligent and crafty.

This could be the reason why we have been able as a people to survive the long night of sanctions-induced socio-economic horrors that have spanned over a decade.

You see, in other times and places, Zimbabwe could have imploded at the height of macro-economic problems that heightened in 2007-08 where hyperinflation ravaged people’s savings and earnings and basic commodities disappeared from shop shelves.

You fell sick and visited the hospital, only to find no medical staff or no drugs and medicines. You earned your monthly salary only for it to get wiped in a day.

Banks limited cash withdrawals, leaving people with no choice but to camp at the premises so that they would be in line for another inadequate withdrawal.

At the end of the transactions, the money would have been wiped off by inflation, meaning that the money one would have spent days queuing for would be inadequate.

It was an awful experience, one which no other country outside a war situation endured. In fact, that was the “screaming” of the economy that Chester Crocker talked about when America gave us sanctions in December 2001.

Zimbabwe was supposed to crash and burn — ask Eddie Cross — so that people would rise against the Government that America did not like.

Thank God, we survived.

Clever Zimbos

Perhaps we, as Zimbabweans, also need to pat ourselves on the back for remaining strong and resisting the pressure to tear each other and our only country for the benefit of foreigners.

Let’s thank the Americans, and the British, too, for teaching us through the hell they gave us: having gone so low, the only direction we can go now is up.

We learnt our lessons.

And we even learnt how to steal from the robber! See, the Americans in their nefarious designs at regime change used a two-pronged approach: pinching with the left hand and caressing with the right.

As such, while sanctions bit the poor majority, Americans were careful to pamper some people and organisations with all sorts of goodies and money. The money was supposed to motivate and oil the local regime-change machine consisting of opposition parties, NGOs and others. Now, here is the interesting part.

Cheeky Zimbabweans, instead of using that money for the intended purpose, they converted a good chunk of it to their own use.

They ate and drank and married. They built houses, bought cars and went on holidays.

Hold your horses! It’s not Morgan Tsvangirai only.

News reaching us is that the Americans are unhappy that the money they funnelled to local NGOs were fleeced by individuals at an outfit called Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition, which administered the funds.

They awarded themselves hefty, Cashbert-Dube-like salaries, corruption and malfeasance reigned.

And, by the way, someone there is said to have lost property in a divorce but replaced it just as swiftly! That was after coming from a legendary holiday.

The Americans are unhappy and have dispatched an Uncle Tom to investigate. However, it is like closing the stables when the horse has bolted. If Americans thought they were clever, they should think again.

Zimbabweans are way smarter.

And they are all zanu-pf at heart and they will do anything to remain so, including “eating” foolish Americans’ money.

Biti’s bite

There has typically been other interesting news this week.

We welcome back Tendai Biti from wherever he has been hibernating, or is it recuperating, and hope discussion in the body politic will be richer.

You got to love the spectacle of the man and his fulminating and froth-laced arguments and his favourite reference to women from Dotito (another one from that place is a candidate for his pity) and Chendambuya.

He convened a presser this week. Only it was disappointing to hear the man telling us about civil service workers stealing elections, strikes, which nobody is interested in, and this seemingly ill-fated “all-party convergence conference”.

Curiously, there is already a fight over the idea of the conference, which Morgan Tsvangirai’s faction claim as theirs.

And to think it is not such a brilliant, game-changing idea! Anyway, this is the opposition that fate has dealt us. (It was the complaint of Christopher Dell, too).

He may have attempted to crawl back to the limelight but clearly, Biti does not have the bite.

Poor Morgan

Spare a thought, and prayer, for poor Morgan Tsvangirai. We hear there are already moves to dislodge him from the party by way of an extraordinary congress.

This is happening less than three months after the congress last October that was occasioned by the rift that gave us MDC Renewal.

It is said structures in Harare and other provinces have been actively discussing the possibility, nay, desirability, of such a development.

Tsvangirai is said to have read the riot act on the mutineers, threatening to wield the axe.

He also banned discussions on social media. Poor Morgan, why won’t people give the man from Buhera some rest?

Besides, it is his only job, lacking as he does any qualifications for gainful employment.

Long Rope

We continue to follow the drama surrounding former zanu-pf secretary for Administration Didymus Mutasa.

Well, it seems he is unable to shut his mouth and has been giving interviews to the private media showing defiance over his infamous Press statement a few weeks ago.

This week the party’s Politburo tasked a disciplinary committee to deal with him as soon as possible, which was clearly a clever, legal move.

Didymus, through his spokesperson (we didn’t know this one), said the move was absurd.

Gumbo told NewsDay that Mutasa’s “position is very clear that he doesn’t recognise the congress because it was done illegally and there is little they can do. That will remain his position until things are rectified.”

Then Mutasa was talking to his favourite mouthpiece, Daily News, and “contemptuously dismissed allegations that he stole critical documents from zanu-pf, describing such claims as ‘unadulterated nonsense’.”

The newspaper cheers him on and hails him as “defiant” and “strong-headed”. Thanks to Daily News, we now know Nyati has a wry sense of humour.

Confronted on the issue of the alleged pilferage, Mutasa shot back, “Which papers are they talking about? Newspapers, memoranda, waste paper or toilet paper? It is not clear what it is they say I stole.”

Unbeknown to Nyati, he may be tying himself with his long rope!

Lastly, speaking of the paper and its insults against the “State media”, we take to heart the counsel by Professor Jonathan Moyo at an editors’ meeting last week that there is really no need to be calling each other names as newspapers and even inventing new terms to “diss” each other.

On a purely journalistic-academic level, we regret to note that they have well and truly cheapened the idea of front page editorials.