EDITORIAL COMMENT: To be used or not to be used is the question

PICTURE this, you are one of thousands of ordinary people spending precious hours in queues trying to withdraw money from banks and being turned away by tellers who claim there is no cash to dispense. You need the cash to meet pressing needs, particularly as the summer cropping and festive seasons are upon us. And just like many urbanites, you need to commute and commuter omnibuses do not take plastic money and you pray for the day you will be able to saunter into a banking hall to withdraw money at will as the prevailing situation has made your life a daily grind.

Government is working to ameliorate your situation and then you have some foreign-based or foreign-funded individuals — who do not share your misery — try to convince you to reject bond notes to abet their political cause predicated on protest votes.

Do you listen or ignore?

To be used or not to be used is the question.

We do not see how any sane person would oppose measures designed to ease the life of the ordinary person, unless that person has a serious ulterior motive.

It is not a secret that the shortage of cash is due to serious externalisation of the much sought-after US dollar which is why Government came up with the idea of bond notes pegged 1:1 with the US dollar, but solely for domestic use.

We all know how and when the rain began beating us. It was when some opposition politicians grovelled for ruinous economic sanctions that are estimated to have shrunk the economy by a factor of over 40 percent in addition to costing the nation over $42 billion in revenue since the turn of the millennium.

While corruption, manifest in deplorable activities like the externalisation of foreign currency among other things, contributed to the deleterious effects of the sanctions, the role of a duplicitous opposition cannot be understated.

The same characters are at it again trying to rally the ordinary person to cut his nose to spite his face by rejecting bond notes in favour of the disappearing US dollar.

We pick two cases to illustrate the extent of the hypocrisy and show why all rational people should ignore the confusionists.

The first case involves one Trevor Ncube, boss of the Alpha Media Group whose papers have been flighting bond note awareness adverts, but who has been posting hypocritical messages on his Twitter handle urging people to reject bond notes!

Yesterday, Trevor Ncube wrote; ‘‘#BondNotes are not solution to Zimbabwe’s economic crisis. Join citizens on Friday to say no #NoToBondNotes/corruption. #ThisFlag #Tajamuka.’’

In other words, Trevor Ncube has no problem receiving and “eating” money from bond notes advertisements, but wants people to reject the same.

What rank hypocrisy!

The second case involves the so-called #ThisFlag, we all know where Evan Mawarire is and it doesn’t need a rocket scientist to know that he has no problem transacting in his US base and neither are his pockets empty given the globe-trotting he has been doing after donors fell for his crocodile tears after he failed in his fatherly duties.

Mawarire’s shoes at home have been filled by lawyer Fadzayi Mahere whom, we are sure cannot tell a bank queue from a commuter equivalent because hers is a privileged existence devoid of the problems that confront the common man they are trying to rally into the street today.

To this end we urge progressive Zimbabweans to ignore the confusionists and leave them to justify whatever donor funds they may have received, funds that shield them from the prevailing cash crunch.

It is said if a man fools me once, shame on him, but if he fools me twice, shame on me.

Evan Mawarire fooled you once.

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