Angry motorist force Station selling fuel in US$ only to close – flood of anger against hardship will be unstoppable

"Motorists forced a fuel service station to close in Waterfalls after unearthing corruption where fuel was being selectively sold in US dollars only," reported Bulawayo 24.

"The agitated motorists said the service station was even refusing to accept its own fuel coupons further enraging a multitude of motorists in possession of the coupons."

I was not surprised to read that story. Indeed, I expect such stories and worse to become the common place stories.

There is only so much that even the most subservient and cowed people can take before they stand up and say enough is enough.

In 1980, Zimbabweans were a very proud people full of hope and confidence in a free, just, prosperous and bright Zimbabwe. The country had a robust economy second only to that of South Africa in sub-Sahara Africa. Our agricultural sector was one of the best in the world; producing quality tobacco and was rightly proud to be the breadbasket of the region. All that is now gone.

38 years of criminal waste of human and material resources through gross mismanagement and rampant corruption by this Zanu-PF regime has destroyed the country's economy. For decades now, the country has relied on imported food aid, we are so impoverished we cannot even pay for the food.

We live in the day and age where human ingenuity has turn deserts from a sea of sand into a sea of wheat fields and orchards. And yet we, in Zimbabwe, are now starving in a country that is, for all practical purposes, the Garden of Eden. Such is the damning testimonial to the sheer incompetence of Zanu-PF leadership.

It is not that the people were not aware that Zanu-PF was destroying the nation's economy; that they were. True, it took most Zimbabweans nearly 20 years to acknowledge that Robert Mugabe and his Zanu-PF friends, the liberation war heroes and heroines, were not just incompetent and corrupt but, worst of all, were vote rigging and murderous thugs.

Mugabe and company has used brute force to create and retain the de facto one party, Zanu-PF, dictatorship that has ruled the country since independence in 1980. The party has then used its carte blanche dictatorial powers to deny the people a meaningful vote and stay in power now 38 years and still counting.

President Mnangagwa blatantly rigged last July's elections to extend Zanu-PF's ruinous rule. Ever since the election, the economic meltdown has got worse and not better.

The economic situation in Zimbabwe today is dire. Unemployment has soared to dizzying height of 90%. Basic services such as supply of clean water, education and health care have all but collapsed. Even the country's referral hospitals have often cancelled routine operations because the hospital did not have something as  basic pain killers. There is no way this tragic situation can continue without the people venting their anger.

Junior doctors have been on strike since 1 st December 2018 to protest their slave wages and inhuman conditions in the hospitals and clinics. Teachers are too threaten to go on strike for the same reasons. Now we hear ordinary members of the public are forcing a petrol station to close because they cannot stomach the hardships and abuse they are being subjected to.

It takes the flooding of individual and insignificant streams and tributaries to flood the great Zambezi River. The striking junior doctors, teachers and now angry motorists; these are all the tell-tale signs of the growing anger and frustration of the impoverished Zimbabweans. The nation must act now to easy the economic meltdown before flood becomes too big not even the dam wall can stop it.

Zimbabwe's economic problems are neither complex nor insurmountable. Indeed there are many other nations whose starting off position was far worse than that Zimbabwe is in today. What Zimbabwe needs desperately are leaders with some common sense to replace the braindead who have ruled the country these last four decades. And all we need to do to get our quality leaders is implement the democratic reforms to end the dictatorship that has stifled public debate and democratic competition.

The vote rigging and thus illegitimate Zanu-PF regime must be forced to step down to allow the nation the time and space to appoint an interim administration to implement the reforms.

The country's worsening economic meltdown is forcing Zimbabweans to lose their fear of the murderous Zanu-PF thugs and to demand that the regime pay them a living wage, end the fuel shortages, etc. As the economic meltdown gets worse the people's demands will get louder and more resolute.

It is only a matter of time before the people realise that this Mnangagwa regime has no clue what to do to end the economic meltdown and that it is just playing for time to remain in power till 2023 so it can rig that year's elections too. The prospect of the economic chaos continuing for another year is daunting enough the reality of more of the same chaos for yet another five years beyond 2023 is unthinkable. That reality will force junior doctors, teachers and the rest of the population to unite and demand that Zanu-PF steps down with one coherent voice.   

Zimbabwe's economic recovery will only start with the dismantling of the Zanu-PF dictatorship, with the regime being forced to step down!