Open letter to RBZ governor John Mangudya

File pic: John Mangudya

My dear brother,

As a passionate protagonist of the gold coins, I stay astutely alert to everything happening around them.

Nevertheless, readers of this column accosted me and dragged me from my resting place demanding a response to an International Monetary Fund (IMF) prescription for the country’s economic woes.

I want to thank and congratulate you and your boss the Finance minister Mthuli Ncube for defending the use of the gold coins during the visit by the IMF team headed by one Dhaneshwar Gura which was under our hospitality from December 1 to December 15, 2022.

Gura, whose name in Shona means “ to break,” certainly wants to break your resolve to heed the Turkish proverb: “No maer how far you have gone down the wrong road turn back ” which I propounded to you in previous articles.

He wants you back on the wrong road.

In their prescription for our economic situation, they listed a host of things which you are already doing and then advised you to “conclude” the issue of gold coins.

“Fund staff recommended accelerating the liberalisation of the foreign exchange market, including through the removal of restrictions on the exchange rate at which banks, authorised dealers and businesses transact; addressing the RBZ’s quasi-fiscal operations to mitigate liquidity pressures; maintaining an appropriately tight monetary policy stance to durably restore macroeconomic stability and ensure social stability; restoring the effectiveness of monetary policy, including through the use of appropriate interest bearing instruments to mop up liquidity and winding down the use of gold coins: and maintaining a prudential fiscal policy.”

 This rumbling prescription is a “copy and paste” job no doubt given to many unsuspecting client-states of the Breton-Woods institution.

The foreign exchange regime in Zimbabwe is by a country mile more liberalized than those in regional peers South Africa, Botswana, Zambia and Mozambique.

There would be no benefit to Zimbabwe of accelerating liberalisation any faster.

All the other recommendations in the statement have already been done as far back as the days of the previous governor Gideon Gono but to no avail.

This is well-known Keynesian textbook theory, which has repeatedly failed in Zimbabwe and has previously made you see demons.

The only problem needing urgent attention by the RBZ is the volatile exchange rate which has for many years been the target of speculators and agent provocateurs.

The real message hidden in the tail of the statement by Gura’s IMF team is that the country should abandon use of the gold coins.

This is tantamount to free advice from the devil in the company of false prophets.

Those who follow the work of the IMF around the world (remember the ESAP I and II programs which made the country suffer and yet yielded no result?) will know that the organisation has never succeeded in helping any developing country to solve its economic woes.

It is clear that the real work of the organisation is to keep the developing world - Zimbabwe in particular subservient to western hegemony and pressure to maintain the flow of cheap raw materials to the west as you grapple with economic solutions which do not work. Later on they will blame you for the failure of their prescriptions citing weak implementation on your part.

The IMF team is fully aware that the gold coins are the only solution to the stability of our currency which will spill over to all other areas. This is our unique challenge.

And they are not amused by the fact that it is a home grown solution which did not come from them.

The success of the gold coins as a fiscal and treasury tool will no doubt be replicated all across Africa and will free the continent from the yoke of these later-day imperial foot soldiers unleashed by the globalists.

The use of African resources to li the African economy is anathema to the western world and must therefore be discouraged at the infant stage hence the poisonous advice of Gura ’s team.

To you my brothers I say, hold on to your gold coins! You worked too hard to get to this point.

I would go on to advise continued and unlimited use of the gold coins, for as long as it takes, not only to achieve inflation reduction but to seize control of the exchange rate through special adaptations coupled with a gradual phasing out of the Casino Royale.

This is the solution needed to achieve stability. Everything else will fall into place after this.

As for the Casino Royale, its only function has been to provide a platform for the head-on collision between the US dollar and the local unit, a collision analogous to one between a loaded 30-tonne truck and a Mushikashika taxi.

After only a few months of use of the coins these are your own words: “In our books, the effect was very impactful.”

This is certainly something you never thought you would see.

Stay on the gold coin course and you will see much greater things.

 I can never part without whispering a saying in your ears: “Wisdom is judged by its children" – Jesus Christ. Luke 7:35

  •  Bart Star-James
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