Let’s start by getting our terminology straight.

Monopoly: One seller, many buyers.

At one stage, Microsoft, with its operating system, had a virtual monopoly. 

Monopsony: One buyer, many sellers.

Until 2012, it was illegal for wheat and barley farmers in much of Canada to sell their crops to any entity other than the monopsony Canadian Wheat Board.

Potemkin Village: Potemkin, the favourite lover of Russian Empress Catherine II, is said to have had a collection of fake, portable villages that he would erect along the river bank as the Princess travelled in her royal barge in the evening. For effect, he would also have camp fires.   Behind the elaborate façade was desolation and starving peasantry.

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In the first part of this 10 part series, we examined how Mugabe, owing to a referendum which did not go as per his plans, played the race and land card and effectively killed the engine of his country’s prosperity.  In this second part, we see how he continues to go down the path to national destruction since he has initiated it.

 

Step 2: Hide the truth

The state run monopsony, Grain Marketing Board , is a mystery to most Zimbabweans. The warehouses are guarded much like military installations and many foreign journalists have been expelled when they got too close to the truth regarding GMB. Local correspondents have been arrested when their pieces were considered ‘national security breaches’.

The GMB’s early days were very different. The UN’s World Food Programme {WFP} only had a procurement desk in the capital, Harare, staffed by 5 or 6 people who would channel the ample harvests stored in the GMB’s warehouses tofeed the rest of the continent. At the height of the Ethiopian famine, 20% of Ethiopia’s population depended on Zimbabwe’s harvest to survive.

The WFP now has hundreds of aid workers scattered across the country todistribute food locally. Fully 50% of the country’s citizens now count on WFP’s food—food that is grown in Canada, China and India—to survive. Mugabe does not even need to feed his own people.  The outlook is bleak since agriculture output has fallen sharply over the recent past and so more mouths will have to be fed by donor nations’ largesse.

The GMB has 80 warehouses which, according to the photos on its website, have grain sacks stacked from the floor to the ceiling 32’ (10 metres) above. Looking closely at the graphics representing the warehouse stock on hand, one notices that it is the one photograph reproduced multiple times. The web page that should direct brokers to procure container-loads of grain is now selling 500 g packs of potato chips and 500 g packs of rice.   Internet access is not a priority for most Zimbabweans and so they are unaware of the true situation. However, the farmers who sell to the GMB, and expect payment for their produce know better. They have stopped selling to the GMB since, in their opinion, it is bankrupt and cannot pay for their appropriations. Crops that are not mandated to be sold to the GMB are being favoured by farmers since they are assured of some payment from buyers.

 

Some years ago, when the situation was quite dire, Mugabe delivered a 20-page ‘international appeal’ which was prefaced by the following, “Land seizure was conducted to economically empower the poor and we criticise the donor community for their skepticism toward our pro-poor policies”. In this appeal, the blame for the food shortages was placed squarely on the shoulders of everyone except the engineer of the shortage, Mugabe. Using a cue from Potemkin, famous for his Potemkin Village {a fake village built only to impress}, Mugabe embellishes the data regarding the harvest of his country at every opportunity so that the donor community diverts its attention to other failed states in more need, such as Syria, DRC and Afghanistan. Widespread starvation is now almost inevitable owing to poor rains and the on-going plunder of the treasury.

It is almost certain that the citizenry will not rise up since Mugabe has a formidable mechanism in place to crush dissent and this is his third step towards destroying a nation which will be discussed in the next instalment.