The Sunday Mail
Until recently, inflation was considered a disease endemic to a few countries such as Zimbabwe, but of late it has turned out to be the new pandemic that has enveloped the world.
Consumers anywhere and everywhere cannot walk down supermarket aisles without either risking a panic attack or heart attack.
Prices have gone absolutely bonkers and haywire, and all because of a war in Ukraine that could have been avoided had Uncle Sam (America) had not taken the thoroughly foolish, naive and suicidal risk of cornering the Russian Bear.
The fallout from the conflict in Ukraine —which is causing grain, wheat, sunflower, oil, gas and fertiliser shortages, among others — is turning the world upside down and spawning a concomitant global economic, political and social crisis that was previously unimaginable in both scale, reach and geography.
Bishop Lazi is praying that this conflict does not escalate into a full-blown apocalyptic World War. In mighty America, which prides itself as the biggest and strongest economy in the world, the cost of everything, from housing, fuel, food, electricity, has been shooting through the roof.
If America’s international news agency Associated Press (AP) is to be believed, deciding whether or not to get a haircut is now akin to choosing between living and surviving?
Apparently, most Americans are foregoing discretionary spending on haircuts and household goods just to be able to buy food. Kikikiki.
It is that bad!
Inflation is now the highest it has ever been in 40 years and might actually get worse, as oil prices continue to be volatile, thanks to Washington and its allies’ ill-thought attempts to sanction Russia’s oil and gas.
The imbroglio surrounding continued galloping fuel prices, which are making Americans increasingly restive, recently led to an ignominious, but symbolically telling, public spat between President Joe Biden and his billionaire countrymen Jeff Bizos.
There is definitely trouble in paradise.
On July 2, Biden tweeted: “My message to the companies running gas stations and setting prices at the pump is simple: this is a time of war and global peril. Bring down the price you are charging at the pump to reflect the cost you are paying for the product. And do it now.”
However, Bizos retorted: “Ouch! Inflation is far too important a problem for the White House to keep making statements like this. It’s either straight ahead misdirection or a deep misunderstanding of basic market dynamics.”
Faced with the real prospect of a precipitous decline in living standards, especially at a time when its major adversaries China and Russia are on the rise, America — invariably the chief instigator of global crises — has now been forced into an invidious position where it has to revise its foreign policy through grovelling for oil from Saudi Arabia, which it recently pissed off; seeking rapprochement with Venezuela, whose administration it formerly didn’t recognise and wanted to jettison; and making a shameless about-turn on Trump-era tariffs on Chinese goods to cool inflation.
How desperate! How the mighty have fallen!
They have been hoist by their own petard.
Wretched fortunes
The fortunes of their kith and kin across the pond in the UK are equally wretched.
Well, according to Assosia, a UK research and quality assurance think-tank, prices on more than 22 000 products offered by the biggest grocers on the cold island have risen over the past year. In fact, some consumers have of late been throwing a fit over a 35 percent rise in Heinz Tomato Ketchup. Kikikiki.
It shows the extent to which prices are soaring and incomes declining, especially where household incomes are understood to be on their longest downward trend since records began in 1955.
Overall, some experts expect the average UK grocery bill to rise by US$438 or £380.
John Allen, the chairperson of Tesco, UK biggest retailer, opines Britain is probably hurtling towards “real food poverty for the first time in a generation”.
But nothing quite illustrates a crisis more than the spectacle of politicians who, in the middle of an unprecedented cost-of-living crisis, have the luxury and nerve to discuss the indiscretions of a handsy Conservative Party member, Chris Pincher, who groped two men in a London pub after having one too many of the firewaters.
As fate would have it, the scandal effectively ended Boris Johnson’s eccentric premiership, but not the UK’s current woes.
Ground Zero
But, as Bishop Lazarus said before, ground zero of the chaos that presently engulfs the world has to be Sri Lanka, where a series of crises — from the coronavirus pandemic to the ongoing conflict in Eastern Europe – have combined to create a perfect storm that has sent the island nation of 22 million people in South Asia into a tailspin.
The country has all but collapsed.
Shelves are empty, fuel stations are dry and power supplies have become epileptic.
On July 3, authorities had to extend school closures for more than a week due to nationwide fuel shortages.
Well, it gets worse.
The next shipment of petrol is only expected on July 22, or on Friday next week.
Despite the resignation of Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksaon May 9, civil unrest still continues.
While many Sri Lankans held out hope that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) might come to the rescue, it seems it might take a little bit longer — if at all — as the Washington-headquartered international financiers insist the country has put its gargantuan US$51 billion debt on a sustainable path.
Phew! This is the crisis the world currently finds itself.
Be it in Europe, where strong economies like Germany and France are feeling the strain and most economies are on the brink of recession, or in Africa, where disruptions in supplies of food and critical inputs such as fertilisers might lead to growing unease and discomfort, the whole world is in a state of flux.
All these are the preponderant consequences and results of war and conflict.
If you plant the wind, you certainly harvest a whirlwind, and if you plant the seeds of conflict, you are certain to reap blood, suffering and death.
We are in this mess because of Washington’s self-serving and aggressive global geopolitical schemes against Russia in Eastern Europe.
Micah 2:1-5 tells us: “Woe to those who plan iniquity, to those who plot evil on their beds! At morning’s light they carry it out because it is in their power to do it.
They covet fields and seize them, and houses, and take them. They defraud people of their homes, they rob them of their inheritance. Therefore, the Lord says: ‘I am planning disaster against this people, from which you cannot save yourselves. You will no longer walk proudly, for it will be a time of calamity. In that day people will ridicule you; they will taunt you with this mournful song: ‘We are utterly ruined; my people’s possession is divided up. He takes it from me! He assigns our fields to traitors.’ Therefore, you will have no one in the assembly of the Lord to divide the land by lot.”
Solid Foundation
Here in our teapot-shaped Republic, already encumbered by a brutal sanctions regime by the US and EU, we might have been in a worse off position if ED had not moved with haste to put the economy on an even kiln in 2018.
Reconfiguring the budget and current account from deficit positions to surpluses was a masterstroke that has given Zimbabwe the ability to absorb shocks of recent droughts, Cyclone Idai, the coronavirus pandemic and now the deleterious impact of the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
One fact that is rarely consistently noted but which the Bishop will continue to highlight ad infinitum is the ability of the new political administration to sustainably grow agricultural output to a level where food self-sufficiency is now in sight.
The 2,7 million maize harvest last year was quite remarkable and has managed to provide enough buffer to cover us to the next harvest despite the drought-affected output in the 2021/2022 season.
A record 75 000 hectares have been put under wheat this year, from which 383 000 tonnes of the cereal are expected, enough to insulate the country for 13 months.
But these are mere anecdotes of ED’s broader over-arching plan to put 350 000 hectares under irrigation within the next three seasons, guaranteeing food security for generations.
You might have seen last week’s launch of an outgrower irrigation scheme in Marondera, which is benefitting from the recently completed Muchekeranwa Dam, or the Marondera University of Agriculture, Science and Technology (MUAST) Agro-Industrial Park that is leveraging on state-of-the-art technologies. Such initiatives are being replicated countrywide. The future is really exciting.
The story of breath-taking progress against extraordinary odds has been the story of the Second Republic.
Tremendous progress being made in mining, especially in the gold sector, is there for everyone to see. We might haul a record 40 tonnes of the yellow metal this year after producing 16 tonnes in the January to June period, which is more than the annual output at any time during the subsistence of the GNU. Kikiki.
Agriculture and mining will develop Zimbabwe.It therefore comes as no surprise that New York-based Fitch Solutions actually believes Zimbabwe’s current account surplus will rise to 3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) this year from an estimated 2,4 percent in 2021 on account of high commodity prices such as gold and a recovering tourism sector.
When others see doom we see boom.
A temporarily volatile Zimdollar is a small price to pay for modern infrastructure that will be inherited by posterity.
A temporarily volatile Zimdollar is a small price to pay for sustainable household and national food security.
A temporarily volatile Zimdollar is also a small price to pay for durable industrialisation and modernisation.
We are currently bearing witness to the birth of Zimbabwe’s golden era, notwithstanding seemingly extraordinary odds.
Bishop out!
