On Wednesday evening, a friend sent me a screenshot of the Zimbabwe Energy Regulatory Authority (ZERA) statement announcing the new fuel prices. This was the second surge of fuel prices in two weeks. The announcement jolted those Zimbabweans fortunate enough to be online into yet another frenzy of posts, outrage and debate.
When I casually dismissed it as a sick joke, my friend forwarded links from credible news sources, accompanied by a heavily frustrated voice note: ‘Ah manje lapha mfowethu iyafika ku 3 dollars, vele by the year end iyabisiku 3 dollars 50 at least. Ah lababantu laba vele angazi ukuthi bacabanga njani. Ah kubuhlungu kakhulu Mpofu, kubuhlungu mpela, uyazi it’s like omunye muntu vele kabamkhumbuleli.
It’s like they delight and they enjoy ukubona ama masses and everybody else suffering, you know. And they always are good at shifting the blame, phela those guys can blame anything and everybody else, except themselves… So lanxa bebhala okuyi communique kwabo lokhuya bakubeka sengathi it was inevitable ukuthi bakhweze and ekukhwezeni kwabo bakhwezela ukuthi kuncedise abantu. And yet they are making lives very difficult for people ….
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They are so insensitive; they just don’t care! ‘ Despite a long life under ZANU-PF rule, I still found myself, somehow, believing that this was possibly a hoax, perhaps some kind of misinformation, a fake post that ZERA would soon disown. Surely fuel could not simply jump beyond US$2 overnight.
Only days earlier, on the day the United States-Israel bombardment of Iran began, I had told a friend who is based in Abu Dhabi that if the conflict dragged on, fuel prices in Zimbabwe could hit US$2 by year-end. I don’t recall his exact response. We both felt like laughing at that thought.
I was probably expressing a distant concern about the global and local implications of the war, certainly not an imminent reality. I still cannot believe how far I was behind ZANU-PF’s thinking. I studied the ZERA statement more carefully.
It assured the public that the government was monitoring ‘the security of supply of petroleum products in the market’. I am not sure what that meant, but the justification followed immediately, couched in concerns for the fears of worried ‘stakeholders’. The country had ‘more than three months’ supply of petroleum products, ZERA assured the worried public.
The justification intensified, with a hint of care: due to piling ‘cost pressures’ (not important enough to explain to the public), it had become necessary ‘that prices be reviewed for two weeks’ in order ‘to avoid fuel shortages and arbitrage’. In short, the government imposed astronomical price hikes to prevent shortages, while simultaneously assuring the nation that it had sufficient reserves. The framing was even weirder.
What did the two weeks mean? Zimbabweans, it seemed, were expected to draw some comfort from the idea that the pain might be relieved. Obviously, if we go by the previous two weeks’ experience, the price cannot come down.
As my friend aptly explained in his voice note, the price hike was an act of love, a caring government looking out for the interests of its citizens and shielding them from an even more dire situation. This is the most unbearable aspect of many decisions taken by ZANU-PF for as long as we can remember. The most inconsiderate decisions are presented as acts of benevolence, even when they are clearly more burdens on citizens who are already struggling from other bad policies and decisions.
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