Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube has just brewed a shocker. The charismatic Minister has just announced through the Ministry Of Information, Publicity and Broadcasting that every civil servant will have a deduction of 2.5% on their salaries to fund cheaper groceries for soldiers.
The announcement come as a surprise to citizens as they feel, and as a humiliation to other civil servants who feel undervalued by the government treasurer.
The questions on many lips is: Why did the Minister have to announce it? Why not just find resources somewhere without deducting from underpaid civil servants?
The Minister is believed to be averting an uprising from members of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces, whom if unsatisfied, can overthrow a government as they did on November 15, 2017.
The soldiers remain the stockholders of Zimbabwe as they are known to be the force behind any President who has governed Zimbabwe since independence.
During 2008, the Reserve Bank Governor Gideon Gono confessed that he kept on printing money to avert a coup that was about to unfold. His intention was to keep the army happy. Failure to print money was likely to result in instability in the army. During the same year junior members of the army looted shops inn Harare.
Former Zanu PF MP Jonathan Moyo weighed on the latest development: “You better be wrong about this. If you’re not, then disaster is looming. Mnangagwa should forget about feeding the army by levying a military garrison tax on poor urban victims of army brutality, who themselves are facing starvation in an economy collapsed by his corrupt cartels!” He posted on Twitter.
The Zimbabwe Defence Forces are not a popular institution in Zimbabwe as they are known for cracking down protests with a heavy hand, meddling in politics and looting natural resources especially diamonds.