Luke-ing the Beast in the Eye: The CIO burnt down Mbare Musika

Monday , 14 October 2024

By Luke Batsirai Tamborinyoka

There is a Shona proverb that states that there might be no reason to continue to look for an old woman when a hyena has been found vomiting strands of grey hair. Put simply, the phrase means there is no reason to scour for the truth when the facts for what happened so evidently speak for themselves.

As Zimbabweans grapple with the identity of the culprits and the motive of the arson attack on the Mbare Musika market, the nerve centre of the country’s informal economic activity, the tell-tale signs are obvious on who committed this heinous and heartless act that has disrupted thousands of livelihoods.

The Mbare market, founded in 1907, is the heart-throb of the nation’s informal trade where millions of different transactions take place every day. The bustling and thriving Mbare market was also the haven and bastion of illegal foreign exchange, and the arson attack came at a time the regime is battling to shore up its struggling currency that continues to alarmingly plunge downwards against other currencies.

Only a fortnight ago, the Central Bank was forced to devalue what it calls a gold-backed currency by over 40% against the US dollar, indicating the last ditch effort to shore up a troubled currency and to stabilise the country’s volatile economy.

Dear reader, kindly take note of the nuances, subtle and not-so-subtle, in the following sequence of events:

The day is Tuesday, 8 October 2024. President Emmerson Mnangagwa chairs a Cabinet meeting and conveniently flies away to far-flung Bulawayo to open the 27th edition of Mine Entra.

In the afternoon of the same Tuesday, just hours before the Mbare market was burnt and razed to ashes, government had, in a post-Cabinet press conference, said basic goods were being pushed from the formal sector to thriving markets in the informal sector, to which Mbare happens to be the biggest such informal haven of goods and services.

In the post-Cabinet briefing, the government, through its Minister of Information Jenfan Muswere, loudly called out informal markets such as Mbare as illegal havens in the unofficial trade of both basic goods and foreign currency, making it difficult for government to converge the parallel and official exchange rate.

There were no shortages yet of basic shortages but government warned of dire challenges ahead if basic goods continued to be pushed into the informal sector where they fetched higher prices.

Dear reader, kindly note that while Mbare was not mentioned by name, the message was clear.

It also remains fact that it is government that had the biggest, motive to intervene in a hostile way in Mbare to tame what it publicly regarded as a wayward informal sector, obviously led by Mbare, the country’s biggest informal market of foreign currency, basic goods and services.

Moreover, there are leaked audio chats on the market of Zanu PF grassroots leaders confirming a recent meeting of Zanu PF and government leaders discussing the bustling illegal foreign currency exchange market in Mbare, which they believed was playing a major role in undermining the ZIG.

Mbare was officially recognised as a hotspot of these illegal informal activities and the subsequent burning of the country’s biggest informal market was obviously a direct government response to stop the illegal activities under the guise of “defending the ZIG.”

So on the day it was burnt and razed to the ground, , government had called out the informal markets, led by Mbare, as the biggest threat to the economy.

The following morning on the Wednesday, Zimbabweans woke up to the sad news that Mbare was on fire.

Mnangagwa, a typical securocrat himself, was already making his way to Bulawayo to officially open the Mine Entra, conveniently far-away from the raging fires, most likely ignited at his directive.

Curiously, as everyone grappled with the tragic event at the country’s biggest informal market, George Charamba, Mnangagwa’s spokesperson, was not even mournful about the arson in Mbare.

The President’s spokesperson, reputed to be a trained spy himself, was overly gleeful in his response.

Without sparing any second for tears probably because everything had been pre-planned, Charamba immediately pronounced the Mbare fire neither as a tragedy nor a threat.

Instead, he curiously and pointedly pronounced it as an opportunity to reorganise Mbare and make government benefit from the tax revenue streams accruing from a restructured informal market.

For many Zimbabweans, Charamba, by din’t of his gleeful deportment , let the cat out of the bag that government was the hyena that had devoured the grey-haired octogenarian.

He was so quick in his celebratory announcement of the way forward.

In the reorganised Mbare market, Charamba tellingly even had a role for what most believe to be the perpetrators of the arson.

He said authorities should now use the military to build new condominiums around the market pending the demolition of the Matapi flats to pave way for a new, decent housing programme.

Dear reader, kindly take note that Charamba might have been making sense, but his proposed roadmap read more like the motivational verbale from the Joint Operations Command that had recommended and executed this high profile pyro-task.

Of course, there were crocodile tears from Monica Mutsvangwa , the Minister for Women’s Affairs, Community, Small and Medium Enterprises Development who said her ministry was engaging other Government departments and agencies as well as development partners to come up with a comprehensive response plan.

But the Presidency had already let the cat out of the bag by semiologically communicating that the arson was pre-planned.

And the other unrelated cruel irony is that the name Mbare non-verbally communicates fire. For Mbare is a Shoma word that refers to scotch-marks caused by sitting prolonged hours by the fireside.

But on a more serious note, the sequence of events leading to the Mbare blaze and its aftermath clearly expose the high likelihood of the government’s hand in exterminating the Mbare Musika informal market which the State believed was playing a big role in undermining the ZIG and resultantly the country’s precarious economy.

Picture this: A village head chairs a village meeting on a Tuesday morning in which the attendees sonorously accuse an old man called Mr Mbare of causing angst across the households through his unmitigated acts of wizardry and witchcraft.

That very night, after the village head, an experienced arsonist himself, has conveniently flown to a faraway village called Bulawayo for some activity, Mbare’s house coincidentally suffers an arson attack and the following morning, Mr Mbare’s charred remains are found in the flotsam and burnt rubble at his razed compound.

Barely hours after the tragedy, the town crier, the village head’s spokesperson, makes a celebratory announcement that Mr Mbare’s death is an opportunity for the village to start afresh, and even lays out detailed plans on how Mbare’s estate would be disposed and what the village would do on the very ground of Mbare’s razed homestead.

Given such a background, it does not need rocket science to identify the instigator of the incendiary fires that have brought Mr Mbare to his untimely demise.

This is exactly what happened in the case of the Mbare fire that destroyed millions of dollars worth of uninsured goods and property.

Intelligence organisations the world over have been known to use arson attacks in their offensive and counter-offensive operations both locally and externally; ostensibly to cow down populations or to sabotage strategic infrastructure.

Pyro-terrorism is indeed a weapon of choice for both terrorists and intelligence organisations.

Of course, in Zimbabwe, the difference between our own intelligence outfit, the CIO, and any terrorist organisation, is only academic.

But, as I stated earlier, intelligence organisations have been known to use arson to achieve their ends, particularly the Russian Intelligence.

The Russian intelligence stands accused of having orchestrated the arson attacks on high-speed rail routes to Paris ahead of the recent Olympic Games.

In April 2024, they were also accused of using arson attacks to burn down Ukraine-linked business interests in London.

The Russian Intelligence, which is close to Zimbabwe’s intelligence services, have largely been accused of orchestrating arson attacks in various NATO members’ capitals, including in Berlin, Germany, where they reportedly burnt down a metal factory belonging to Defence equipment manufacturer Diehl all in an attempt to disrupt shipments of critical arms and ammunition to Ukraine.

Conversely, NATO members sympathetic to Ukraine have also been known to use the same arson attacks on strategic Russian military infrastructure.

My point, dear reader, is that the CIO bombed Mbare in pursuance of the government narrative that the country’s biggest informal market was undermining ZIG and the country’s economy.

Moreover, a bombed Mbare would decongest the biggest informal market in Zimbabwe, presumed to be a groundswell and a hotbed of opposition support.

Crowded areas are always a threat to paranoid regimes such as Zanu PF as such areas would make it easy to mobilise an insurrection in the event of an economic meltdown in the country.

Many residents in Mbare reported to have heard a loud explosion before the fire broke out, which points to the possibility of huge military artillery having been used to set off the fire.

Only the State is the custodian of such big artillery!

The State has done so before in Zimbabwe, using pyro-terrorism to achieve its wicked ends.

I was a senior reporter at The Daily News when high explosives bombed the newspaper’s printing press to smithereens during the night of 28 January 2001. Tellingly, the paper was bombed just 24 hours after the then Information Minister Jonathan Moyo had said it was only a matter of time before the government put a stop to what he called “the madness” at the Daily News.

This was just before another bomb blast took place directly below the office of our then editor-in-chief, Geoffrey Nyarota.

To date, no one has been arrested for these arson attacks on the Daily News printing press and the editor’s office that happened 23 years ago.

And yet again, and in spite of the assurances of on-going investigations by the police on the Mbare arson attack, I can tell you in advance that no one is going to be arrested simply because the State itself is responsible for the fire attack on the country’s biggest informal market!

Conclusion : Stitching the anus to cure diarrhoea

In conclusion, dear reader, everything points to the State being responsible for burning down Mbare.

But then government is being illogical by thinking that it can solve Zimbabwe’s currency and economic challenges by bombing down the country’s informal markets without addressing the underlying fundamentals that have caused this rot.

Bombing down Mbare Musika to salvage a wobbly, ailing currency is akin to stitching the anus in order to cure diarrhoea.

Government must solve the problem not the symptoms.

As Shona wisdom would say: Wongorora chikonzero chaita musoro uteme (address the root cause).

Indeed, one does not address the symptoms if they want to seek an enduring solution to a problem. And the solution in this case is political.

Indeed, you don’t kill poor people to eradicate poverty, or burn down the underclothes of a whore in the vain hope that you will end prostitution that way.

On the whole, dear reader, whichever way you look at it, it is very clear that the State is responsible for the Mbare arson attack.

And the stubborn facts irrefutably vindicate that conclusion.

Luke Tamborinyoka is a citizen from Domboshava. He is a journalist and a political scientist by profession. You can interact with him on his Facebook page or via the twitter handle @ luke_tambo.

The Zim Bulletin