SW Radio Africa news - The Independent Voice of Zimbabwe
Gideon Gono’s stewardship of the country’s Treasury has been the worst in the country’s history, according to economist Vince Musewe.
Gono’s 10-year tenure of the Reserve Bank constitutionally ended on Saturday and, in his farewell speech, he seconded his two deputies, Charity Dhliwayo and Khupukile Mlambo, to take over “until a substantive candidate is found”.
Gono further sought to justify his destructive actions while heading the central bank by saying he used “extraordinary measures to tackle extraordinary economic circumstances.”
In July ZANU PF and President Robert Mugabe openly praised Gono for doing a sterling job in “reviving the economy”, but there will be many within political and economic circles who will remember Gono for the terrible governor that he has been – as his kamikaze monetary policies condemned the nation to unprecedented suffering.
As a party appointee and critical cog in the ZANU PF administration, Gono’s contribution to the total ruination of the country’s economy is well-documented.
“I think he is the governor who has done the most damage to this economy: his policies and his work with Mugabe’s ZANU PF, particularly around 2007-2008.
“This man (Gono) destroyed the Zimbabwean economy and I am shocked to hear some people saying that he was a good guy. This is a man who came in and decimated indigenous banks, hounding them for allegedly externalising foreign currency,” Musewe said.
Musewe blamed Gono for introducing and funding the farm mechanisation programme from RBZ coffers, a project also aimed at winning back a disillusioned rural population.
“Now the country, read ordinary poor Zimbabweans, sits with a debt of $1.3 billion created by Gono when he raided foreign currency accounts belonging to non-governmental organisations and other individuals,” he added.
Gono’s legacy includes the 100 trillion dollar note
Godwin Phiri, leader of Bulawayo-based youth group intsha.com, said people should not be fooled by Gono, who often referred to himself as the people’s governor.
“During his tenure, Gono was responsible for the unprecedented hyperinflationary levels ever recorded in any country, when he printed truckloads of worthless Zimdollars.
“As success stories go, Gono was successful as far as the ZANU PF project and mandate was concerned, but he was a total disaster for the country and ordinary Zimbabweans.
“It is thanks to Gono that Zimbabweans learned of the bearer and agro cheques and all sorts of currencies. Even as he steps down, the country has no currency of its own,” Phiri added.
Gono is the governor who presided over world-record inflation, which reached a whopping 500 billion percent in 2008. Until the dollarisation of the economy in 2009, Gono’s answer to the galloping inflation was to just lop off the zeros.
Shocked by Gono’s strategies then, MDC-T’s Tendai Biti, then Finance Minister described the former governor as “an economic saboteur, terrorist and number one Al-Qaeda who deserves to be shot by a firing squad.”
Commenting on Gono’s departure one Daily News reader, going by the name of Boorangoma, accused the former governor of crafting economic programmes aimed at aiding ZANU PF to loot national resources.
Boorangoma wrote: “Go away Gono. You are a criminal who destroyed the country for personal benefit. Your stupid programs like BACCOSSI just helped you to loot national resources. How come that when the country’s fortunes were plummeting that’s when your personal wealth increased? As things stabilised, with the coming in of MDC, your personal empire started crumbling. Isn’t it ironic?”
In August, British newspaper the Daily Telegraph revealed how Gono accepted £104,000, paid into the accounts of his children, from Ravenscourt Corporation which sold fuel to the Mugabe regime in violation of western-imposed restrictive economic measures.
“Gono, who blames ‘illegal sanctions’ imposed by the West for the country’s economic woes, became the crucial deal-maker charged with ensuring the survival of Mugabe’s regime, negotiating with private companies to raise funds for vital imports.
“One such company was Ravenscourt Corporation, which sold 49 million litres of fuel – almost 5% of Zimbabwe’s annual fuel consumption – to the Reserve Bank as part of a joint venture in 2006 and 2007,” the paper said.
Gono is also said to have personally raised thousands of US dollars to fund Grace Mugabe’s foreign shopping sprees, when he was chief executive of one of the country’s largest commercial banks.