Author: TSA Press

Mozambique has threatened Zimbabwe with sanctions, after repeatedly warning Harare against imposing trade sanctions on a variety of goods exported from Maputo including alcohol, according to a report in the Zimbabwe media.

Pindula News reported that Mozambique’s Minister of Trade and Commerce, Rajendra De Sousa allegedly told Zimbabwe President Emmerson Mnangagwa that the ban could be met with retaliation.

During a business seminar in Maputo, De Sousa told Mozambican industrialists that Zimbabwe had placed bottlenecks for trade between the neighbours in clear violation of the SADC Free Trade Protocol agreement.

The minister said that he told Mnangagwa that Mozambique could also close its border with Zimbabwe for three days which would complicate life for Harare.

A similar incident took place in 2017 with Malawi, after it too had banned several products being imported from Mozambique.

Mozambique closed its border with Malawi for several hours, after which numerous telephone calls were made and delegations sent to Maputo to resolve the impasse.

“Mozambique has this weapon, which is our geographical location. If they stick to the strategy of not using the law and using mechanisms, we will do the same,” De Sousa warned.

Mozambique is Zimbabwe’s closest gateway to the sea and key imports such as fuel, maize and wheat come through the port of Beira.

* Poor Rudy Giuliani complaining about how the $800K he’s already made this year simply isn’t enough. [Bloomberg]

* Drug dealer says she doesn’t care about harm to the public. [PBS]

* Trump’s efforts to shut down tax record subpoenas stymied by precedent. On the other hand, “precedent” is a legal concept that the current Supreme Court has more or less eradicated. [Law360]

* If you’re interested in a collection of bad takes on the latest Amy Wax controversy, this article has you covered with both Brian Leiter and John Banzhaf! [National Law Journal]

* Politicians are coming for Section 230 and it’s pretty clear they haven’t even bothered to read the existing language. [NY Times]

* White-collar work is slowing down. Something tells me this next recession is going to kick it into gear. [NY Law Journal]

* Robert Mueller’s most important testimony was less about Donald Trump and more about on-going Russian interference in elections. So obviously Mitch McConnell has smothered all legislation aimed at impeding the Russians. [Huffington Post]

Parliament Invites Public Written Comments on Three Bills:

(1) Money Laundering and Proceeds of Crime Amendment Bill

(2) Freedom of Information Bill

(3) Coroner’s Office Bill

Parliament has in separate public notices dated 23rd July invited the public to make comments on the above-mentioned Bills.  In each case the deadline for receipt of written submissions is Friday next week, 2nd August.

How to Submit Comments

The notices follow a standard form, setting out the reason for the invitations, addresses for submission of comments, and a contact person at Parliament for clarification of queries, as follows:

Section 141 of the Constitution of Zimbabwe provides that:

“Parliament must—

(a) facilitate public involvement in its legislative and other processes and in the processes of its committees;

(b) ensure that interested parties are consulted about Bills being considered by Parliament, unless such consultation is inappropriate or impracticable …”.

In compliance with this constitutional provision, and as part of public consultations meant to enhance participatory democracy, the Parliament of Zimbabwe is inviting comments on the … Bill, for consideration by the relevant Committee(s).

All comments must be submitted to the following e-mail addresses: [email protected] or[email protected]. Alternatively, written submission can be sent to: Parliament of Zimbabwe, Corner Third Street and Kwame Nkrumah, PO Box CY 298, Causeway, Harare. All submissions must be received on or before Friday 2nd August 2019.

Targeted public and stakeholder consultations on this very important Bill will be conducted in due course on dates to be advised.

For any clarification, you may get in touch with Mrs Luciah Nyawo, Assistant Clerk of Parliament on email [email protected]

Copies of the Bills are Available

The Bills are available on the Veritas website using the following hyperlinks:

Money Laundering and Proceeds of Crime Amendment Bill [link]

Freedom of Information Bill [link]

Coroner’s Office Bill [link]

Veritas makes every effort to ensure reliable information, but cannot take legal responsibility for information supplied.

Post published in: Business

Zimbabwe is faced with widespread hunger because the country lacks the hard currency needed to import basic food, and a new currency introduced in June has provided little relief.

This week a United Nations spokesman said the situation “was moving from a crisis to an emergency”.

In late June the finance minister Mthuli Ncube said the jumble of foreign money in use since 2009 would be replaced with domestic paper instead. “The British pound, United States dollar, South African rand, Botswana pula and any other foreign currency whatsoever shall no longer be legal tender alongside the Zimbabwe dollar in any transactions in Zimbabwe,” he said in a public statement.

The country had abandoned the Zimbabwe dollar, its currency since 1980 after hyperinflation reached 500 billion per cent by 2008. At the time, the government was desperately trying to print its way out of a financial crisis, churning out money that quickly became valueless as soon as it hit the streets.

Now, a new Zimbabwe dollar is being put out but it has not solved an essential problem: the lack of hard currency such as the US dollar that is needed to pay for vital imports such as food. Consequently, aid agencies warned in July of impending starvation, with up to a third of all households now facing a food crisis, as local suppliers run out of hard currency to pay for imports.

The World Food Program (WFP) says that up to 4.7 million people could be starving by the end of this year.

“Given the scale and scope of the food insecurity in Zimbabwe the WFP is planning to scale up to assist over two million people,” WFP spokesperson Herve Verhoosel said. “Resources must now be mobilised.”

One of the largest food producers, Lobel’s Bakery said at the beginning of July that it would close its bakeries in Bulawayo and Harare indefinitely, cutting production in half. Lobel’s said the closures were unavoidable because local flour mills were unable to supply enough flour to bake bread.

In the cities, fuel queues of up to 2 kilometres are being reported, as supplies of petrol and diesel run short because retailers have limited access to dollars, euros and rands. For motorists the misery of queuing is compounded by thieves who strip parts from drivers’ cars left overnight in fuel lines to make sure they can fill up the next day.

Meanwhile, the government has stopped issuing passports because it does not have the foreign currency to pay for the special inks and paper required for travel documents.

“The passport situation is just the tip of the iceberg,” says Dewa Mavhinga, Southern Africa director with the Africa Division at Human Rights Watch. “The country is in a huge crisis politically and economically. It’s a reflection of the massive mismanagement that is happening now.”

Perhaps most pressing for Mr Mnangagwa and the ZanuPF party he leads is how to compensate civil servants, who have seen the purchasing power of their salaries collapse as the new currency is introduced. The civil service continues to eat most of the country’s $8 billion (Dh29.3bn) national annual budget at a time when inflation is officially running at 176 per cent, the highest in 10 years.

Now government employees, including police and soldiers, have started holding protests to demand their salaries be adjusted upwards. They claim the new currency’s official exchange rate is not matched by its real-world purchasing power.

The Apex Councils for civil servants and health services, the main government employee union, says a starting salary of $500 that its members had previously received, is now worth less than $50 in terms of buying power because they are now paid in Zimbabwe dollars.

“Our situation is untenable,” says David Dzatsunga, Apex council secretary. “We cannot afford to go to work as usual, we cannot pay our children’s school fees, we are failing to meet our health bills – a lot of things we were able to do, we cannot afford to do any longer.”

A worker previously earning $500 should now be paid $5,000 in Zimbabwean dollars to reach the same earnings level as previously, Apex says.

Given the importance of the civil service in helping the ruling party ZanuPF cling to power, cranking up the minting press seems inevitable.

Steve Hanke, professor of Applied Economics at Johns Hopkins University in the US and a scholar of Zimbabwe’s economic implosion, said in a tweet that inflation is even higher than the official rate, which will force the government’s hand in reaching a settlement with its employees. “Since making the US dollar illegal, Zimbabwe’s inflation has soared. Today, by my measure, the annual inflation is 546 per cent a year. Zimbabwe will raise civil servant wages, which already eat up most of the budget, in an attempt to maintain living standards in death spiraling Zimbabwe.”

Printing money is something Zimbabwe has experience with. This was the disastrous strategy applied in the early 2000s, when the economy collapsed after ex-president Robert Mugabe began driving white farmers off their land. Agriculture was the main provider of export finance and as the farmers left, state coffers ran dry.

Unable to pay civil servants, whose salaries account for more than 90 per cent of Zimbabwe’s budget, according to Reuters, Mr Mugabe ordered the central bank to simply print money.

The result was catastrophic runaway inflation that saw a trillion dollar note trading against just one greenback. By 2009 the government raised the white flag and scrapped the currency, and made the US dollar, euro and rand legal tender instead.

This did indeed bring rocketing prices to a screeching halt. However, it also introduced a whole new problem: cash liquidity.

Without the authority to print its own money, Zimbabwe has depended on the unreliable inflows of cash from business transactions. Electronic funds in bank accounts could not be turned into cash, because there was not enough to meet demand. Banks began to ration customers, limiting withdrawals to as little as $20 a day, regardless of how much they had in their accounts.

The spread between US dollars in the bank and dollars in hand began to widen, reaching as high as 70 per cent by late last year. “If I have an expense to pay such as school fees, and I need $2,000, it will cost me more if I pay by electronic transfer than if I pay cash,” says Vince Musiwa, an economist based in the capital Harare. “So before I can pay, I have to first spend a few days trying to secure the money in cash, or I might have to pay thousands more.”

Various strategies to provide liquidity were tried, with limited success. “Bond notes”, a pseudo currency, were introduced by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe in 2016, with a printed value of Z$2 and technically equal to the US dollar. These were never popular with consumers or businesses and never really caught on.

In February this year, Zimbabwe introduced the real-time gross settlement dollar, or RTGS, in the hopes of weening the public off the greenback. It proved no more popular than its predecessor and quickly began trading at a discount to other currencies.

The country had even considered exclusively adopting the rand, the currency of its neighbour South Africa, and hoped to import cash from Pretoria, the president of Zimbabwe Emmerson Mnangagwa said in June. However, the South African reserve bank had made “unacceptable” demands that could not be met, he added.

“South Africa’s Reserve Bank wanted to know our GDP and other things that we did not agree with. This was because they would have had to print the requite value of currency for circulation in Zimbabwe.”

It was yet another reason for many in Zimbawe to look to the near future with a sense of foreboding.

Mr. King recently served as the Chief Operating Officer at Econet Wireless where he was influential in digitally transforming the Telecommunications Company. He served on the Boards of Liquid Telecom Zimbabwe, Econet Burundi and Econet Lesotho, bringing to the position over 30 years of experience in innovation, business development, organizational & digital transformation.

He previously served as Managing Director at Bharti Airtel International and Celtel International, having worked in Uganda, Nigeria, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Mr. King has spearheaded the implementation of several technological innovations, including digital products, and overseen developments aimed at digitizing school education and healthcare. He is a passionate driver of youth development and empowerment.

Mr. King founded various entrepreneurial endeavours, in the field of agriculture and food security, driving efficiencies through technology innovations. He held the role of Chief Executive Officer and Group Marketing Director at Innscor Africa Limited where he pioneered the growth of a range of products and services, from bread and confectionary to video games and entertainment, and expanded the Zimbabwean business ventures in the region.

He earned a Master of Business Administration from the University of Zimbabwe in 1994 and completed several specialized courses at INSEAD, HEC Paris and Harvard Business School.

Post published in: Business

Mupfumira, a senior member of the ruling ZANU-PF party was previously labour minister and social welfare minister [File: Ministry of Environment, Tourism and hospitality]

Martin Shkreli has tangled with many dangerous people over the years; Wu Tang Clan, Jim Cramer, the SEC, etc., but we are just today learning that he once drew the ire of a true Original Gangster and we find ourselves shocked that Shkrels is so lucky as to merely be serving time in a federal prison.

From Whitney Tilson’s most recent letter to investors:

The Take ‘Em To School charity poker tournament that’s taking place this evening reminds me of a story I’ve never shared publicly. Martin Shkreli – yes, the now-infamous scumbag who’s serving a seven-year prison sentence for fraud – bought a $10,000 table for the event in July 2012. He had a great time with nine of his friends… but then stiffed us when we sent him the bill, ignoring all of our collection attempts.

Wow. Martin has nine friends?

But also, “Scumbag”? DAMN! Not many men have messed with Whitney Tilson and survived. This man came up in animal factories like The Northfield Mt Herman School, and Harvard. He is not someone with whom one should trifle, son…

When I first learned about this five months later, I was pissed. I’d never heard of Shkreli – he wasn’t infamous yet – but I checked him out and he already had a bad reputation, so on December 19 I sent him the most threatening e-mail I’ve ever sent anyone: