Dear Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube; There comes a point when numbers and glossy blueprints can no longer mask the raw truth of people’s agony. Zimbabwe reached that point many years ago. You cannot play with lives to win elections or appease elites in air-conditioned boardrooms.
If you are part of the privileged class — living on hefty allowances, chauffeured cars, free housing, and endless per diems — do not mistake those luxuries for the lived experience of ordinary citizens.
Millions survive without food, medicine, or dignity under a broken sanitary system. Families in our cities live cheek by jowl with raw sewage. That is their reality, not the “booming economy” celebrated in your recent mid-year reviews.
Ask minister Tino Machakaire what he saw at Parirenyatwa Group of Hospitals in May while visiting a sick relative. That is the real Zimbabwe, lived by millions. Not by ministers and the 1%. He spoke the truth. Public institutions are now carcasses, endangering the very people they were meant to protect.
Yet for daring to speak out, he became a traitor in the eyes of those pretending to get angry on behalf of the President. His words echo what millions whisper daily. That our hospitals, schools, and state corporations, once sources of pride, are now ruins.
Take a genuine walk through the farms, villages, and townships — Mbare, Nkayi, Mahenye, or Madhlambuzi — if you have ever heard about them. See how people live. Then return to your budget tables and tell us again that Zimbabwe is “accelerating.”
The trap is familiar. For 25 years, Zimbabweans were told they are “okay” while jobs disappeared through de-industrialisation, corruption emptied dinner tables. Every trip to the shops requires mental gymnastics to navigate daily exchange rates.
Your statistics call youths selling airtime and currency “entrepreneurs”. That is not entrepreneurship — it is survival. And survival is not growth. We live in two parallel economies. The first is for the privileged 1% luxuriating over fine wine. The other is for the desperate majority.
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No matter how impressive your GDP growth or current account surpluses look on paper, they are meaningless unless they change the lives of a villager in Gokwe or a retrenched miner in Zvishavane. Inflation is nearly 100% — the highest in the region. Wages erode, and families shrink meals. How can you speak of “stability” while poverty reigns?
Zimbabwe may have a fiscal and balance of payments surplus, but growth “fails to penetrate poorer segments”, as economist, Eddie Cross put it.
Your own numbers tell the story. Foreign inflows hit US$7,2 billion in the first half. Reserves are up 150%. ZiG now accounts for 40% of electronic transactions. Yet these mean nothing to a teacher earning US$260 a month or to 1 200 retrenched miners. Formal jobs now number fewer than two million in a country of 16 million. That is crisis, not boom.
The private sector knows the truth. In the most recent anecdotes of catastrophe, Choppies exited, and Unilever divested. Tourism revenues plunged 16% during the first quarter. Power generation remains volatile, with blackouts lasting up to 18 hours. This is what an economy on life support looks like.
The biblical reference is no exaggeration: like the Israelites in Egypt, Zimbabweans toil and suffer while the powerful thrive, disconnected from the reality of the masses.
Minister, if you want a legacy, stop the deception. Return to basics: rebuild schools, hospitals, and jobs. Tell citizens the truth. Address sanctions through reform, diplomacy, and good governance.
The people do not need statistical mirages. They need jobs. If the 2026 National Budget fails to speak to the real, battered Zimbabwe, your blueprints will remain useless dead trees.
You have a choice. You must chase applause from the International Monetary Fund and elites, or undertake the nobler task of serving and saving your people.
