The call for the mandatory blending of all imports betrays that Zanu PF believes in a rule for the rich by the rich at the expense of the people.
I think it is wrong to make laws that benefit a businessman like Billy Rautenbach.
When price controls were removed, we thought the market was giving business people and buyers a chance to negotiate prices freely. But now it seems government is putting people at the mercy of businesses.
Businesses can charge whatever prices they want and they don’t care whether people can afford it or not. If we don’t buy, laws like mandatory blending will remove our right to refuse the product.
The lack of uptake for E10 is a clear sign that customers don’t like it. This does not mean they will always refuse to buy, it simply means that the pricing is unattractive to the market. Mandatory blending is a way of armtwisting the market to accept Rautenbach’s product at its current price. This, in my view, is anti-free market.
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Rautenbach has the option of exporting his ethanol if the local market is uninterested, after all, more exports is what Zimbabwe needs. Pursuing the export market means we won’t have to close Chisumbanje. The closure was a blackmail to force Zimbabweans to accept the unattractive E10 pricing. Zanu PF likes to punish the people in order to prove partisan arguments. They sent the country down the drain to prove that sanctions were bad. Now they close Chisumbanje to set the nation against Elton Mangoma while helping Rautenbach and themselves. Let no one fool us; Rautenbach is too seasoned a businessman to start a doomed project the way Chisumbanje did.
He simply wants the biggest possible kill and he wants it to be as permanent as mandatory blending because his Zanu PF friends are about to leave office. Our politicians must refrain from making laws that deny the customer a voice against business sharks. Being bribed by businesses to punish your own people is undemocratic. The day will soon come when books shall be written about those who took bribes to force expensive E10 on the people.
Tafi Muzondo
