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We have all been taken aback by the excessive negativity of this one newspaper which continuously writes about Zimbabwe’s “dying” economy. We have lost count of just how many times the same economy has “died”. It was earlier last month that the paper announced, “Panic as Zimbabwe economy dies”. How the economy lived to see another death, including one allowing for publication of newspapers as part of businesses formal and informal, nobody really knows.
But soon enough, the newspaper — without telling us how the economy fared in heaven or hell — was back telling us how the economy continued to die.
Just this week we were told on Wednesday that “Zim economy continues to die” and on the following day it was announced that “Zim economic rot deepens by the day”.
Of course, these are sub-headlines of stories titled, “Basic food prices soar” and “Back to 2008 all over again”.
Incredibly, the former story telling us about the shortage of basic goods only told us about a single line of product, that is, cooking oil, being produced by a struggling company.
It went on to lie about foreign cooking oil brands disappearing “altogether”.
Apart from this half-truth nothing else is given as evidence of “basic food prices soaring”.
Nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
And absolutely nothing to suggest that the paper and its terrible twins (at least as deployed these days) carried out a check in the shops.
Of course, the reality on the ground is that prices are actually falling as retailers are re-adjusting their prices to match the current deflationary environment.
What economists have been recommending.
In fact, it is not even about the deflation.
It is about the readjustment of unreasonably priced commodities and the reasserting of the true value of the US Dollar, which happens to be scarce these days.
Everywhere you look, prices are falling, from food and foodstuffs to rentals.
Many people have expressed positive surprise at their landlords slashing rentals by significant amounts.
That’s the reality, and that cannot be gainsaid!
Yet some people choose to look the other way. And we hope the readers of this lying rag open their eyes and realise that every day they are sold exaggerated stories just so they part with their hard-earned cash for something to gossip about.
Not that things are rosy in Zimbabwe.
They are not!
The issue of cash shortages is probably the biggest headache at the moment adding to the general slack in development and unemployment.
We are certainly not back to 2008, as these gloom and doom prophets would want us to believe — that hyperinflationary period cannot be matched or repeated elsewhere and again.
The fundamentals and dynamics are changed: namely, the use of local currency as substituted by multi-currencies, even if this has its own negative effects; re-engagement with the West, even on a slow scale; and increased productivity, especially in gold.
Things may get bad, but certainly not worse, before getting better.
That is on the proviso of our politicians knowing the urgency of the matter — which they increasingly are as people, even closest family and strident supporters, are speaking out.
We have done our part in offering the same friendly advice to the likes of Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa and RBZ Governor John Mangundya.
Negative path to happiness?
We have always believed in constructive criticism of Government and communicated, indeed acted, our belief that things can be done differently.
We have chided and indeed exposed vice such as corruption and graft.
We differ with some of our colleagues in that we believe in being positive — not that our rulers are saints, which they are not.
Thus some quarters expect us to criticise the Government and the ruling party on behalf of opposition and indeed the regime change agenda that is largely pushed by foreign interests, the same interests praying day and night for our economy to “die”.
That is a sure no!
There can be a positive way to happiness.
But the paper quoted and critiqued above has a different philosophy.
It is called, “The Power of Negative Thinking”.
We owe this coinage to the Wall Street Journal.
It carries a piece adapted from Oliver Burkeman’s book, “The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking.”
Among other gems from this article we are told that from a philosophical perspective, there is a “counter-intuitive approach that might be termed ‘the negative path to happiness’.
One pioneer of the “negative path” was the New York psychotherapist Albert Ellis, who died in 2007.
He rediscovered a key insight of the Stoic philosophers of ancient Greece and Rome: that sometimes the best way to address an uncertain future is to focus not on the best-case scenario but on the worst.
“Seneca the Stoic was a radical on this matter. If you feared losing your wealth, he once advised, ‘set aside a certain number of days during which you shall be content with the scantiest and cheapest fare, with coarse and rough dress, saying to yourself the while: ‘Is this the condition that I feared?’”
Well, this could well be true and human.
Only the fact that applied to the Zimbabwean situation, it carries a very repulsive whiff which is largely underpinned by unwarranted negativity towards Government by certain unelected quarters.
These quarters include newspapers that were founded to subvert the revolutionary zanu-pf Government and party which has been enjoying popular support.
See, whatever the Government does is met by unnecessary hostility from opposition parties that oppose for the sake of opposing and newspapers that also oppose for the sake of it even things are nationally beneficial.
There is no sense at all of the national interest.
There interest starts and ends with regime change.
The kind of reportage that we have critiqued — that seeks to spread panic and alarm among Zimbabweans and businesses, is meant to precipitate a crisis in Zimbabwe.
A crisis, in their hope, that will see the toppling of the legitimate Government that has close to two years of its term.
That is why they are scaremongering about bond notes, food situation and everything – to spread panic.
That is an unacceptable way to happiness!
And we know that the negative and destructive path to happiness always yields that – destruction.
We have seen that with the so-called Arab Spring rebellions, which the opposition and its media vicariously admire. And that spring took with it many lives, including those who precipitated it.
We reiterate that things are not rosy in Zimbabwe, but certainly negativity cannot take us to happiness.
Online Reporter