Dear Family and Friends,
After weeks of claims, counterclaims, assertions and denials over who had called for a million man march, who was organizing it, who was supporting it, who was going to attend it and what it was actually in aid of, Africa Day’s 2016 Million Man March has come and gone in Zimbabwe.
In the week leading up to Africa Day we began hearing some of the facts and figures. The Zanu PF Youth League said they were looking for US$600,000 to pay for transport, food and accommodation for the one million people expected to attend the march in Harare. Whew, that was a scary sum to do, was it really going to be possible to move, feed and house a million people for just $1.67 each?
Then we learnt that the government owned ZUPCO bus company were told to avail 200 buses to transport people to the event. Hmm, that was another scary sum: 200 buses, each able to carry about 75 people , didn’t they actually need about 14,000 buses?
100,000 people were expected to come from each of the country’s 10 provinces and each province was apparently doing its own fund raising. That itself raised questions because we are a country gripped by chronic cash shortages and hundreds line pavements every day to withdraw paltry daily limits from banks. One press report said Bulawayo were soliciting donations to the tune of US$50,000 in order to buy 26,000 litres of diesel; 6 tonnes of flour; 5,000 litres of juice , 100 buses and “cash for various payments.” What were 100,000 Bulawayo million-man marchers going to do with 6 tons of raw flour we wondered and what exactly were the other ‘various payments’ they talked about?