HARARE – Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube on Sunday accused MDC vice president Tendai Biti of “lacking sophistication” following searing criticism of the treasury chief in London.
Ncube lost his rag after Biti, a former finance minister, reportedly told a United Kingdom-based internet news website that “Mthuli is a loudmouth that doesn’t have a connection with its brain, and the economy has found him out.”
Biti is also quoted as saying: “This is about realism, this is about intelligence and this is about honesty. These three things are lacking in Mthuli Ncube.”
Ncube, responding on Twitter, appeared to have wrongly assumed Biti had made the comments at the Royal Institute of International Affairs’ Chatham House, an independent policy institute based in London. Biti did speak at a book launch at Chatham House on June 5, but the pointed criticism of Ncube was made in an interview with a news website.
Ncube blasted: “Biti’s choice of crude language not only reveals his analytical deficiencies but also demonstrates lack of sophistication and poise normally associated with a global platform such as Chatham House. He has much to learn. However, this may take a while.”
Ncube was last September appointed as one of the technocrats in President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s cabinet following disputed elections in July.
The economy has tanked since then, and Biti – credited with stabilising the economy as finance minister between 2009 and 2013 by his loyalists although experts think Biti’s job was made easier by foreign currency reserves released for government to pay its workers in US dollars.
Some analysts as well think Biti presided over a consumer economy financed by imports from South Africa as the country’s consumers took advantage of the stronger currency against the Rand. This is often highlighted as source of accelerated company closures during the coalition government.
Backed by his supporters Biti has sharpened his criticism of Ncube, with the two men regularly sparring in Parliament.
On May 31, Biti said on Twitter: “Having spent a few days quizzing Emmerson’s lot in Parliament, it’s quite clear that the country is doomed. The whole bunch are cruel, clueless quislings.”
President Emmerson Mnangagwa says Zimbabwe must have a new currency by the end of the year, arguing this would help stabilise prices and inflation, which is at a 10-year high.
The southern African nation in February removed an unrealistic peg for its electronic dollars and surrogate bond notes and merged them into a transitional currency called the Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) dollar.
In January Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube said Zimbabwe, in the grip of a severe dollar crunch that has caused shortages of fuel and medicines, would have a new currency in the next 12 months.
“As a country we must have a our currency by the end of this year, we have started that journey,” Mnangagwa said at an event south of the capital Harare.
Prices of basic goods from sugar to maize meal have spiked in the last month as the RTGS dollar has lost value.
Mnangagwa said the price hikes were unjustified.
Zimbabwe abandoned its own currency in 2009 after it was wrecked by hyperinflation and adopted the greenback and other currencies, such as sterling and the South African rand.
As physical dollar supplies started dwindling, the central bank introduced the bond note in 2016 at par to the dollar while the amount of electronic dollars increased, plunging the financial system into disarray.
