In other words, bugger off …

HARARE, Zimbabwe. As hardships mount, the family who last month hosted a Jeff Bezos-style wedding wants people to stop begging for money from them.

The marriage of Taona Tagwirei, son of the principal advisor to the presidency, chalked up US$20 million for the celebrations and in gifts of cash, luxury vehicles, livestock and property. Not quite the celebrity-studded Bezos event in Venice estimated at US$50 million but still inappropriate in glitz and glamour by any standards.

Swamped by appeals for financial assistance, the family is tired of it. “This is not a charity or a proposal office. Respectfully, please stop,” says a social media post attributed to Taona.

The rich don’t get rich and stay rich by giving anything away. In other words, bugger off all of you and leave us alone.

The latest Land Rover SUV costs about US$280,000 in Zimbabwe, the favoured luxury Toyota Land Cruiser goes for a cool $200,000, a second-hand upmarket Mercedes fetches $100,000, and then several Bugatti, valued at around the $2million each, Rolls Royces, ranging between $400,000 and $1.3 million each (both pictured above) and low-slung Lamborghinis appear on the least potholed streets in town.

How many boreholes or wells can be sunk in poor waterless communities for the price of one flashy Mercedes?  More than 20. How much medicine will it buy for empty hospital pharmacies, how many children will it keep in schools, how many flooded sewers can it repair, how many ambulances and garbage collection trucks can it make roadworthy again?

A man wheels two fully laden trollies out of the store to a waiting limo. A beggar approaches, hands held out. Bugger off. A pedestrian hit by a car needs a blood transfusion and his family asks around for $120 per unit of donated blood. Bugger off. The pedestrian bleeds to death.

Vagrants don’t bother to approach the big cars any longer. They know they’ll get nothing. The occupants, in air conditioning behind tinted glass, don’t even roll down their windows and their bugger off expletives won’t be heard.

Ordinary kind-hearted souls can only assist with small handouts – perhaps a couple of bucks here and there – because their own cash is tight, they are burdened by spikes in the cost of living and food prices every day.

Above right. Informal fresh vegetable stall doing good business undercutting the prices at a major supermarket across the road. A battered mishikashika, a pirate taxi, the transport of the masses. Formal bus and rail services barely exist.

End note. South Africans want African migrants to bugger off back to their home countries and have been out in rowdy street demonstrations trying to bring it about. Official statistics put migrants at around 3 million, or 4 percent of the country’s 65 million population. Are the migrants the scapegoat for the very elitism, corruption, poor governance and unemployment seen in Zimbabwe that undermine South Africa’s economy. Demonstrators, some turning to violence and looting, were whipped up by militant political agitators who accuse migrants of taking the bulk of their jobs. Really?  Perhaps the tiny percentage of migrants in SA have better education, better skills and a better work ethics than their local counterparts.