The Insider

Simba Makoni was touted for years as one of the potential successors of President Robert Mugabe. He had everything going for him -age, education, international exposure. But something went wrong in 2008 when he decided to challenge Mugabe in the presidential elections. Rumours say he was pushed to challenge Mugabe with the promise that senior ZANU-PF members would abandon Mugabe to join him, but that never happened. There are more than 160 cables on Makoni. Here are the first 50.

(74 VIEWS)

The reporting of United States President George Bush’s visit to Africa reflected the political divide in the local media with The Herald trashing the visit because Bush was coming to Africa “with dirty hands after his alleged bungling in Iraq”.

(74 VIEWS)

Former Finance Minister Simba Makoni said government ministers were too cowed by President Robert Mugabe to challenge official dogma and did what they thought Mugabe wanted not what worked.

(43 VIEWS)

President Robert Mugabe had embarked on a ruinous path which had seen gross domestic product decline by 35 percent between 1998 and 2002 and there was no prospect for recovery without a sweeping policy overhaul.

(63 VIEWS)

Herbert Murerwa replaced Simba Makoni as Finance Minister though he had no “economic expertise” but had a PhD from Harvard in educational planning.

(64 VIEWS)

Despite President Robert Mugabe’s vigorous insistence that devaluation was dead, Finance Minister Simba Makoni effectively devalued the currency through so-called incentives for tobacco farmers and the duty on luxury goods.

(64 VIEWS)

First it was a letter from Finance Minister Simba Makoni that found its way to the United States embassy. A week later it was a document from the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe that was now in the hands of the embassy.

(92 VIEWS)

The Mugabe administration was literally mortgaging the country’s assets to obtain fuel according to economist John Robertson.

(68 VIEWS)

Former Finance Minister Simba Makoni defended Zimbabwe’s land reform programme and said donors should “forget about how or why we got where we are”.

(75 VIEWS)

Finance Minister Simba Makoni had to bow down to tobacco farmers after they withheld their crop because of the low price on the auction floors.

(47 VIEWS)