Wonders truly never cease in Zimbabwe’s political theatre. The regime that rules—not governs—continues to parade hollow solutions to deep structural decay. The latest act in this farce is the so-called introduction of digital gold coins, a move that has not only baffled the informed but also enraged the politically aware. It is yet another scheme from a government obsessed with dressing wounds while refusing to treat the disease. And let’s be clear—the disease is illegitimacy.
What is legitimacy? It is the moral, legal, and democratic right to govern. ZANU PF, a regime with a history of stealing elections, abusing power, and looting public resources, cannot claim legitimacy by any stretch of reason or law. It rules through fear, propaganda, and corruption—not through the will of the people. That’s the elephant in the room that digital gold coins, mud ovens, and pfumvudza will never address.
The so-called digital coins are a continuation of a tired pattern: using populist gimmicks to distract from real crises. But ask any vendor in Mbare, any nurse in a rural clinic, any unemployed graduate in Dzivarasekwa—can digital coins buy food, electricity, clean water, or transport to work? Can they fix the crumbling hospitals or bring back teachers who’ve fled the system? No.
And what of the physical gold coins that came before them? Were they not hyped as the answer to inflation, currency instability, and capital flight? But they failed—spectacularly. Why? Because no economic measure will succeed in a system built on unaccountable, uncontrolled spending—especially by a regime that prints money at will to pay soldiers and spies, the very tools used to suppress citizens and silence dissent.
Digital gold coins are being introduced in a country with no digital infrastructure to speak of in rural areas. They are being launched in a country where hospitals lack Panadol, schools lack chalk, and cities go weeks without running water. They are being introduced by a regime that cannot account for billions siphoned from public coffers, including under the guise of Command Agriculture, COVID-19 procurement, and so-called development funds.
This is not a monetary crisis. It’s a political crisis. One caused by a terroristic, criminal, fifth column regime that uses public institutions as instruments of looting and oppression. A regime obsessed with consolidating a one-party state through violence, electoral theft, and the mutilation of constitutional law.
What we are witnessing is not governance. It is rule by decree. The people of Zimbabwe are ruled, not governed. Their rights—to water, to health, to education, to safety—are deliberately violated. Their welfare is a footnote to the greed of a political elite that loots in broad daylight, with no fear of consequence.
Digital coins, like RTGS before them, will collapse under the weight of this criminality. The coins will not empower the people. They will not build confidence. They will not rebuild the economy. Because in Zimbabwe, nothing will work—not digital this, not gold that—until we deal with the illegitimacy of the regime in power.
Until we restore constitutionalism, until we have free and fair elections, until we dismantle the predatory state and replace it with people-centered governance, every economic move is smoke and mirrors. Every announcement is a lie wrapped in propaganda. Every so-called innovation is a glittering mask for a rotting core.
Digital gold coins? More like digital fool’s gold. And the people know it.
Zimbabwe does not need gimmicks. It needs liberation.