BY PETER MUTASA 'The worst of our economic woes are now behind us,” President Emmerson Mnangagwa bragged on his Twitter handle, adding that the “worst is now behind us”. “In 2017, 5% of stock in Zimbabwe’s supermarkets was locally manufactured. Today, 45% of our supermarket supplies are proudly made in Zimbabwe”. It is astonishing how the President, who is obviously expected to be fully informed about what is happening on the ground could confidently make such assertions. There are two or rather three possibilities. Misinformation Firstly, it is possible that the President is completely misinformed by his advisers, especially his ministers. This is not uncommon considering that since the later former President Robert Mugabe’s era, various ministers inflated impacts of government policies to appear as if their ministries were doing well. The infamous one being former Agriculture minister Joseph Made’s assurances that there was going to be a bumper harvest in the 2004 season. Made had hovered around the country in a helicopter and counted everything green as crops awaiting harvesting. He was quoted in the Press stating that: “You see, God has been smiling on us and we are lucky that in the northern parts there were good rains in the last few days and crops are doing well.” As a result of his numerous annual misrepresentations, the late former President Robert Mugabe reportedly rejected food aid. In 2005, he sarcastically told donors that: “We are not hungry. Why foist this food on us? We don’t want to be choked. We have enough.” Made misinformed Mugabe about the state of food security, resulting in serious consequences for the nation. Many villagers faced starvation and the country had to import lots of grain using the little foreign currency we had. Perhaps, the most stupid one was when Mugabe was misinformed and believed that some spirit medium (Rotina Mavhunga) had discovered a rock oozing purified diesel in Chinhoyi. A lot of superstitions and half-baked scientific conclusions were drawn to support this ludicrous claim. Worryingly, this was believed by many ministers including those tasked with State Security. In addition, this crazy tale was also backed by the so-called analysts who could even spew their nonsense on the national broadcaster’s various outlets. It was only after a lot of resources had been wasted that the government, full of specialists, finally accepted that it had fallen victim to an unsophisticated scam. Without any consequences to the ministers and State security bureaucrats involved, Mugabe jokingly ended the matter talking about how his ministers had fallen for the scam. Mavhunga was subsequently arrested but none in the administration faced any reprisal. It is, therefore, possible that despite the well-developed and experienced public bureaucracy, the President can still be deliberately or unintentionally misinformed. On this one, it is not yet clear whether he is a victim of misinformation or he is alive to the realities but simply playing politics. In such a case, the workers and citizens m