1992 There is also evidence of epic womanizing that Mr.
Henry Louis Gates, Jr., New York Times Book Review, 20 Sept. Charles Krauthammer, Time, Only in our last days on the peninsula (the arm of Antarctica that polar scientists disdain as the "Banana Belt") did we see our first frozen sea … - Kate Ford, Wall Street Journal, 12 June 1998 His vehicle would be a form he both enjoyed and disdained-pulp fiction. The left disdains him as your basic race hypocrite. Verb The right eyes him suspiciously as a limousine Jacobin so enamored of revolution that he once suggested we should have one every 20 years. I have a healthy disdain for companies that mistreat their workers. Michiko Kakutani, New York Times, 27 June 2002 2003 But for all its playful love of puns and cool disdain for "suits," the high-tech world is, at heart, a cruel, unforgiving place ruled by the merciless dynamics of the marketplace. peacekeepers who stood by while thousands were murdered in Bosnia's ethnic cleansing. 2004 There is fierce disdain within the Pentagon for the passive U.N. Sense must just prevail, to save these former workers who have nowhere to go from here.Noun McCarthy's indifference to accolades and his disdain for grandstanding … turned into a disdain even for being understood. People are walking away empty-handed across industries because oligarchs, who are mostly the ruling elites holding powerful political party positions, have been protected by the law to act as they please. It is not only at AirZim that this injustice has taken place. It becomes even heavier if one works for over two decades, only to be forsaken when things go wrong. It is a huge national assignment with so many sacrifices. Working for a national airline like AirZim carries with it huge responsibilities. They didn’t work for 30 years to be paid packages that are so cynically humiliating. AirZim is not the only African airline in this predicament many have collapsed, but creditors and workers were treated fairly. Ways of protecting both sides should have been devised instead of unleashing draconian SIs that will hurt generations. There should be no excuse for ill treating Zimbabweans in such a brazenly unfair way. It wanted to protect companies, pension funds and insurance firms that held US dollar savings for workers, not the workers that had toiled under difficult circumstances to save. If anyone was in any doubt that the 2019 currency reforms created avenues for social injustice, it is now very clear what the government wanted to achieve.
It is opening the floodgates for corporate injustice because it will have no moral ground to stop companies from doing the same. No well meaning government would allow such madness to prevail, but the Zimbabwe government has set a bad precedent by treating its former workers and creditors with such contempt.
Workers who were owed US$40 000 in terminal benefits will receive ZW$40 000 (US$470 at the prevailing exchange rate), which is not enough to buy two months’ basics for an average family of five. The SI has empowered the government and the AirZim administrator to pay creditors at a rate of US$1:ZW$1. The Statutory Instruments (SIs) that the government has invoked to give it legal authority to pay creditors in Zimbabwe dollars for debts incurred in United States dollars demonstrates just how dishonest a government purportedly meant to serve the people can be. The settlement plan sent out to creditors last week is replete with dishonesty, manipulation and a clear strategy to shortchange the creditors by paying them peanuts and silencing them using a law specifically crafted to punish the working class and defend the elites who are mostly the politicians running big corporations and swathes of prime land. WHEN everyone thought the government was sincere in its decision to settle over US$340 million in debts owed to Air Zimbabwe (AirZim)’s creditors, including over 300 former workers, it throws a bombshell that must have sent a chill down the spine of anyone who has been keenly following this saga.