The soaring fuel and food prices caused, partly, by the 2019
corona virus and exasperated by the unprovoked invasion of Ukraine by Russia in
February 2022; have triggered serious economic problems, everyone the world over
is worried.
Inflation in UK is 9% and is projected to rise to 13% by the
end of the year. As feared, an impoverished nation like Zimbabwe is already
coughing blood: the country’s hyperinflation has already hit 600%, the highest
in the world! No one would want to hazard a guess of what the country’s hyperinflation
would be next week much less in six months, what is clear is that it is growing
exponentially. In 2008 it peaked at 500 billion percent!
There are many reasons why Zimbabwe is in such economic mess
compared to its own neighbours such as South Africa, Zambia or Botswana. The
number one reason is because Zimbabwe has been stuck with a corrupt,
incompetent and tyrannical Zanu PF dictatorship for 42 years and counting.
42 years of gross mismanagement, rampant corruption, riotous
lawlessness and ruthless political oppression, earning the country the pariah
state label; have left the country in total economic ruins and political paralysis.
The ruthless political oppression has created a suffocating political system in
which no competent and quality leaders can survive; a sewage swamp no quality
fish can survive.
In the 42 years the country has had many opportunities to
end the Zanu PF dictatorship, notably during the 2008 to 2013 GNU, but has wasted
all these chances. The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), the country’s main
opposition party of the last 22 years, including the GNU years, has failed to
implement even one reform to stop Zanu PF rigging the elections. Not even one! Hence
the political paralysis.
Before independence, Zimbabwe was the breadbasket of the
Southern Africa. The Zanu PF regime seized the white owned farms to give to party
loyalists, mainly, and the country’s agricultural sector collapsed taking down
with it the economy. Zimbabweans are starving in a land which is for all practical
purposes the Biblical Garden of Eden; a damning testimonial of how we, Zimbabweans,
have failed to govern the country.
The nation has paid dearly for our failure to govern
ourselves as millions of our people have been forced into abject poverty and to
suffer in dumb anguish denied their freedoms and basic human rights for 42 years
and counting. And whenever there is a worldwide economic disruption, as is the
case now; whilst other nations catch flue, we because our economy is already weak
and feeble cough blood or worse.
The root cause of Zimbabwe’s economic meltdown and political
paralysis is the country’s failure to hold free, fair and credible elections- a
man-made problem or to be more specific a Zanu PF and MDC/CCC made problem. Like
all human-made problems, there is a human solution. We must implement the democratic
reforms, MDC failed to implement during the 2008 to 2013 GNU, to ensure free, fair
and credible elections.
It is too late to implement any reforms before the 2023
elections, less than a year away. Zanu PF wants the elections to go ahead with
no reforms so it can blatantly rig and secure another five years in power. CCC are
hell bent on participating in the flawed elections for the same reasons they failed
to implement even one reform during the GNU – greed and breathtakingly
incompetent.
In the past Zanu PF has counted on Sadc, the regional body
to fraudulently endorse the rigged elections and thus grant the regime legitimacy.
This time we, the people must leave no stone unturned in exposing these
elections for what they are – farce. Sadc, IMF, USA and more recently EU have all
called for reforms before elections because they all know without reforms the
elections will never be anything else but a farce. This time Sadc will have no
excuse for giving Zanu PF legitimacy. None!
What Zimbabwe needs is another GNU opportunity to implement
the reforms to ensure free elections and thus finally end the curse of rigged elections
and bad governance.