Thursday 4 May 2017

Zimbabwe is an enigma inside an enigma; we are the poorest but have the richest ruling elite. P Guramatunhu

Last week an AfrAsia report confirmed something many Zimbabweans already knew – that we are the poorest people in the poorest continent, Africa, on earth. We are the poorest people on earth!
In complying the data for their report, AfrAsia should have investigated the wealth of each country’s ruling elite. The findings would have been an eye opener; they would have found that Zimbabwe’s ruling elite are some of the richest not just in Africa but in the world.
There is documentary evidence to show that Mai Mujuru and her late husband tried to sell diamonds worth US$15.8 billions!
To put this amount into perspective for my fellow Zimbabweans; Zimbabwe has been waiting to build Batoka Gorge Dam for donkey years. When complete it would have boosted Zimbabwe’s hydropower generation from the 800 MW from Kariba Dam by another 1 600 MW. Zimbabwe’s power cuts have been one more milestone that have weighed down and crash the Zimbabwe economy. Building Batoka Gorge will cost US$ 3 billions. With the Mujurus’ diamond loot alone we would have completed five Batoka Gorge size projects round the country. This of the difference these projects would have made to the country’s economic prosperity.
The Mujurus are not the only ones who have been looting and plundering the nation’s wealth and resources; many of Zanu PF’s ruling elite are filthy rich and even the opposition politicians have had their share of the loot. Tsvangirai got the $4 million Highlands mansion, other MDC leaders got former white owned farms plus all the other trappings of high office – bribes to induce MDC leaders to kick democratic reforms in the tall grass during the GNU.
What most Zimbabweans are finding a nauseating irritant is our leaders’ heartless indifference to our tragic suffering. President Mugabe went all the way to Durban and was once again denying Zimbabwe is fragile and failed state!
“Zimbabwe is the most highly developed country in Africa. After South Africa, I want to see another country as highly developed," replied President Mugabe.
“We have 14 universities and had a literacy rate of over 90%, which was the highest in Africa. And yet they talk about us as a fragile state."

Our education may have been the envy of other nation but not now. Decades of poor funding has resulted in the quality of our education becoming sub substandard. President Mugabe has been sending his children to the Far East for their education and so too has his cronies. He has established the Presidential Scholarship (paid by the taxpayer) to Zanu PF loyalists to send their children to Universities in SA. It is us the poor who have no choice but send to send our children to the poorly funded local University for the substandard education.

Every year Zimbabwe is chaining out 100 000 plus University graduates and yet many of them cannot write a single sentence without making a spelling or gramma mistake. As for the sentence expressing a coherent idea, that is simply asking for too much! And with unemployment sitting at 90% plus most of these graduates have all joined the army of street vendors selling mobile phone airtime or left the country in search of work.

" We have more resources than the average country in the world. We have Chrome, Gold, Diamonds, etc. etc. Our agriculture is viable. We have a bumper harvest, not only maize, but also tobacco and many other crops. We are not a poor country," continued President Mugabe.

Zimbabwe is certainly not a poor country because we do have all these mineral resources if only the ruling elite were putting them to good use and not squandering them away or worse. It is no secret that President Mugabe has been using some of the billions of dollars looted from Marange to bankroll his vote rigging juggernaut!

Zimbabwe is expecting a bumper harvest, which means will have enough to feed its own people, this year because it had an above average growing season. Ever since President Mugabe seized the farms from the white farmers to give to the ruling elite and Zanu PF party loyalists the country struggled to produce enough to feed its own people much less have anything left over for export. We have lost our breadbasket of the region accolade.

In the day and age when other nations have harnessed technology to turn deserts into bloom fields and orchards we who live in a country which is for all practical purposes is the Garden of Eden are having to rely on imported food aid. We are starving in the Garden of Eden; the can be no more damning testimonial in failed leadership than that!

"If anyone wants to call us fragile, they can. You can also call America fragile," Mugabe continued in his usual self-assured cut-thrust arrogant manner to the amusement of some in the audience.

None of the millions of ordinary Zimbabweans, whose hopes and dreams of freedom, human rights and life in dignity have been shattered by four decades of corrupt and tyrannical Mugabe rule, were amused by his denial of the economic and political mess in Zimbabwe much less his belittling of their suffering!

It is widely believed that President Donald Trump is planning to reduce USA aid to Africa and to Zimbabwe in particular. It is hard to justify giving aid to a country whose leaders spend billions of mansions and other luxuries and every few months spend millions on birthday parties, weddings, globetrotting, etc.

SADC warned Zimbabweans not to participating in the 2013 elections without implementing the reforms but we did not listen. This was why SADC accept the rigged result; what else could they do since we had the opportunity to stop the rigging but refused to take it.

If Zimbabweans allow next year’s elections to go ahead still with no reforms in place, we can be certain that the rest of the world will follow SADC’s example and wash their hands of Zimbabwe. The Americans will lift the 2002 targeted sanctions against the Zanu PF ruling elite and the rest of the western countries will do the same. The sanctions were meant to help us, Zimbabweans, pressure the Zanu PF dictatorship to implement the democratic reforms and we have wasted the years pursuing such trivial matters as voter education, who buys BVR kits, etc.

There is no doubt that countries like China, India, Israeli, etc. who did not care that Mugabe rigged the elections and continued to trade with the regime have profited greatly from trading with Zimbabwe’s corrupt ruling elite. Why should the West not claim its share of the looted wealth, especially when those who were supposed to benefit from the imposed sanctions are doing nothing to implement the reforms even when they have the opportunity to do so.

Zimbabwe is an enigma within an enigma with all the antonyms, voodoo mysticism, idiosyncrasies of a demented tyrant, etc. all mixed into this bubbling primeval soup! Zimbabweans are the poorest in the world but we also have the richest ruling elite in the world. Zimbabwe is, for all intent and purpose, the Garden of Eden and we are starving.

We claim to be the most literate populous in African and yet are still failing to say what constitutes free and fair elections, 37 years after independence and with the benefit of 2 500 years of democratic good governance dating back to the Golden Age of Greece.


“You can also call America fragile!” Good one Mr Mugabe. As long as there is even one homeless person in New York, America is a failed state.  And you, sir, do not have to worry about millions of Zimbabweans who live in abject poverty because you denied them their freedoms and human rights including the right to free and fair elections and even the right to life. You can continue spending the billions of dollars on your endless globetrotting, five-star overseas health and education for yourself and your cronies, etc. with a free conscience; you do not owe any of the impoverished Zimbabweans a thing!

9 comments:

  1. This is the shameless face of greed! We did not risk life and limp in the war of independence so we can create another set of oppressor be they black instead of white!
    There were freedom fighters during the war who believed in the freedom of everyone and many of them still do to this day. The tragedy of our situation is that the greed thugs led by President Mugabe himself have dominated the political discourse and silenced the voices of the good ones.
    Zimbabwe is not the only country on earth that has had to fight to gain its independence, many other countries have done the same. Those countries that had the fortune of having visionary leaders with no intention of becoming the new oppressors have thrived. Zimbabwe was just unlucky to be one of those countries to be ruled by mercenaries and thugs.
    Of course, General Chiwenga is a greed thug would saw the fight for independence as the opportunity to seize power and become the new oppressor. You do not reason with a thug like him, he has no intellect and that is exactly the reason why President Mugabe promoted him. He is just a willing tool in a tyrant’s hand!

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  2. @ Tawanda
    Divide and rule is a easy concept to impose on people who are divided already. The British are finding it easy to impose what ever they want because we, Zimbabweans, have no clue what we want.
    After 37 years of independence and with over 2500 years of human history of democratic rule we are still failing to say what constitute free and fair elections much less how we can secure it for ourselves!
    We have leaders like Morgan Tsvangirai masquerading as leaders of a party called Movement for Democratic Change MDC and yet after nearly 20 years as leader he has failed to bring about even one democratic change. Not one. He has no clue what the democratic changes are. What is worse, there are still hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans out there who continue to follow him not aware he does not know where he is going!

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  3. It is millions of ordinary Zimbabweans who are facing the daily life-challenges of living off the merger $200 per annum and not President Mugabe. He continues to enjoy his fabulous and extravagant lifestyle at the impoverish masses’ expense. It really adding insult to injury for him to continue to talk of a successful and wealthy Zimbabwe when these millions know a totally different Zimbabwe.

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  4. Yes “Zimbabwe is an enigma within an enigma with all the antonyms, voodoo mystics, idiosyncrasies of demented tyrants,” and contradictions of confused incompetent opposition, etc.

    We have Morgan Tsvangirai failing to implement even one reform when he was given five years to do so, contesting the 2013 elections knowing fully well they will be rigged and is now gearing to contest the 2018 with still not one reform in place and foolishly threatens “to refuse to concede defeat”! What planet are Zimbabweans coming from because it really is impossible to see how anyone can be this stupid!

    We did not get where we are by accident; we have been sleep walking into this hell-hole for the last 37 years, I fear where we are going after another rigged elections next year will make the present look like the golden age!

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  5. OPPOSITION MDC-T Vice President Thokozani Khupe is no farmer, and yet - without asking for one - she found a brand new tractor in her backyard, delivered by then Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) governor Gideon Gono.
    Speaking in the UK, Khupe said she rang the central bank chief and advised him that she was no farmer and did not need the tractor but was told to keep it “because all members of parliament were getting one”.

    Khupe got the tractor and converted into hard cash – she is in politics for the money. No doubt these were some of the many things MDC leaders received and made them forget about implemented the reforms.

    “Mazivanhu eMDC adzidza kudya a nyerere!” (MDC people have learnt to enjoy the gravy train benefits and not rock the boat!) Boasted a Zanu PF apologist, when people expressed their concerns at MDC’s failure to implement the democratic reforms!

    MDC leaders sold-out during the GNU and it is pure madness to trust them not to do this again!

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  6. War veterans including Chiwenga still have the notion that they are special; when it comes to deciding who governs the country, they are entitled to have a veto where everybody else has a vote. This is what is at issue here and no true democrat can ever accept that!

    The freedoms and basic human rights, including the right to a meaningful vote and the right to life, of every Zimbabwean are sacrosanct and inalienable. We must dismiss this nonsense that those who played a major role in the liberation struggle have earned for themselves the added freedoms and rights to cartel in any way the freedoms and rights of others!

    Zimbabwe is in this economic and political mess because for the last 37 years we have allowed President Mugabe and his cronies to ride roughshod over povo under the pretext that as liberation war heroes and heroines they had the divan right to govern the nation as they pleased. Enough is enough!

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  7. The way not only to silence Chiwenga but to stop Zanu PF's whole vote rigging machinery is by implementing all the reforms. Calling for Chiwenga to resign is a total waste of time.

    So, what is ZUNDE going to do if Chiwenga does not resign and the vote rigging machine rambles on and even gathers more momentum, as we all know it will? No doubt ZUNDE will participate in the flawed elections just as like all the other opposition parties. The call for Chiwenga to resign is just an attention seeking publicity stance, no more effective than the boastful dog's puny fart in putting out the forest fire!

    The time for posturing and dithering is over what the nation needs right now is decisive action; we must demand the implementation of ALL the democratic reforms BEFORE the elections and not waste another day on trivia.

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  8. @Kyle James
    Make up your mind, if Tsvangira beat Mugabe and we do not need reforms then why did he fail to be president? The whole concept of vote rigging is that Zanu PF denies the people the vote and the opposition the right to rule even though that is what the nation wants.

    The trouble here is that we have a woolly-minded opposition that does not appreciate what reforms are and how they are to be implemented hence the reason why they failed to get even one reform in five years. Now they are stuck with the situation in which they desperately want to win power but have to pretend they can do so with no reforms.

    SADC have already told us what we need to do to ensure free and fair elections - implement the reforms. If we go ahead and contest flawed elections then it is us who have to pay dearly for it just as we did for contesting the 2013 elections. SADC and the whole world will have nothing to do with our foolishness!

    We have made implementing the reforms more difficult for ourselves by failing to implement them during the GNU and the degree of difficult and the price for having failed we go up another ten-fold if we contest 2018 elections with no reforms in place!

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  9. Government is planning to spend $20 million on new vehicles for ministers and other civil servants.
    The regime is failing to fund critical areas such as health and education but has money to spend on luxuries for the ruling elite. No wonder countries like USA are cutting aid to Zimbabwe, why should the Americans pay for Zimbabwe’s health and education when the country has the money but spending it on luxuries!
    There is no doubt the regime is bribing the ruling elite ahead of next year’s elections, they are the ones who run the vote rigging machine. We must implement th democratic reforms BEFORE the elections. It is insane to contest next year’s elections knowing fully well the process is rigged in favour of Zanu PF!

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