"Revolutions fail if masses don't chuck out leaders a.s.a.p." said G Orwell - our supremacists are still here N Garikai

"Despite all the hurdles and all the barriers, Zimbabwe in 2019 leaped 15 places in the Global Ease of Doing Business rankings. As we look to improve this in 2020, privatisation is a big part of this story," said Finance Minister, Professor Mthuli Ncube.

"For the first time in living memory, Zimbabwe achieved a balanced budget. We have our fiscal and monetary fate in our own hands. We have a talented, educated and devoted workforce, ready to get to work. And we have natural resources a-plenty, ready to drive our economy forward. The Zimbabwean future is, therefore, an exciting one. With patience and discipline, we will overcome all the hurdles that lay in our path and build a better future for all.”

Zimbabwe has done nothing to revive the country’s commerce and industry and its agricultural sector, the country’s economic engine, and hence the reason why unemployment rates, trade balance, inflation and other economic performance indicators have remain unfavourable. 

Minister Mthuli Ncube has improved the national budget by taxing to death the poorest of the poor with his 2% electronic transaction tax; by cutting government spending on education, health and other public services. This is just voodoo economics because he has done nothing to revive the economic growth and national prosperity. 

“The Mnangagwa administration has virtually no productive tax base and no one who will lend to it on the scale required, so policy on the fly is the order of the day—layers of contradiction, distortion, graft and increasing chaos—a ‘ramshackle edifice’ that will grow larger and more precarious as the months roll by,” wrote Stuart Doran, in the Strategist ASPI.

“Downward trends and further economic shocks may trigger more instability before the year is out, but they are, ultimately, symptoms, not causes. They are weather vanes that speak of the present and warn us of the imminent, yet they are not seminal and are poor indicators of the longer term.

“For those who would try to read the swirling tea leaves, broader and deeper factors are the better bet. The word ‘system’ is inadequate because the core of it is more profound, more organic and more enduring than that. Zimbabwe is what it is because of a political subculture, centred on the ruling party, that has hegemony and subjugation as its highest ideals. Violence, disdain, paranoia and plunder are among its natural progeny. It is fundamentally antithetical to genuine political competition, dissent and notions of stewardship.

“…. Yet for those who would dare to guess, the longer threads—not the frayed edges of Zimbabwe’s social fabric—suggest that it’s not going to make any real difference if Mnangagwa, or Chiwenga, or any of their fellow travellers, rule—much as it’s made little difference that Mugabe has gone. Lest we forget: as long as the generation of supremacist nationalists and its proselytes remain, so will the mindset.”

Of course, Stuart Doran is right! 

For the last 40 years we, Zimbabweans have allowed Zanu PF to ride roughshod over us, denying us our freedoms and rights including the right to a meaningful say in the governance of the country and even the right to life. 

Mnangagwa and his fellow supremacist nationalists blatantly rigged the July 2018 elections, just has they had done countless times in the past. The nation has once again turned a blind eye to the rigging and rewarded Zanu PF with legitimacy. It is little wonder the regime is refusing to implement any meaningful democratic reforms to ensure free, fair and credible elections. 

Zanu PF has accused those demanding free and fair elections of seeking "regime change". A nonsense argument since regime change is the ultimate consequence of "meaningful say in the governance of the country".

After 40 years of rigging elections and enjoying absolute power, Zanu PF thugs now believe they have the right to rig elections and stay in power “until the donkeys have horns”, as Simon Khaya Moyo, Zanu PF bigwig, once boasted. 

People like Professor Mthuli Ncube are just the regime’s propagandist, telling the masses the empty glass is full if they factor in what tomorrow will bring! He is nothing but George Orwell’s Squealer in Animal Farm.

   

“I meant the moral to be that revolutions only reflect a radical improvement when the masses are alert and know how to chuck out their leaders as soon as the latter have done their job,” said George Orwell of his book. 

In Zimbabwe, we, the people, were not alert and diligent and so our leaders have become the supremacists nationalists who believe they have the absolute right to rule Zimbabwe. They and they alone will decree what constitute free, fair and credible elections regardless of the all flaws and illegalities in the process. 

40 years of corrupt and tyrannical Zanu PF dictatorship have left the country in economic ruins and political paralysis, stuck with Zanu PF with no competent alternative party to replace it. Zanu PF has dragged the nation right up to the edge of the precipitous abyss. 

34% of the population now live in “extreme poverty”, according to a WB report. Many schools in Zimbabwe reported 10% or less pass rates at primary, “O” and “A” level. Many clinics and hospitals have closed for lack of staff and medicine; etc. The country is sitting on health, social and political time bomb! The economic and political situation is not sustainable. 

The people of Zimbabwe must face the nation’s demons, the supremacists nationalists, and demand the implementation of the democratic reforms designed to end the curse of rigged elections and bad governance. Demand change now or the country will be dragged over the edge into the abyss.