One of the consequences of the corona virus pandemic is the economic
collapse. Many Zimbabweans left the country for economic reasons but with the economic
collapse in the host country an ever increasing number of Zimbabwean will find
themselves out of work and forced to return back home. Botswana has started to deport
some Zimbabweans.
"The government of Zimbabwe should expect to receive 500 deportees
from Botswana," advised Zimbabwe's Ambassador to Botswana Batirai Henry
Mukonoweshuro.
"About 230 people have already surrendered themselves to the police and district commissioner in Gaborone. These were expected to be deported as of (Thursday) and more continue to register themselves with the embassy."
As the economic situation gets worse the trickle of Zimbabweans returning
home from Botswana, SA, Europe, etc., etc. will grow into a flood.
Zimbabweans should have worked hard to make sure Zimbabwe addressed the
underlying problems behind the country’s economic and political crisis that
forced them to leave the country in the first place. The crisis has been there
since the 2000 to 2008 era which saw inflation soar to 500 billion per cent and
the economy totally collapse and never to recovery, These people are now going
back to Zimbabwe with unemployment rate a nauseating 90% and hyperinflation at
1 000% before the corona virus outbreak! Corona virus has dragged the nation
even deeper into the nightmare!
These deportees have been the life-line for many who have remained behind,
the dependants will not be pleased to see them back home.
Whilst the people, have risked life and limb to elect Morgan Tsvangirai
and his MDC friends on the understanding the party will bring about the democratic
changes the nation needed to end Zanu PF misrule. The MDC leaders have sold-out.
MDC leaders have failed to deliver even one meaningful reform in 20
years, particularly during the 2008 to 2013 GNU when the country had the golden
opportunity to do so. The people not only failed to hold MDC leaders to account
for selling out during the GNU but, worse still, have failed to replace the incompetent
opposition and so the nation is now stuck with corrupt and incompetent ruling
party and opposition party!
After 40 years of misrule, we cannot deny we had many opportunities to
end the curse of bad governance in Zimbabwe but wasted them all. Zimbabweans deserve
this corrupt, incompetent and tyrannical Zanu PF government complete with its
entourage of equally corrupt and incompetent opposition parties, all 130 of them
at the July 2018 rigged elections.
Corona virus has already caused serious economic disruption, humanitarian
suffering and claimed many, many lives. The virus has affected the rich and
poor, developed and developing nations alike. But has hit the poor harder than
the rich, the developing nations harder than the developed one. The poor had pre-existing
economic and health conditions making them more vulnerable and their situation
was made worse by their failure to mobilise the material and human resources to
deal with the virus.
The corona virus will hit Zimbabwe very, very hard given the country’s
economy has been in total meltdown for decades now and its public health
service has long collapsed. Zimbabwe has failed to supply something as basic as
clean running water to even key institutions like referral hospitals like
Parerenyatwa Hospital much less the urban dwellers!
“Wash your hands regularly with soap and clean running water!” WHO has
advised.
At least, Zimbabwe’s urban dwellers had clean running water 40 years ago,
not any more!
Zimbabwe’s ruling elite live in palatial mansions like Mugabe’s Blue Roof
built at the expense of the nation’s hospitals and clinics that are now in advance
state of rot and decay!
Even now with the country facing this existential threat from the corona
virus pandemic, the country continues to lose billions of dollars a month from
the wholesale looting of diamonds and other resource; money that should be used
to help save human suffering and lives. What will it take to final force Mnangagwa
to end corruption?
As much as there are many developing countries and donors who would like
to help Zimbabwe deal with this pandemic; they are reluctant to do so. These Zanu
PF leaders are renowned for not only looting Zimbabwe’s resources but foreign
donations too!
There is no doubt that corona virus is presenting Zimbabwe with the most
serious economic, social and humanitarian challenge this nation has ever faced.
The economic and humanitarian cost will be that much more than expected because
of 40 years of bad governance. And we, the people of Zimbabwe, have done
nothing to ensure the country end the curse of bad governance.
Corona virus is forcing Zimbabweans to go back home; to pay dearly, in
lost treasure and human lives, for having done nothing to end the curse of bad
governance these last 40 years and, one can only hope, to finally do something to
end the curse.
China’s economy has shrunk by 6.8% in the first three months, the first contraction in nearly 30 years of as much as 12% of positive growth. China like the rest of us in the developing countries has no welfare system to support those will lose their jobs and become economic destitute.
ReplyDeleteIn the USA, unemployment has surge to 22 million, from 3% before corona virus outbreak to 13% now.
IMF forecast has moved from positive world economic growth before corona virus outbreak, to recession when the virus started to spread outside China and now the forecast is a world economic depression.
A recession is widespread economic decline that lasts for at least six months. A depression is a more severe decline that lasts for several years. For example, a recession lasts for 18 months, while the most recent depression lasted for a decade. There have been 33 recessions since 1854.
There is no doubt we are now at the beginning of the world’s 34th recession and in 18 months time can be reclassified a depression. Let’s leave the academic and historians to bicker over whether this recession cum depression is one of the most severe in human history; the task before us, is how to survive.
Health expects are forecasting that as many as 40 000 people in UK out of a population of 60 million, 0.7%, will die of corona virus. In Zimbabwe, with its collapse health care and no resource to deal with the pandemic and, to crown it all, have the worlds’ most incompetent and corrupt men and women in government, the death rate will soar to 10%, 1.5 million.
We should think of the economic recession cum depression triggered by corona virus as the work of the virus’s twin brother; the virus attacked the humans and the twin attacks the economy. As we can see economic giants like China and USA are already coughing blood and we in the third world can expect the economic depression to be even more severe.
It was USA President Donald Trump who coined the phrase “America first!” Now with the cloud of economic recession, it will be “Americans first!” “Chinese first!”, “South Africans first!”, etc., etc. During a recession many people will withdraw and look inward, like tortoise, it is not the best time to be a foreigner in a strange land!
I agree, as the economic recession drags on the trickle of Zimbabweans returning home will grow into a flood. The tragedy is they are coming back to a Zimbabwe that will have nothing to offer them.
Indeed, if the nation still does nothing to end the curse of bad governance, they will be returning to a country performing far worse than it should. There is nothing to show Zimbabweans have learnt the lesson and will now take their responsibility to end the curse of bad governance with the seriousness the matter demands.
@Ed
ReplyDelete“People lie as if Mdc was the only party to implement reforms. They tried but were blocked by Zanu pf. Remember all ministries responsible for such reforms were under Zanu pf and Mdc were deployed onto social welfare ministries,” you argue.
“Zanu pf was and remains the sole author of our problems.”
It has been said that George Orwell’s Animal Farm is “a sequence of direct if allegorised allusions to the betrayal of the Russian Revolution by Stalin and his acolytes. The treacherous treatment meted to Trotsky, the purges and show trials, the fudges of the Nazi – Soviet pact, and the exploitation of popular decency by a new elite for their own advantage and survival.”
Yes the book is all the above but more, significantly particularly for us in Zimbabwe and other third world countries; Animal Farm explains why Major’s dream of creating an just and egalitarian society was doomed to fail because the majority of the animals had no idea what the dream entailed.
So, when the pigs started corrupting the system for their own selfish gain, the rest of the animals did nothing because they saw nothing wrong, they had no template to compare it with. Even when the pigs started to ignore or change the rules, the animals were helpless to challenge them because they could not remember the original rule.
“Their most faithful disciples were the two cart-horses, Boxer and Clover. These two had great difficulty in thinking anything for themselves, but having once accepted the pigs as their teachers they absorbed everything that they were told, and passed it on to the other animals by simple arguments,” Orwell wrote.
“Boxer could not get beyond the letter D!”
You, ED are worse than Boxer. You blind loyalty to MDC leaders has fogged your shallow mind, you have completely failed to understand what the GNU was about, even after so many detailed explanations. Worse still, you claim MDC leaders “tried to implement the reforms but Zanu PF blocked them!” Chamisa himself has said otherwise!
“Chamisa: We went into GNU with no plan, sat and ate!” screamed the headlines in New Zimbabwe July 2019.
“We got in the inclusive government and just sat there, spent five years in there. We came out without doing anything,” said Nelson Chamisa.
“We will not do that, dialogue must have timelines that are very clear, the international community must tick us, mark us on the boxes.”
So having failed to learn beyond the letter D of the political alphabet your imbecilic mind has misread “sitting, eating and doing nothing” to means “tried but were blocked by Zanu PF!”
As long as the majority of the Zimbabwe electorate are brain-dead and cannot even see leaders like Mugabe, Mnangagwa, Tsvangirai, Chamisa, etc. for the corrupt, incompetent and sell-outs they are, even when presented with a mountain of evidence; Zimbabwe’s hopes of democracy and good governance will remain a forlorn pipe dream. We, just like Animal Farm, are doom to be ruled by corrupt, incompetent and vote rigging thugs.
Zimbabwe's only fighting chance of the corona virus is for the country to test, track and isolate. Once the virus start spreading like wild fire, the battle is lost; we have no health care resources to help the sick and dying and no effective lockdown system to isolate large numbers of people.
ReplyDeleteZimbabwe's ongoing lockdown is just a waste of time because it is not working. Isolation is impossible when five people or more live in a two roomed house, the family unit has to interact with twenty plus other units on a daily basis because they share the same water source, toilet, meet to buy food, etc.
Until last week Zimbabwe had only done 500 or so test with over 10 confirmed corona virus cases, this was woefully inadequate considering none of the cases were not in quarantine. Working on a conservative estimate of an infected person meeting 5 people a day so by the end of the first the number of infected is 6, second day 6x6 and so for so by the end of the first week we should be testing 279 936! To have tested only 500 is but a sick joke!
All 36 tested in Bulawayo yesterday were negative while one of the 74 tested in Harare was positive. Bulawayo now has 10 cases while Harare has nine.
ReplyDeleteThe ministry said one of the patients, identified as case Number 16 has passed on the virus to four other people:
1. A four-year-old girl
2. A 10-year-old
3. A 34-year-old
4. And a16-year-old.
Patient number 15 had also passed on the virus to a 54-year-old woman.
All were said to be stable and on self-isolation at home with mild disease.
Zimbabwe declared a 21-day national lockdown which started on 30 March and ends on Sunday.
President Emmerson Mnangagwa said his government will decide either on 20 or 21 April whether to extend the lockdown or not, but the government was urged to announce any extension in advance to allow people to prepare.
The lockdown was not well planned and carefully thought out. The reason why the regime wanted the lockdown is because using force appeals to them. They will retain the lockdown for the same foolish reason.
The lockdown is causing a lot of economic hardships and crippling the little economic activities that were still taking place.
Lifting the lockdown when the infection numbers are rising does not make sense and yet retaining the lockdown when it is not doing anything, worse still, causing serious economic hardship for no gain is insane. Sadly, we are a nation governed by the insane!