"The politics are being shaped from the market, it is
as if we are being told, if you won't have MDC-Alliance for an opposition then
we will create an opposition for you through illicit market activities, through
illicit NGOs, through disgruntled unions and through embassies mostly so given
to making anti-government statements,” George Charamba, Mnangagwa presidential
spokesperson, confessed.
“When you coalesce that you will realise that we are in a
phase where destabilisation has assumed a market form. The calculation was a
health sector led generalised public strike, we are aware of such plots."
The greatest threat to any sitting government’s hold on
power comes from the people who become restless if they believe government is no
doing enough to help them meet their needs and aspirations. The people of
Zimbabwe are disgruntled because this Zanu PF government has failed to meet their
basic needs of employment, decent housing, education for their children, etc.
Instead of taking the blame on the cheek, after 40 years of bad governance turn
the other cheek, the regime is illicit market, illicit NGO, etc. How typical!
Last year the WB reported that 34% of the people in Zimbabwe
were living in abject poverty, i.e. they could not afford one decent meal a day
much less education for their children, basic health care and other necessities
of life. In comparison, all the other countries in the region had single digit
percentages living in abject poverty.
The corona virus pandemic has only added yet another layer
of hardships to the existing ones. And so, even more people are now living in
abject poverty. Worse still; with Zanu PF refusing to step down so meaningful democratic
reforms can finally be implement and thus end the curse of rigged elections and
bad governance; all signs are the situation is set to get worse and not better.
IMF, WB and many donors have stopped giving Zimbabwe any assistance,
they are fearful the donation will be looted by the ruling elite, especially in
these corona virus times when there are
so many nations in need of help and who would put the donations to good use. Zimbabwe
has earned itself a reputation as a Banana Republic and we are paying dearly
for it!
There is no doubt the tragic situation in which so many
people are forced to live in abject poverty is morally and politically reprehensible
and unsustainable. So far, Zanu PF has use brute force to stop street protests
and other forms of public dissent. But history tells us that human beings are
not sheep to go quietly to the slaughter; no amount of brutal oppression can
keep the people quiet forever. The country’s worsening economic situation is
fuelling the people’s anger and frustration and one of these days the wall that
has held them back all these years will finally burst releasing a tsunami wave that
will sweep away all before it.
“It is the economy, stupid!” said former US President Bill
Clinton.
Lucky for President Clinton the US economy has doing very, very
well, thank you. And the people voted for him back into office for a second
term regardless of his womanizing and other scandals.
Mnangagwa is not so lucky, he is cursed, the Zimbabwe economy
is not only in deep, deep trouble but, worse still, he has no clue what to do
and his blundering incompetence and addiction to corruption are making a bad
situation worse.
The people of Zimbabwe themselves are becoming increasing
aware that they have a grime choice. Either they grab the nettle and demand
that this illegitimate Zanu PF regime steps down so the nation can finally
implement the reforms and end the curse of rigged elections and bad governance.
Or do nothing and let the regime drag them deeper and deeper into this man-made
hell-on-earth Zanu PF created.
40 years of Zanu PF gross mismanagement and rampant
corruption have ignited such a fierce economic meltdown, everything is melting.
The intense heat generated by the economic meltdown is becoming unbearable even
Zanu PF hardliners are getting restless. There is talk of yet another military
coup. So, the regime is now living in fear of a military coup and/or civil
unrest!
Mnangagwa can blame the illicit market, the sanctions
imposed by the west, the corona virus (new kid on the block), [even he cannot
blame MDC given the party have lost all credibility], etc. for the people’s
restlessness. These are all scapegoat; the political unrest in being caused by
the economic meltdown and it is his own his own addiction to corruption and his
blundering incompetence that is fuelling the economic meltdown.
The EU ambassador said Zimbabwe had failed to pursue economic reforms leading to the end of the International Monetary Fund Staff-Monitored Programme, thereby blocking the path that could lead to debt relief.
ReplyDelete"(On) getting international credit from international financial institutions and the West, the issue there is that it's not a punishment against Zimbabwe that these credits are not flowing, it's just the historical consequence that Zimbabwe, since the late 1990s, did not pay these debts. It defies banking logic to continue to extend debts to someone who is not paying," he said.
On the political front, the EU said it remained worried over allegations of abductions and human rights violations in Zimbabwe and the failure by President Emmerson Mnangagwa's government to break from the past.
"We have been discussing with the authorities that Zimbabwe wants to make a break with the past, a very crucial part of the break is to end human rights violations. I think there is a willingness to turn the page," he said
Zimbabwe has had the problem of bad governance for the last 40 years; we, the ordinary Zimbabweans, have done nothing about it all these years and now the chicken are coming home to roost in the billions. The country’s economy is in total meltdown, unemployment has soared to 90%, education, health and many other basic services have all but collapsed and overlay to all these problems the challenge brought about by the corona virus.
As of 2019 34% of Zimbabwe’s population was already living in abject poverty, they could not afford even one decent meal a day. The situation is a lot worse now.
The ruling elite are not interested in doing something to end the corruption because they are benefiting from the corrupt and bad governance. It is for us to the people to demand the implementation of the reforms and end the curse of bad governance. After 40 years of this circus it is understandable why the EU, IMF and the rest have given up helping Zimbabwe; we have not shown any willingness to help ourselves! It is for us to make sure we have a competent and honest government or pay dearly for it!
Here we go we have more and more returnees testing positive suggesting the quarantine centres themselves are corona virus hotspots! We have already said the unhygienic conditions and the fact that these returnees are being allowed to mix.
ReplyDeleteThe number of covid-19 cases has been rising and yet the number of tests remains low. We have done 650 tests and given the number of returnees this means we are hardly testing suspected cases in the local community.
The nation is being deceived on the seriousness of the corona virus in Zimbabwe and will pay dearly for it – in terms of the human suffering and deaths! Zanu PF is hoping to get some brownie points for having some of the lowest confirmed covid-19 cases and deaths but it is totally unacceptable that innocent people should be the one paying for the points with their suffering and lives!
MDC-T leader Thokozani Khupe has sprung a surprise expulsion from parliament of 8 Senators.
ReplyDeleteMDC have hit the self-destruct button and there is no going back!
THE Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission (Zacc) is having a massive headache trying to recover billions of dollars stashed outside the country in the form of funds and properties, the Daily News reports.
ReplyDeleteThis comes after the organisation in February this year said it had identified properties worth over US$7 billion, which are proceeds of crime, outside the country.
The chairperson of ZACC is the wife of Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sibusiso Moyo. Minister Moyo was the Major General who announce the 15 November 2017 military coup. He was then one of the top brass in the Army together with VP Chiwenga and Minister Shiri. It is no secret that the Army, Police and CIO each has had a diamond mining concession in Marange and Chiadzwa from which Augustine Chihuru got the US$32 bounty he is being asked to explain now. Moyo, Chiwenga and Shiri have not been asked to do the same only because they are in power and Moyo’s wife will never ask her husband to explain where he got his loot! Never!
ZACC cannot stamp out corruption because it is answerable to the godfathers of corruption. “ZACC inogo gona kugomera pasina chinobuda!” as one would say in Shona.
This is just nonsense, the proposed new GNU of Zanu PF and MDC will be a Zanu PF government in all but name. The new GNU will never implement any meaning democratic reforms and so the next elections will be another rigged elections. We are just going round and round in circles and someone thinks that is progress. How naive!
ReplyDeleteThe solution is that Zanu PF is illegitimate and it must step down. We cannot allow Zanu PF to continue to hold the nation to ransom. As long as Zanu PF is allowed to hold the nation hostage, there will be no getting out of the hell-on-earth the regime has dragged us into!
In 1993, F W de Klerk and Nelson Mandela were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their work in ending apartheid. Most people have accepted Mandela a worthy recipient of the prestigious award. However, many people have questioned de Klerk’s as merit; given he was as President of the apartheid South Africa responsible to the injustice and reign of terror the regime inflicted on the blacks.
ReplyDeleteIt was F W de Klerk, of all the white South African leaders, who realised the futility of the apartheid regime at a time when the regime still had plenty of gas in the tank to carry-on. How much longer, no one can say for certain but there is no doubt the regime had the economic wealth and military muscle to have resisted black majority rule for a few more years.
In 1979 the South African government told Ian Douglas Smith that they were not going give him any more military and economic assistance. Smith’s army was already struggling to contain the Zanla and Zipra black freedom fights even with SA’s help; it was hopeless without the help. It was only after a long hard look over the edge of the precipice that forced Smith to the negotiating table.
In the late Robert Mugabe and now Emmerson Mnangagwa we have leaders who have not only peeped over the precipice but have seen many innocent souls push over the edge to their death and still they will not accept that the de facto one-party dictatorship is doomed. 40 years of corrupt and tyrannical Zanu PF misrule have seen Zimbabwe lose its coveted breadbasket of the region accolade to the point Zimbabwe is now relying on imported food aid. We are starving in the land which is still for all intent and purpose the Biblical Garden of Eden – a damning testimonial in failed leadership.
As you rightly said, 34% of our people are living in heart breaking abject poverty, our education and health care have all but collapsed, etc., etc. And yet Mnangagwa will still hang on to power, he will never ever accept that he and his Zanu PF regime have failed and must step down.
Mnangagwa is not like F W de Klerk who was smart enough to accept apartheid was doomed without having to go full steam ahead to the bitter end. Mnangagwa is determined to go the whole hog and damn the consequences! It will probably take a violent uprising similar to the one that ousted the late Colonel Muammar Gaddafi of Libya to remove Mnangagwa from power.
It is now near a decade since Gaddafi was killed and yet civil war in Libya is rages on and on. Such is the fate that awaits Zimbabwe if Mnangagwa and his Zanu PF regime drags the nation over the edge into the abyss!
@ Mark Matthews
Delete“For people to wish what's going on in Libya to Zimbabwe is beyond me but i live to tell that, it doesn't mean I don't feel or see the suffering of people, no household have been built on handouts, NGO are a curse to Africa because we accept everything there is much worse poverty in Asia but they have a different faith hence you don't see much activity about NGO because there is no mineral worth, Africa sustains the world hence this hyena in chicken feathers.”
I do agree with you there Africa’s dependence on aid has allowed our people to believe they are totally helpless; so helpless many have stopped thinking for themselves. I do not believe that we need someone to come from Europe or North America to tell that we should not be drinking water from a shallow well in this day and age! Alas there are many, many people across Africa who still continue to drink dirty water to this day.
What would it take to dig a three or four-metre deep well complete with a wall to stop dirty water flowing into the well? In Zimbabwe unemployment is 90% and so there are plenty of people with time to kill!
A nation that cannot think for itself is doomed. Of course, we are doomed to blunder from pillar to post and it is no wonder the country and continent, Zimbabwe and Africa, are in a real mess! Unless we open our eyes, we are doomed to remain the dark continent, the richest in terms of resources and yet its people are the poorest because they have never learned the true value of the resources.
The 40 years of gross mismanagement and rampant corruption has left the Zimbabwe’s economy in ruins and the tragic consequences of the people. If anyone thought the suffering and deaths would gourde Zimbabweans out of their sloth-like slumber; that has not happened, at least not yet! 34% of the population are living in abject poverty but clearly that is not enough!
Still, the economic meltdown is set to get a lot worse, the 34% is set to go up. Those who will not learn from their past mistakes are destined to repeat the same mistakes and, as we can see, there is a heavy price to be paid for repeats!
Mater Dei Hospital has announced that it will be charging US$ 60 for casualty and US$3000 for a general ward and then US$5000 for ICU for all patients with Coronavirus.
ReplyDeleteMater Dei Hospital is a private institution and should be allowed to charge whatever it likes and if the charges are excessive then market forces will force it to bring them down. We should be concerned about the ruling elite who have been seeking their health care needs outside the at exorbitant prices all paid by the taxpayers! One positive thing to come out of the corona virus pandemic is most travel outside the country has stopped and the chefs are now forced to seek their health care service in Zimbabwe. Mater Dei Hospital will have plenty of ruling elite and their cronies as clients!
Public hospitals like Mpilo Hospital will charge modest fees but then the service is mediocre or worse! Right now the nurses and doctors are on strike and so even the substandard service is not there. Public institutions have been starved of funds they are a shadow of what they were in 1980! The ruling elite let the local institutions go to the dogs because they got the five-star service outside the country!
Whilst the country’s hospitals and school have allowed to rot and decay Zimbabwe has seen doom in the building Blue Roof type palatial mansions. We have had 40 years of midsummer madness and it is not yet over, not as long as Zanu PF remains in office exercising absolute power.
@ Ryton Dzimiri
DeleteKick them out on what charges?
If you can offer the same health care service for less, or better still for nothing, then please go ahead and open your own hospitals and clinics in every city, town, growth point and village!
The real saboteours are the ruling elite who starved our local health care service of the funds to pay for their health care needs in distant lands. You have never said a word against them! How anyone can be so shallow, thick and slow; beggars belief!
@ Bhani
DeleteIf Mnangagwa can rig elections he will have no problem rigging the auction. If he allowed someone else to out bid him, you can be certain he will be banking the cash and still remain president!
We appeal to our government, once again, to do some serious soul-searching and put in place policies that will help pull the country out of its current mess. What they have done so far has proved ineffective.
ReplyDeleteThe government must stop the business of seeing economic saboteurs everywhere and confront the elephant in the room - corruption.
Mnangagwa and his senior Zanu PF cronies are the godfathers of corruption and to believe that the cobra can ever be moved to bite one of its own much less bite itself is very naive, to say the least.
Mnangagwa and his Zanu PF cronies will never acknowledge that they are responsible for Zimbabwe's economic meltdown much less that the worsening economic situation is causing the political instability. Whenever the regime acknowledges any failure on its part it is always in the context of "This is a minor problem and we are fixing it!"
ReplyDelete“Many measures have been put in place to fight corruption and the people are now free to talk about it. Officials are being arrested and before that was taboo. Now we’re talking about it, it means it’s being solved,” said Foreign Affairs and International Trade Minister Dr Sibusiso Moyo.
Yes the Mugabe regime had done nothing to stamp out corruption, it was taboo. What the Minister is conveniently ignoring is that he and the others in this Second Republic were senior members in the Mugabe regimes and are the ones who rigged elections to keep the regime in power. Worst of all the Minister talks about corruption is being solved now and yet two and half years since the booting out of Mugabe the regime is yet to arrest one diamond looting kingpin!
“This is President Mnangagwa’s election pledge card, he pledged to fulfil the fight against corruption by 2023. He asked to be measured with regards to fighting corruption by the people ahead of 2023 elections, it’s his pledge card and he is serious about fighting this scourge that is eroding the economic fibre,” continued Dr Moyo.
Soon after the 2017 military coup Mnangagwa promise "zero tolerance on corruption" and now that has moved to "ending corruption by 2023"! This is just another mirage, just like middle income by 2030, that the nation is chasing and will never catch.
The people of Zimbabwe must demand that Zanu PF steps down so the nation can implement the reforms necessary for free, fair and credible elections. The worsening economic situation is certainly helping to pile the pressure on Zanu PF to step down. The people must keep their eyes on that ball and not allow themselves to be distracted.
Minister of Finance, Professor Mthuli Ncube has already been to the IMF, WB and AfDB begging for a financial bailout to save Zimbabwe from total economic meltdown.
ReplyDelete“Zimbabwe’s economy could contract by 15-20 percent during 2020 with very serious consequences. Already 8.5 million Zimbabweans (half the population) are food insecure,” wrote Professor Ncube in his letter in April 2020.
“The global pandemic will take a heavy toll on the health sector with many lives being lost and raise poverty to levels not seen in recent times, including worsening food insecurity."
The reply was no, not until Zimbabwe address the corruption and political oppression at the heart of the country's problems.
Professor Ncube has since written to the Paris Club, again begging for a bailout. The answer was the same; until you implement political and economic reforms, there will be no financial assistance.
The economic pressure on the regime to step down is mounting. What is slow in coming is the political pressure.
The people of Zimbabwe have yet to wake-up to the reality that Mnangagwa and his irk would rather drag the whole nation over the edge of the precipice than accept they have failed and give up power. They would prefer to see the country burnt down to ashes than let anyone else rule! They consider Zimbabwe, the land and all who live there, to be their personal property by right of conquest and they will dispose of as they wish.
It is for us the people, to stand up and say no. To stand up and claim our freedoms and rights including the right to free and fair elections and the right to life as our birth rights and not privileges to be given to some and denied others at the whim of a dictator and his cronies.
We need to stand up now before Mnangagwa turn Zimbabwe into another Libya. Time is running out!