"As we end today's Cabinet session, which is the last for the year 2020, it is imperative that we take stock of some of the achievements in our journey towards the attainment of Vision 2030," Mnangagwa said in his closing remarks at the final Cabinet meeting of the year.
"The year has recorded a number of successes, which would not have been possible without your commitment to duty and excellent performance."
For the last 40 years, without exception, Zanu PF has claimed the country was moving in the right direction to achieve its main objective of mass prosperity, “Gutsva ruzhinji!”, as Mugabe never tired of saying it. Many times the nation has been told whatever hardship the nation was going through, it was all part of the plain, these were necessary short term hardships to secure long term gains.
The truth is the short term hardships have all stayed. Instead of building on what we inherited from the whites in 1980 we have been busy destroying it.
Decades of poor investment in the electricity industry has left the country with less power generating capacity than it had in 1980. More often than not, one or more, out of the six, Hwange Thermal Power Station generators are off for one reason or other. The three Thermal Power Stations, one each in Harare, Bulawayo and Munyati, have long been decommissioned.
The white government had plans for two more generating unit at Hwange and had completed the feasibility studies for Batoka Gorge Hydro, a second Kariba Dam. If it had not been for the civil war, these two projects would have been completed by the late 1980s.
This Zanu PF government is hoping to finally have the two new generators commissioned at Hwange Power Station by 2023, 30 years later, and the regime is over the moon about its achievement.
"As a result, of the power generation projects being implemented, the country should be self-sufficient and become a net exporter of power by 2023," said Mnangagwa.
Well Zimbabwe has lost many of its heavy industrial companies, ZISCO, ZIMASCO, Sable Chemicals, ZIM ALLOYS, etc., still the addition of the two generator at Hwange will not be enough to meet country’s power demands. As for becoming a net exporter of electricity, that is just wishful thinking.
According to Mnangagwa the country will finally attain the mass prosperity, attain upper middle income status, in 10 years time, Vision 2030. This is just mirage and Mnangagwa himself knows it!
Corruption remains the number one impediment to economic recovery in Zimbabwe; Mnangagwa acknowledge this when he declare “zero tolerance of corruption!” It has been three years since he took over from Mugabe and he has failed to stamp out corruption.
In 2016 Robert Mugabe admitted the nation was being “swindled out of US$ 15 billion in diamonds revenue alone”! A staggering fortune for any country but much more for Zimbabwe whose GPD is US$10 billion.
Mugabe has never arrested one diamond swindler nor recover one swindled dollar. Mnangagwa has not done any better and we know why.
It was none other than Mugabe and his cabinet who granted the diamond mining concessions in which the holder had no legal obligation to keep records of the quantity and quality of diamonds, to whom the diamonds were sold and for how much, how the spoils were shared out, etc. With no records the holder and his partners had no legal cooperate or individual tax obligations. None!
Of course, the diamond mining concession were a licence to loot!
Naturally, it was not every Tom, Dick and Harry who got the diamond mining concessions. The concessions were granted to the top brass in the Army, Police, CIO and Prison Services, a select few from Zanu PF.
The top brass in the security services also belonged to the Joint Operations Command, a Junta headed by Mugabe with Mnangagwa as his assistant. Mugabe has corrupted the country’s security services turning them into departments of Zanu PF in all but name.
The Police, Army, etc. have all played a major role in establishing and retaining the de facto one-party, Zanu PF, dictatorship. The diamond looting licences were a thank you to Junta members from Zanu PF for a job well done.
When Mnangagwa took over from Mugabe, he did so with the active assistance of the top brass in the Army. He rewarded the the key individuals in plotting and executing the coup by granting them senior positions in his government. The Junta is still his power base and so he has not cancelled any of the diamond looting licences.
Indeed, Mnangagwa has used the diamond looting licence as a template to grant the Army, CIO, etc. new licences in other areas.
Mnangagwa also promised to hold free, fair and credible elections but, as we all know, he went on to rig the July 2018 elections.
Mnangagwa’s “Zimbabwe is open for business!” is dead in the water. All the harp about the flood of investors never materialised. Investors are a shrewd and savvy lot, they knew it was going to take a lot more than some clever marketing to turn a dictatorship into a healthy democracy.
By blatantly rigging the July 2018 elections, doing nothing to end corruption, etc. Mnangagwa left no one in any doubt that Zimbabwe was still a dictatorship or be it under a new dictator.
Zimbabwe is a pariah state, ruled by corrupt, incompetent, vote rigging and murderous thugs. And as long as the country remains a pariah state, there will never be any meaningful economic recovery.
“Achievements in our journey towards the attainment of Vision 2030!” It is one thing talking about a mirage in broad day but only a first class village idiot will believe a mirage by star-light!
For the last 40 years Zanu PF has insisted the nation is going to enjoy economic prosperity in the "near future", vision 2030 is the latest one of the near future. The truth is the country has suffered a steady decline for the last 40 years and millions now live in abject poverty.
ReplyDeleteMnangagwa is claiming there have been many successes showing we are on track to achieve vision 2030. All the evidence show the economic meltdown of the last 10 tens is getting worse, nothing has changed.
You are right, MDC are a tea-party and not a political party. Given the MDC leaders have already proven beyond all doubt that they are breathtakingly corrupt and incompetent, it is naive to expect the party to be anything other than a tea-party.
ReplyDeleteWITH millions of Zimbabweans devastated by a year of drought, rising hyperinflation and Covid-19, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) Thursday appealed for an additional US$204 million to support over four million of the most food insecure over the next six months.
ReplyDelete“The appeal comes ahead of the ‘lean’ season, which risks pushing some 6.9 million people—nearly half of Zimbabwe’s population—into hunger by its March peak, according to the most recent national data,” the WFP Zimbabwe’s representative, Francesca Erdelmann said in a statement.
“That includes roughly one-third of the rural population, who are expected to face “crisis” or “emergency” levels of hunger, and 2.3 million hungry urban dwellers. Others are spared from falling deeper into acute hunger thanks to assistance from WFP and partners.
“More than half of Zimbabweans in the rural areas are left no alternative but to skip meals, reduce portion size or sell off precious belongings in order to cope. We are deeply concerned that if WFP does not receive enough funding to reach the four million people it intends to families will be further pushed to the limit.”
We must never ever forget that Zimbabwe was once upon a time the breadbasket of the regime and now she is the basket case of a failed state, a Banana Republic ruled by corrupt, incompetent, vote rigging thugs.
We had the golden opportunity to end the Zanu PF dictatorship during the 2018 to 2013 GNU; the opportunity was wasted by the corrupt and incompetent MDC leaders. And since then the opposition have given the vote rigging Zanu PF legitimacy by participating in flawed and illegal elections.
Zimbabwe is in a real economic and political mess and it is all man-made!