“The attainment of an upper middle economy as enshrined in the national Vision 2030 is achievable if the private sector remains committed as has been the case this year, Vice President Constantino Chiwenga said last night,” reported The Herald.
Zanu PF has claimed the same thing for the last 40 years and meanwhile the country has sunk deeper and deeper into the abyss because the ordinary Zimbabweans were denied a meaningful say in the governance of the country. Zanu PF has always rigged the elections, forging the people’s mandate to govern.
The root cause of Zimbabwe’s economic meltdown is the failure to hold free, fair and credible elections. The nation has been stuck with a corrupt, incompetent and murderous regime for 40 years and counting.
Zimbabwe was middle income nation in 1980 and 40 years of gross mismanagement and rampant corruption has dragged the nation into the gutter. Zimbabwe is one of the poorest nation on earth. Unemployment has soared to 90%, basic services such as education and health care have all but totally collapsed.
A 2019 WB report said 34% of our people were living in “extreme poverty” i.e. they could not afford one decent meal a day let alone other basic necessities of life such as education for the children and health care. No doubt the corona virus pandemic has made turned a tragic situation into a catastrophe; the number of Zimbabweans living in extreme poverty is going to soar way above 34%!
Zimbabwe has been hit particularly hard by the pandemic because the country’s economy and health service were already in a mess before the corona virus outbreak. Zimbabwe was caught with its pants down!
"With millions of Zimbabweans devastated by a year of drought, rising hyperinflation and COVID-19, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) today appealed for an additional US$204 million to support over four million of the most food insecure over the next six months," said Francesca Erdelmann, WFP Zimbabwe's representative, in the statement this week.
"More than half of Zimbabweans in the rural areas are left with 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.”
Zimbabweans are starving in a country that, before Zanu PF seized the farms and gave them mainly to the ruling elite and their cronies, prided itself in producing enough to feed her own people with plenty leftover to be the breadbasket of the region. Since the farm seizures the country has become a basket case of a failed state, a Banana Republic, a pariah state!
As long as Zimbabwe remains a pariah state ruled by corrupt and vote rigging thugs the country’s relentless economic decline will continue.
What Zimbabwe needs desperately is to implement the democratic reforms to ensure 2023 elections are free, fair and credible and finally end the curse of rigged elections and bad governance.
In August, the Cabinet Committee on National Peace and Reconciliation tasked the Ministry of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs to draft a law that prohibits citizens from conniving with hostile foreign governments to harm the country.
ReplyDeletePrinciples of the Patriot Bill have now been drafted. Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ziyambi Ziyambi is now expected to table the principles in Cabinet.
Zanu PF has been hurrying, harassing and intimidating its critics at every turn for the last 40 years and this will just be another tool in its tool box with which to get at its critics. The regime rigged the July 2018 elections, giving itself all the political muscle to do as it pleases, and it will have this law passed.