Zimbabwe's rural povo are impoverished deliberately, they are medieval serfs, for selfish political gain. W Mukori

 Moving Beyond Paperwork: Why Africa’s ‘Resource Curse’ is a Crisis of Academic Inaction

By Akson Potera

As the continent prepares to mark Africa Day, I must state plainly: Africa’s persistent “poverty paradox” is not a failure of intellect, but a profound failure of execution.

For decades, African universities, think tanks, and policymakers have generated mountains of compelling research diagnosing the continent’s economic stagnation. Yet, despite being home to some of the world’s richest natural and physical resources, our local communities remain trapped in a cycle of severe unemployment. The root of this problem lies in institutional inertia. The academics who write the blueprints are failing to implement their own recommendations.

The knowledge is there. What we face is a stark theory-practice gap where vital research remains confined to lecture halls and policy briefs rather than being deployed on the ground. Traditional, top-down economic models have repeatedly failed to convert vast natural wealth into localised prosperity.

To break this gridlock, I and the Fastforward Community Development Centre (FCDC-SA) are championing a radical shift toward grassroots industrialisation through the Local Asset-Based Employment Creation and Community-Based Industrial Development (LABEC-CBID) framework. This model circumvents sluggish state bureaucracies by focusing entirely on self-reliance. Instead of waiting for foreign direct investment or distant state intervention, LABEC-CBID identifies and mobilises existing community assets—such as local skills, land, and raw materials—and converts them into immediate employment drivers.

Crucially, the strategy hinges on Community-Based Industrial Development (CBID). By establishing micro-manufacturing and small-scale industrial hubs directly within townships and rural areas, we ensure that wealth circulates locally rather than leaking out to multinational corporations.

Turning this philosophy into action requires a pragmatic, five-stage approach that I urge governments to adopt:

1. Strategic Planning and Mapping: Define clear local employment targets and audit community strengths.

2. Targeted Identification: Pinpoint high-unemployment zones and determine what specific industries those areas can realistically support.

3. Resource Mobilisation: Aggressively secure infrastructure, seed funding, and community-led partnerships.

4. Inclusive Skills Training: Provide practical, “second-chance” technical training to marginalised workers who lack formal academic qualifications, instantly making them employable.

5. Execution and Monitoring: Launch the local hubs with rigorous, ongoing monitoring to ensure long-term sustainability.

As Africa Day approaches, my message is clear: true liberation and economic sovereignty will not come from more academic papers. It will come when African communities transition from being passive consumers of external goods to active, self-sustaining producers and innovators.”

Every interesting!

In Zimbabwe many people have argued that rural folk must be given title deeds to the few acres of land on which their mud huts stand. This would give these people confidence to build decent houses and develop the land by planting fruit trees, digging wells for clean water, etc. 

Zanu PF, just like the white regime before it, has stubbornly refuse to give povo title deed. Giving blacks title deeds will give them the confidence to demand political rights next. Smith was not going to give blacks the right to vote, period. Zanu PF ruling elite are denying povo title deeds to land for the same selfish political reason! 

In Zimbabwe it is not the academic who is hold up progress, povo will do wonders to lift themselves out of poverty. It is the politicians who are holding povo and  the nation at large hostage! Zanu PF is dishing out title deeds to Chinese, foreigners, as if there is no tomorrow but will not give one acre to the rural blacks. Property rights are recognised for the ruling elite and foreigners but not povo!

The liberation war was fought over land first and foremost. Great liberation icons like the late Chief Rekayi Tangwena must be spinning in their grave to know that 46 years after independence millions continue to be denied the right to own even a postage stamp size piece of land!

Zimbabwe is a failed state - consequence of 46 years blundering from pillar to post living the Zanu PF lies. W Mukori

 Zimbabwe is a failed nation - fact!

Why is Zimbabwe a failed nation, a pariah state, blundering from pillar to post and sinking deeper and deeper into this man-made hell-on-earth Z anu PF has landed us in? Yes it is Zanu PF that dragged us into this hell-hole and has kept us there. How? By stifling all meaningful debate and democratic discourse on the one hand and sparing no expense on promoting lies, misinformation and propaganda to drown the truth.

For 46 years and counting the nation has been forced to follow a disastrous path . Many could see it is the wrong path but they either did not dare say so or heir voices were drowned by the regime or worse.

A nation that disregard the truth is like a man forced to run with a blindfold. Of course, he will blunder from pillar to post. Zanu PF thugs are the ones who have tied the blindfold on the nation for their own selfish reason - how else could they have retained their absolute power on the nation. We must fight to remove the blindfold or this nation is going to sink deeper and deeper into the abyss.

Temba Mliswa, you, Mnangagwa, Chiwenga, the war veterans, the army, Police, etc. were key pillars of the the First Republic. You all played your part in keeping Mugabe in power even to the extend of carrying out the barbarism of 2008 Operation Mavhotera Papi.

Mugabe had accepted defeat in the March 2008 vote and it was none other than Mnangagwa and Chiwenga who forced him to stay. The two orchestrated the 2017 military coup that ousted Mugabe.

You are clearly exaggerating the role of the war veterans played in the 2017 military coup and down playing that of the army. It was the army not war veterans who drove the tanks and it was soldiers not Victor Matemadanda & co. who stormed State House in the small hours of 15 th November 2017.

The so-called Second Republic has been but a continuation of the First Republic the promise to stamp out corruption , hold free, fair and credible elections, etc., etc. have not been honoured. Indeed, many believe the Second Republic is worse than the First! For one thing corruption, which was bad under Mugabe has gone into overdrive.

Mnangagwa has always been at Mugabe's side from the Mozambique days and became the dictator's most trusted henchman. In the 2008 Operation Mavhotera Papi Mugabe did not have the leash on Mnangagwa and the latter demonstrated the depth of barbarism he would sink to!

Many people have died especially in the army and war veterans and considered to be VP Chiwenga allies. Mnangagwa and VP Chiwenga were allies in the fight to secure ,power from Mugabe but as soon as that was done, Mnangagwa started eyeing Chiwenga as his greatest enemy!

The Second Republic is a curse to Zimbabwe and no amount of propaganda can ever change that.

******

Temba Mliswa stop insulting our intelligence with you lies and nonsense. Was it the war veterans who drove the tanks and stormed Mugabe's home in the small hours of 15 November 2017 or it was Army Soldiers? So the war veterans supported the Army and not the other way round as you claim!

Operation Restore Legacy and Second Republic are just a continuation of the First Republic. Indeed, if anything, things are much worse under Mnangagwa than they were under Mugabe; corruption has gone into overdrive and the fog of fear is thicker now than ever!

Zimbabwe is a failed state because the nation has never been allowed to have open and honest debate nor benefit from vigorous  democratic discourse and competition. CAB3 will only drag the nation even deeper into the abyss. This must end if the nation is ever going to get out of this hell-on-earth Zanu PF has landed us in

CAB3 passed with 216 YES and 42 NO. Real surprise is that millions are SURPRISED! W Mukori

 The controversial Constitution of Zimbabwe Amendment (No. 3) Bill (CAB3) has cleared a major hurdle after securing the constitutionally required two-thirds majority in the National Assembly, moving it a step closer to becoming law.

The Bill sailed through Parliament on Thursday after 216 legislators voted in favour of the proposed constitutional changes while 42 voted against.

The real surprise here is that there are many out there who are surprised the bill passed! Zanu PF blatantly rigged the 2023 elections, a more complex process, it is therefore naive the even imagine the regime would have any problem rigging the constitutional amendment process, a process in which the regime can do as it damn well pleases! 

After 46 years of Zanu PF rigging elections one would have thought every Zimbabwean out there has finally token up to the reality of not only that Zanu PF was rigging the elections but also that nothing of substance can ever be accomplished until this curse is dealt with. So why are so many Zimbabweans surprised?

There is one fundamental reason why millions of Zimbabweans are surprised CAB3 is sailing through: IGNORANCE!

Yes, Zanu PF has been rigged elections for donkey years now and got away with it every time because whilst many people have realised there was something wrong with the electoral process very few have ever understood enough detail to comprehend what is going on. 

Election processes are not rocket science, that citizens should have a meaningful say in the governance of the country are not such abstract ideas in this day and age. The ancient Greeks figured this out 2 500 years ago; all others who have followed had only to embrace the ideas. 

Why we are strangling to comprehend what constitute free, fair and credible elections speaks volumes of our ignorance. 

Both Zanu PF and their corrupt and incompetent political side-kick, MDC/CCC, have taken advantage of the millions of Zimbabweans out there who have no clue what is going on to rig elections and/or con them to participate in flawed processes, “so flawed, so illegal, the only logical step is to withdraw. As long as there are millions of Zimbabweans out there who are so slow, shallow and thick they do not know what constitute free and fair elections; Zimbabwe will never escape out of the hell-hole we find ourselves in.  

The 42 participated in the flawed elections "so flawed, so illegal the only logical step was to withdraw." They did not withdraw and participated to give Zanu PF legitimacy out of greed. They knew Zanu PF was offering a few gravy train seats to entice the opposition to participate no matter how flawed and illegal the process got. They found the bait irresistible! 

Ever since taking up the gravy train seats, Zanu PF has dished out more and more freebies cars, land to build houses, US$150 000 for development, etc., etc. They have had their moments in parliament and denounce the regime, CAB3, etc. 

These are the classical mother-hen moments making a big show of chasing the eagle that has just snatched her chick! The tragedy is how many people have fallen for empty show! The 42 are now national heroes when their participation in the flawed process GAVE the 2023 elections legitimacy and what else followed that was unavoidable. The damage was participating in the flawed process out of greed! 

42 CCC MPs voted NO to CAB3 and 35 voted YES!

A closer look at the two lists shows an interesting contradiction: many of those accused of being sellouts actually voted “No” to CAB3, while a number of those regarded as standing for the citizens voted “Yes.” It’s quite a surprising outcome.

The damage of giving Zanu PF legitimacy was done when these leaders decided to participate in the flawed elections knowing fully well that doing so would give Zanu PF legitimacy. They did this out of greed. Those CCC leaders who have made a big song and dance about criticising Zanu PF, CAB3, etc., are just playing to the gallery. Only the naive and gullible will fall for this! 

Zimbabweans keep blaming the wrong people for economic decay Derrick Wini Dari

 @ Derrick Wini Dari

Zimbabweans keep blaming the wrong people for economic decay Bulawayo 24 17 June 2026

“There is a comfortable consensus forming in our economic conversations. The vendor on the pavement is the problem. The tuckshop on the corner is the problem. The hawker selling cheap imported wares is the problem. The argument is repeated by economists, ministers, columnists, and city fathers. And the question that always follows is the same: how do we formalise them? But there is a paradox hiding in that question that almost no one stops to examine. How do you formalise something that is already formal? The vendor is already inside the system, already contributing to the fiscus in more ways than they are ever credited for. It is a tidy story, then, but it is also wrong, and we have spent years trying to fix the one part of the chain that was never broken.

Let me begin with what is true, because honesty has to start there. Informality in Zimbabwe is now structural rather than peripheral. Roadside vending reflects distress rather than triumph. Cheap, often counterfeit imports are hollowing out what remains of our formal commerce. None of that is in dispute. The dispute is about who put us here, and who is being asked to carry the blame for it.

The Dollarisation Question

Consider the claim that dollarisation has done deeper, more irreversible damage than hyperinflation. The timeline does not support it. Deindustrialisation began in 1991 with ESAP, when manufacturing fell from 22.8 percent of GDP in 1990 to 17.1 percent by 1998. That is eighteen years before the US dollar arrived. And when it did arrive, it interrupted the collapse rather than deepening it: manufacturing swung from negative 17.1 percent in 2008 to positive 10.2 percent in 2009, and inflation dropped from billions of percent to single digits. The dollar did not kill our industry. It removed the smokescreen hiding a corpse.

What Really Killed Our Industry

What actually killed it was plant that was never retooled. To see how much that mattered, set Zimbabwe beside the nations that chose differently. In 1987 we were not far behind Malaysia in industrial terms, and ahead of much of South-East Asia in schooling. Singapore, South Korea, China and Malaysia then treated industrial upgrading almost as a national religion, reinvesting in machinery, in skills, and above all in research and development. South Korea today spends more than five percent of its economy on research and development; China and Singapore over two percent; even Malaysia around one percent. Zimbabwe's spending has languished at a fraction of one percent, much of it donor-funded. That is the most significant difference between us and them, and it has nothing to do with the dollar. While they retooled, we ran our inherited plant into the ground and called the breakdown a crisis of currency. DIMAF, the 2010 retooling facility, captures the pattern: Old Mutual put in 27 million dollars, Government defaulted on its share, and the terms were so tight that dying firms could not draw on it. By the 2010s, 63 percent of surveyed industries were operating below half capacity.

Other forces compounded this, and saying so strengthens rather than weakens the argument. Land reform collapsed agricultural productivity. The sanctions argument shaped our access to credit. Commodity swings, skills flight, power cuts and decaying infrastructure all played their part. Dollarisation itself entrenched import dependence and stripped us of monetary tools. But these forces compounded the governance failure; they did not cause the loans to go unpaid or the billions to go missing. And of all the causes, governance is the one entirely within our own hands. We cannot legislate away a commodity cycle. We can choose to account for three billion dollars.

Tracing the Real Pipeline

Now to the sharper charge, the vendor as the disease itself. The vendor is never the leaking point, and the easiest way to see it is to trace the pipeline a product travels before it reaches a stall. It starts in a foreign factory the vendor never commissioned. It passes a first gate, the inspection that Bureau Veritas has been paid for a decade to carry out before the goods even ship. It hits a second gate at the border, where under-invoicing and bribed clearance let it through; the Anti-Corruption Commission alone logged over 150 corruption cases at Beitbridge in four years. It passes a third gate, the licensed clearing agents, where insider breaches of the customs system itself have been documented. Then it reaches the importer-wholesaler, where the money actually escapes the country, because when that stock sells they take hard currency and send it back out to restock abroad. Only after all of that does it reach the vendor, who buys stock that has already cleared, or already evaded, every gate behind them, marks it up by a thin margin, and recirculates that margin here.

Pause on the phrase "breaching the customs system," because it deserves more scrutiny than it usually gets. A national system is not breached from within by accident. It is breached because it was built, or left, porous enough to be breached. And the asymmetry tells the whole story. The state can name and prosecute a clearing agent to the cent. Hold that against the three billion dollars of Command Agriculture money the Auditor-General could not account for, including close to a billion the Treasury paid directly to suppliers with no transaction detail recorded. We prosecute the small version to the cent and file the large version as an unexplained line in a report. And none of this is hidden. ZIMRA and the Ministry of Finance hold the records of who imports what, in what volume. The importer is named in a database. The vendor is anonymous on a pavement. Yet it is the anonymous one we blame, and the named one we leave alone.

Not Scandals, but Directors' Drawings

And none of this is new, nor did it begin with the dollar. As far back as 1988, the Willowgate scandal saw senior officials loot Willowvale Motor Industries, the state-owned vehicle assembler. The plant could build over four thousand cars a year but managed only fourteen hundred for lack of foreign currency. Faced with an industrial asset crippled by a forex shortage, the elite did not fix the constraint. They monetised the scarcity for themselves.

The pattern scaled. The 2007/08 Farm Mechanisation Programme procured roughly 200 million dollars of equipment, real tractors and combine harvesters, as loans to farmers. When the beneficiary list surfaced years later, it was a roll-call of the powerful: generals, judges, ministers, and presidential relatives. They did not repay. The debt was quietly converted from loan to grant and loaded onto the taxpayer through the Debt Assumption Act of 2015. The assets were real; only the repayment was fictional. Then Command Agriculture, launched in 2016, ran roughly three billion dollars of unappropriated expenditure with an 85 percent default rate, financed for years outside the budget through an oil-trading company handed the contract without an open tender.

Look at them all together, across decades and  political eras, and what emerges is something closer to directors' drawings than to public finance. The State was treated, by those with the keys, as a closely-held company they happened to run. What was called a loan was understood, by everyone involved, as something more like a withdrawal. The repayment was theatre. The default rates were not failures of recovery; they were the unspoken terms of the arrangement. Willowgate, DIMAF, Farm Mechanisation, Command Agriculture. Each touched the productive base. Each was drained from the top and the bill passed down. This is not a series of scandals. It is a habit of withdrawal, almost as old as the country itself.

********

Very interesting. 

One reason why the street vendor is blamed for everything is because he/she is an easy target. The economic collapse has continued even as the war on vendors has intensified, proof the vendors are not the problem! 

Zanu PF finally pay Matinyarare for anti- sanctions propaganda - another mercenary proud had a mother to sell. W Mukori

 Presidential advisor Paul Tungwarara says efforts to resolve grievances raised by some citizens are aimed at protecting the image of President Emmerson Mnangagwa and maintaining national focus on development.

In a statement issued on Sunday, Tungwarara said it was important to address concerns being raised publicly, particularly where individuals were using social media platforms to criticise the President over outstanding financial claims.

“We cannot tolerate a situation in which individuals continuously disparage the President under the guise of claiming outstanding dues,” Tungwarara said.

“Where it becomes necessary for us to intervene and resolve such grievances for the greater good of our leader and the nation, then we must do so decisively in order to silence unnecessary noise and refocus our collective energy on national development rather than daily propaganda, recordings and distractions.”

Tungwarara said several people who previously held grievances had since reconciled with the ruling party and pledged support for Zanu‑PF and President Mnangagwa, with some reportedly defecting from opposition ranks.

“Many individuals who previously held grievances have since reconciled, returned to the fold and pledged their support to Zanu‑PF and the President,” he said.

In laymen’s language; Zanu PF is doing what is has always done - bribe its opponents and critics! Mnangagwa must have squandered over US$5 billion on bribes in the 2023 elections alone from the chicken and chips for hired povo crowd to cars for chiefs, US$ 400 000 and US$ 500 000 for all the country’s judges and ministers respectively. 

Money  that should be spend on the good of Rome is instead wasted on the glory of Caesar. No wonder we are failed state.

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𝗙𝗔𝗖𝗧𝗦 𝗔𝗥𝗢𝗨𝗡𝗗 𝗥𝗨𝗧𝗘𝗡𝗗𝗢 𝗔𝗡𝗗 𝗗𝗥 𝗧𝗨𝗡𝗚𝗪𝗔𝗥𝗔𝗥𝗔’𝗦 𝗘𝗡𝗚𝗔𝗚𝗘𝗠𝗘𝗡𝗧.

First, let me start by saying that I had never met or spoken to Presidential Advisor Dr Paul Tungwarara until he approached me online yesterday. During this public engagement, like a true leader, he extended a hand of reconciliation through the gesture of a vehicle, which he said was in recognition of the work I have done for the country.

He then invited me to a roundtable discussion to understand why I am publicly opposing CAB3, critiquing the President’s work, and expressing my separate frustrations regarding the government's non-payment in relation to my fight against sanctions.

We subsequently had another discussion offline, during which he explained to me that the President is not responsible for my non-payment for the sanctions work, but that responsibility lies with Kuda Tagwirei, whom was mandated to work with me.

Additionally, he informed me that he would engage the President and all stakeholders on the way forward. As a result, in the same way that talks between ZAPU and ZANU led to the Unity Accord, and discussions between MDC and ZANU-PF led to the Government of National Unity, we are going to have frank discussions and seek a suitable way to navigate our differing political positions around CAB3.

I also informed him that, contrary to the perceptions of some, I have no issue with the President, the First Lady, or the First Family. I have merely expressed the same constructive criticism on certain issues that I have raised since President Mnangagwa assumed office. And he has never taken issue with me criticizing him before because he has always been a listening President who allows open and frank discourse.

Zimbabwe is a failed state and one reason why we are a failed state is because the nation has more than its fair share of mercenaries masquerading as champions fighting for the common good! Mercenaries who have sold out the common good for the Judas Iscariot 30 pieces of silver. Whilst Iscariot repented and hanged himself Zimbabwe’s Iscariot have flouted their ill-gotten wealth. They sold out their own mother for a price and proud they had a mother to sell!

Our situation has been compounded by an ignorant, naive and gullible majority who have failed to see the difference even after 46 years and counting of being lied to, conned and dragged deeper and deeper into this economic and political hell-on-earth. 

Many of the mercenaries have turned philanthropists, sharing a fraction of their ill-gotten wealth with the poor; has made them national heroes! The penny has yet to drop that the mercenaries and the ruling elite masters are not only profiting from stealing from the masses but are doing everything they can to keep the masses poor and pendent on handout. 

The mercenaries and the ruling elite give with one hand and make a big song and dance about it and steal a great deal more than they give away. In Zimbabwe the mercenaries and the ruling elite have formed a formidable team the former are doing all the looting of the nation’s wealth, rubbing the common people blind, and the latter have used brute force to deny the ordinary people a meaningful say in the governance of the country.