Zimbabwe is an enigma inside an enigma; we are the poorest but have the richest ruling elite. P Guramatunhu

Last week an AfrAsia report confirmed something many Zimbabweans already knew – that we are the poorest people in the poorest continent, Africa, on earth. We are the poorest people on earth!

In complying the data for their report, AfrAsia should have investigated the wealth of each country’s ruling elite. The findings would have been an eye opener; they would have found that Zimbabwe’s ruling elite are some of the richest not just in Africa but in the world.

There is documentary evidence to show that Mai Mujuru and her late husband tried to sell diamonds worth US$15.8 billions!

To put this amount into perspective for my fellow Zimbabweans; Zimbabwe has been waiting to build Batoka Gorge Dam for donkey years. When complete it would have boosted Zimbabwe’s hydropower generation from the 800 MW from Kariba Dam by another 1 600 MW. Zimbabwe’s power cuts have been one more milestone that have weighed down and crash the Zimbabwe economy. Building Batoka Gorge will cost US$ 3 billions. With the Mujurus’ diamond loot alone we would have completed five Batoka Gorge size projects round the country. This of the difference these projects would have made to the country’s economic prosperity.

The Mujurus are not the only ones who have been looting and plundering the nation’s wealth and resources; many of Zanu PF’s ruling elite are filthy rich and even the opposition politicians have had their share of the loot. Tsvangirai got the $4 million Highlands mansion, other MDC leaders got former white owned farms plus all the other trappings of high office – bribes to induce MDC leaders to kick democratic reforms in the tall grass during the GNU.

What most Zimbabweans are finding a nauseating irritant is our leaders’ heartless indifference to our tragic suffering. President Mugabe went all the way to Durban and was once again denying Zimbabwe is fragile and failed state!

“Zimbabwe is the most highly developed country in Africa. After South Africa, I want to see another country as highly developed," replied President Mugabe.

“We have 14 universities and had a literacy rate of over 90%, which was the highest in Africa. And yet they talk about us as a fragile state."

Our education may have been the envy of other nation but not now. Decades of poor funding has resulted in the quality of our education becoming sub substandard. President Mugabe has been sending his children to the Far East for their education and so too has his cronies. He has established the Presidential Scholarship (paid by the taxpayer) to Zanu PF loyalists to send their children to Universities in SA. It is us the poor who have no choice but send to send our children to the poorly funded local University for the substandard education.

Every year Zimbabwe is chaining out 100 000 plus University graduates and yet many of them cannot write a single sentence without making a spelling or gramma mistake. As for the sentence expressing a coherent idea, that is simply asking for too much! And with unemployment sitting at 90% plus most of these graduates have all joined the army of street vendors selling mobile phone airtime or left the country in search of work.

" We have more resources than the average country in the world. We have Chrome, Gold, Diamonds, etc. etc. Our agriculture is viable. We have a bumper harvest, not only maize, but also tobacco and many other crops. We are not a poor country," continued President Mugabe.

Zimbabwe is certainly not a poor country because we do have all these mineral resources if only the ruling elite were putting them to good use and not squandering them away or worse. It is no secret that President Mugabe has been using some of the billions of dollars looted from Marange to bankroll his vote rigging juggernaut!

Zimbabwe is expecting a bumper harvest, which means will have enough to feed its own people, this year because it had an above average growing season. Ever since President Mugabe seized the farms from the white farmers to give to the ruling elite and Zanu PF party loyalists the country struggled to produce enough to feed its own people much less have anything left over for export. We have lost our breadbasket of the region accolade.

In the day and age when other nations have harnessed technology to turn deserts into bloom fields and orchards we who live in a country which is for all practical purposes is the Garden of Eden are having to rely on imported food aid. We are starving in the Garden of Eden; the can be no more damning testimonial in failed leadership than that!

"If anyone wants to call us fragile, they can. You can also call America fragile," Mugabe continued in his usual self-assured cut-thrust arrogant manner to the amusement of some in the audience.

None of the millions of ordinary Zimbabweans, whose hopes and dreams of freedom, human rights and life in dignity have been shattered by four decades of corrupt and tyrannical Mugabe rule, were amused by his denial of the economic and political mess in Zimbabwe much less his belittling of their suffering!

It is widely believed that President Donald Trump is planning to reduce USA aid to Africa and to Zimbabwe in particular. It is hard to justify giving aid to a country whose leaders spend billions of mansions and other luxuries and every few months spend millions on birthday parties, weddings, globetrotting, etc.

SADC warned Zimbabweans not to participating in the 2013 elections without implementing the reforms but we did not listen. This was why SADC accept the rigged result; what else could they do since we had the opportunity to stop the rigging but refused to take it.

If Zimbabweans allow next year’s elections to go ahead still with no reforms in place, we can be certain that the rest of the world will follow SADC’s example and wash their hands of Zimbabwe. The Americans will lift the 2002 targeted sanctions against the Zanu PF ruling elite and the rest of the western countries will do the same. The sanctions were meant to help us, Zimbabweans, pressure the Zanu PF dictatorship to implement the democratic reforms and we have wasted the years pursuing such trivial matters as voter education, who buys BVR kits, etc.

There is no doubt that countries like China, India, Israeli, etc. who did not care that Mugabe rigged the elections and continued to trade with the regime have profited greatly from trading with Zimbabwe’s corrupt ruling elite. Why should the West not claim its share of the looted wealth, especially when those who were supposed to benefit from the imposed sanctions are doing nothing to implement the reforms even when they have the opportunity to do so.

Zimbabwe is an enigma within an enigma with all the antonyms, voodoo mysticism, idiosyncrasies of a demented tyrant, etc. all mixed into this bubbling primeval soup! Zimbabweans are the poorest in the world but we also have the richest ruling elite in the world. Zimbabwe is, for all intent and purpose, the Garden of Eden and we are starving.

We claim to be the most literate populous in African and yet are still failing to say what constitutes free and fair elections, 37 years after independence and with the benefit of 2 500 years of democratic good governance dating back to the Golden Age of Greece.

“You can also call America fragile!” Good one Mr Mugabe. As long as there is even one homeless person in New York, America is a failed state.  And you, sir, do not have to worry about millions of Zimbabweans who live in abject poverty because you denied them their freedoms and human rights including the right to free and fair elections and even the right to life. You can continue spending the billions of dollars on your endless globetrotting, five-star overseas health and education for yourself and your cronies, etc. with a free conscience; you do not owe any of the impoverished Zimbabweans a thing!