The striking doctors and teachers will never be paid a living wage
because the Zimbabwe government is broke; most people accept this as a matter
of fact, which it is! They want the doctors and teachers to go back to work on
the same starvation wages they are getting.
“Let us give Mnangagwa a chance to turn round the economy,” many are
arguing. Their optimism reminds me of a witty remark on misplaced optimism.
“Zvinhu zviyedza chembere yokwa Chivi yakabika mabwe!” (One should
always try something, an old lady from Chivi tried cooking stones!) one would
remark.
What is sickening here is that Zanu PF has been promising the nation
this delicious and nourishing stone stew for the last 38 years and there are
still people insane enough to still believe this nonsense!
For the first 20 years or so after independence, Zanu PF promised
economic mass prosperity, “Gutsa ruzhinji!” as Robert Mugabe never tired of
saying. The national economy took a totally different trajectory, one of stead
decline in response to the criminal waste of human and material resources
through mismanagement and corruption under Zanu PF misrule.
For the last 20 years, Zanu PF has changed its tune; the party has
grudgingly accepted the economic rot and so has been promising to revive it.
The party got us into the economic mess and now it is claiming it will get us
out of the mess. This beggars the question: why did the party got us into the mess
in the first place?
Worst of all, Zanu PF claimed it was the ONLY party competent to deliver
mass prosperity and now still claim it is the ONLY party competent to revive
the crumbling economy. The party has done this by ruthless imposed the de fact
one-party, Zanu PF, dictatorship. It has effectively denied the people their
basic freedoms and human rights including the right to a meaningful say in the
governance of the country.
With no democratic voice to hold the Zanu PF ruling elite to account,
the mismanagement and corruption of the first 20 years have gone into
overdrive. In 2016 the then President Robert Mugabe admitted the country was
“swindled out of US$15 billion in diamond revenue.” He never arrested even one
swindler. President Mnangagwa has not done any better; he too has yet to arrest
the first diamond swindler!
A year latter, in 2017, the then Minister of Finance, Patrick Chinamasa,
told parliament that government was still receiving 1/6 of the expected diamond
revenue. There is nothing to suggest the situation has improved in any way. So
we can be 100% certain the wholesale looting of Zimbabwe’s resource is
continuing to this day!
In Zimbabwe corruption has now been institutionalised making even more
difficult to uproot. The country’s army, ZDF, has its own diamond mining
concession, for example, and so all the top brass in the army are benefiting
from the looting. The Police, CIO and other state institutions have their own
mining concessions. It is one thing taking on one or two corrupt generals
and quite another taking on all the top brass in the Army, Police, CIO, etc.,
etc.!
Even rich nations like America or Japan cannot sustain a US$15 billion
revenue haemorrhage much less an impoverished country like Zimbabwe with a GPD
of US$10 billion!
Mnangagwa has done nothing to end the gross mismanagement and the
rampant corruption, the two cancers killing the economy and yet promises living
wages to government workers and economic boom for us all! He is the proverbial
old man of Mberengwa cooking a stew of stones!
After 38 years of being conned by Zanu PF first about mass prosperity
and now economic recovery, it is shocking there are still Zimbabweans out there
insane enough to still believe in Zanu PF’s delicious and nourishing stone
stew!
Mnangagwa is only going to drag this nation even deeper into this
hell-on-earth Zanu PF landed us in. The deeper we go the harder it is going to
be to get out, assuming we have not already gone beyond the point of no return!
The doctors and teachers should stop wasting time demanding a living
wage from this Zanu PF regime, the party will never deliver a stone stew. They
should be demanding instead that Zanu PF steps down following the rigged July
2018 elections so the nation can start implementing the reforms necessary for
free, fair and credible elections. We need to end the curse of rigged elections
if we are ever to get out of this hell-on-earth.
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