In a circular to local hospitals, Health and Child Care Permanent Secretary Agnes Mahomva announced that Ante-natal ward per day will now cost $200 at Parirenyatwa Hospital, $160 at central hospitals such as Mpilo and United Bulawayo Hospitals (UBH), $120 at provincial hospitals and $80 at district hospitals with the same amounts being charged for post-natal care.
Caesarean birth will now cost $2 500 at Parirenyatwa Hospital, $2 500 at Central hospitals and $1 500 at provincial hospitals and $1 000 at district hospitals.
In a country where unemployment has soared to 90% plus where are the poor expected to get the money from?
Only the other day Mnangagwa was saying he was going to stop schools hiking school fees. So, it is ok to increase hospital fees but not school fees!
The 600% hike will only fuel inflation as everything else will go up in price. This is just a rat race; you cannot pull out or slow down or you will be trampled by the stampeding herd and yet know you are just going round and round in circles. It just a matter of time before you collapse of exhaustion!
Zimbabwe is caught up in a rat race and as long as Zanu PF remains in power; the nightmare will continue.
It is now clear that Mnangagwa has no clue how to revive the country’s comatose economy, just like Mugabe before him. And, also just like Mugabe, the worsening economic situation has not in anyway dampen Mnangagwa’s determination to remain in office!
“Danotiziva kati van voKuwadzana vasingadhi kuti mvura inyaye. Taingoti Army kombayi tirove!” (If we knew it was people from Kuwadzana who are causing the drought. We would just tell the Army, to round and beat them!) said Mnangagwa, addressing a rally in Kuwadzana.
The same crowd he had just told he will stop the school fees going up. The people know the promise to stop fees going up will never be honour but they all know the threat to use the Army was not an empty threat.
Zimbabweans know the Freudian slip to use the Army and other state security institution to silence dissent and criticism was the number one issue on Mnangagwa’s mind! Violence is his bread and butter speciality and would issue the shoot to kill order at the drop of a hat as he did in August 2018 and again in January 2019.
The Kuwadzana crowd was stunned and subdued by the Mnangagwa’s casual and jocular demeanour with which he said this. The nation knows, Zanu PF’s response to the country’s worsening economic situation will be to use brute force to silence dissent and criticism. We are all expected to suffer and die is silence like sheep!
Zanu PF regime have no clue what to do to revive the Zimbabwe’s economy.
When Mnangagwa launched “Zimbabwe is open for business!” mantra in 2017; he was cocksure it going to open the flood gate to new investors and investment. Two years down the line, it is clear investors have continued, as in the Mugabe years, to shy away and the mantra is dead in the water.
Still, Mnangagwa’s failure to revive the economy, the truth must have sunk in by now, has not dampened his determination to stay in power. Indeed, his failure, it seems, has only hardened his resolve to stay in power no matter what!
“If a madman were to come into this room with a stick in his hand, no doubt we should pity the state of his mind; but our primary consideration would be to take care of ourselves. We should knock him down first, and pity him afterwards.” Boswell: Life of Johnson
This is the underlying self-preservation principle governing our lives.
Well, in Zimbabwe, the madman is in State House and he has more than a stick in his hand; he has all the state security machinery behind him and, as we know, has no qualms using it to silence dissent and criticism.
Zimbabwe is being torn apart the poor are dying, literally, for change of government; as long as Zimbabwe remains a pariah state ruled by corrupt and vote rigging thugs the economic meltdown is set to get worse. The ruling elite are using brute force to silence dissent and criticism in defence of the pariah state.
The tragedy here is the ruling elite are deluding themselves in believing they are stopping change. Change is nature. The best Mnangagwa and his Zanu PF thugs can do is delay change but they are now running the risk of closing the door to peaceful change in favour of violent and revolutionary change.
Mnangagwa and his Zanu PF thugs rigged the July 2018 elections, they have no mandate to govern the country and they must step down now, spare the nation more human suffering and deaths and, more significantly, spare the nation the agony of violent and chaotic change!
"Danotiziva kati vanhu voKuwadzana vasingadhi kuti mvura inaye. Taingoti Army kombayi tirove!" (If we knew it was people from Kuwadzana who are causing the drought. We would just tell the Army, to round and beat them!) said Mnangagwa, addressing a rally in Kuwadzana.
ReplyDeleteIt is the cold-hearted indifference with which he said those words that send a shiver down my spine. There is no doubt at all that he meant every word he said about sending the Army to beat up the people. He should not forget that he is the man who gave the shoot to kill order on the 1 st August 2018 and in January 2019 in which 7 and 17 innocent civilians respectively were shot dead. He even boasted about it!
First he denied that anyone was killed in the January incident. “Show us the graves!” he said.
Then at a Zanu PF rally in Mwenezi the truth came out. “Those that want peace, stay at home, so that we deal with those that want violence,” said Mnangagwa, according to The Standard report.
“We will sort them out. Those who come to you inviting you to the protests, tell them to pass, what you are saying has bad omens of Legion.”
“In Harare and Bulawayo violent protesters were preventing people from going to work and even burning buses. We don’t want violence, so I said soldiers go and silence these people, they were silenced.
“That is preserving peace. We should be on the lookout as our enemies are not resting, but ensure our eyes are always wide open. We will crush our enemies, and they are being crushed.”
Mnangagwa has no clue how to revive the Zimbabwe economy but make no mistake, his resolve to stay in power is rock solid! If he is not going to rule Zimbabwe then he would rather burn the whole country with everyone in it than see anyone else rule it.
The tragedy for Zimbabwe is Mnangagwa is coming perilously close to seeing his devilish wish come true. The country’s economic meltdown has left 90% classified as poor and 34% as living in extreme poverty, according to a recent WB report.
The WFP is frantically trying to raise US$200 million to feed 8 millions Zimbabweans facing starvation, left to Mnangagwa and his regime, they will starve.
Most of the country’s healthcare has all but collapsed because government would not pay doctors and nurses a living wage, there is no medicine, no equipment, etc.
The people of Zimbabwe themselves have yet to wake up to the reality that they, first and foremost, owe it to themselves and posterity to stop the Zanu PF madness. Of course, the people are infinitely more power than Mnangagwa and his rogue soldiers the trouble is we have a sleeping giant!