Let me say from the on-set that white colonial exploitation
of Africa has a lot to answer for why the continent is in the economic and
political mess it is today. But this is not say the whites are solely to blame
for Africa’s problems; we, the Africans, are to blame too.
“After century of slavery and colonial exploitation the
developed nations had a head start over Africa,” you might argue.
You are right, the developed nations had more than a head
start. But I am not interested in how many blocks ahead the developed nations
were at this or that point in time. I am interested in what Africans have done
with whatever we had at a given time.
I am not religious but I think Jesus’ parable of the talents
is particularly ad rem to what I am driving at.
The parable of master who, before going away, entrusted his three
servants with five, two and one talent, “each according to his ability” Matthew’s
Gospel tells us. On his return the servant with five presented his master with
the five talents plus five more. The one who got two presented the master with
two plus two more he made. The Master thank each of the two servants for their
hard work.
“He also who had received the one
talent came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew you to be a hard man,
reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed, 25 so
I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here, you have
what is yours.’ 26 But his master answered him,
‘You wicked and slothful servant! You knew that I reap where I have
not sown and gather where I scattered no seed? 27 Then
you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should
have received what was my own with interest.
28 So take the talent from him and
give it to him who has the ten talents. 29 For to
everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from
the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. 30 And cast the
worthless servant into the outer darkness. In that place there will be
weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
Matthew 25 24 – 30
Most African nations are failed states, Zimbabwe being a textbook
example, because we have squandered our many God given talents in terms of material
and human resources.
Indeed, Zimbabwe’s bounty of diamonds, gold, lithium and
other natural resources have become a curse and not a blessing. Corruption has
become rampant and the ruling elite who are the godfathers behind the looting
are using the ill got wealth to bankroll their political activities. The Zanu
PF Mafiosi has corrupted and controls all the state institutions, private
sector is dominated by the regime’s cronies – cartels and Zanu PF has corrupted
the country’s opposition rendering them utterly useless.
I have often wonder what the late Robert Mugabe would say on
his judgement day. Zimbabwe had a sound economic infrastructure in 1980, when
the country gained her independence. It had the potential to become the South
Korea of Africa, according to Ken Yamamoto, a Japanese scholar. No doubt the dictator
would give the usual toroid blaming the “wicked British and their western
allies” for all Zimbabwe’s social, political and economic troubles.
“You had money to build the US$ 4 billion Blue Roof mansion,
enough money to design, supply, install and commission Batoka Hydro Power
Station. In 2012 alone you squandered US$ 24 million on 8 hospital visits to
the Far East for an eye check-up when major hospitals like Pararenyatwa were
running of painkillers and bandages,” the Lord will remind Mugabe.
“Your regime has murdered over 30 000 innocent Zimbabweans
in 37 years with you as the Zanu PF leaders to create and retain the de facto
one-party dictatorship. You remained in power all these years because Zanu PF
denied the people their right to a meaningful say in the governance of the
country.”
If anyone deserves to be “cast into the outer darkness where there
will be weeping and gnashing of teeth”, it is Robert Mugabe and his fellow
African leaders who have squandered their nation’s wealth but, like the wicked
servant in the parable of talents, will never admit to their foolishness and
greed.
Zimbabwe is in this economic mess and political paralysis
(both the ruling party and the coterie of opposition parties have no clue what
to do to get out of the hell-on-earth we are in) because both Zanu PF and
opposition leaders have turned out to be corrupt, incompetent and utterly
useless. The late Morgan Tsvangirai must too be in hell for failing to
implement even one token reform during the 2008 to 2013 GNU, for example.
Mugabe bribed the MDC leaders and his friends with the trappings of high office;
the ministerial limos, the generous salaries and allowances, the US$4 million
mansion for Tsvangirai, etc.; and they throw the reforms out of the window!
The one African leader I hold in great respect is the late President
Mwalimu Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, his socialist experiment was a disaster for
Tanzania. Still, I admire him for admit his own failures and, unlike the likes
of Mugabe, seek scapegoat to blame.
"People have gone to the moon, and we are still trying
to reach the village, and the village is getting farther," remarked
President Nyerere when he learned in 1969 that the Americans had successfully
landed on the Moon!
The genesis of Zimbabwe’s economic meltdown is not so much
in the misguided economic policies and the rampant corruption but in the
country’s failed political system that has given corrupt and incompetent men
and women absolute power and allowed them to stay in power for 43 years and
counting. Nothing, absolutely nothing, of value will ever be accomplished until
we cure ourselves of the curse of rigged elections and bad governance.
It is shocking that we still do not have the common sense to
know we cannot have free elections without something as basic as a verified
voters’ roll, even after 43 years of the Mafia Zanu PF rigged elections and in
this day and age. Those who will not learn from the past are destined to repeat
the same foolish mistakes over and over again and will pay dearly for their
folly. fail to hold free, fair and
credible elections; we don’t even know what constitute free and fair elections.
Since the 1969 Moon landing the Americans and the rest of
the world have explored Mars and the world beyond our own Solar System, they
have split the atom into its components and have produce vaccines for illness
such as the recent corona virus in record time. Meanwhile we in Africa lagged
even further behind, the “village is even further away” as President Nyerere
had aptly put it.
Admitting we are our own worst enemy, as Mwalimu did, is the
first step in our effort to pull ourselves out of this mess of our own making.
What to do next will have to wait for the next time! For now, we must learn the
first step.
PRESIDENT Mnangagwa yesterday handed over 20 of the 28 vehicles to traditional leaders, among them the inaugural Chief Goledema of the San community in Tsholotsho District, Mr Christopher Dube, as part of Government's ongoing programme to ensure chiefs are mobile.
ReplyDeleteThe San community chose Mr Christopher Dube as the inaugural chief, in 2021
The traditional leaders were used by the whites to control the people in return for the colonial hat and the half-moon necklace with the inscription “CHIEF”. Zanu PF has gone one step further and turned the chiefs into party political commissars in all but name.
One of the most urgent reforms that must be carried out in Zimbabwe is giving the rural folk title deeds to the land they are settled on and end the feudal system of communal ownership which has given the traditional leaders landlord powers turning the villagers into medieval serfs! Give the villagers title deeds and you will not need chiefs and village heads.
OPPOSITION Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) Deputy Spokesperson Ostallos Siziba is leading the party’s voter registration campaign in Zengeza West, incarcerated Member of Parliament (MP) Job Sikhala’s constituency.
ReplyDeleteSikhala has clocked 275 days in remand on allegations of inciting public violence. More than 10 bail applications have been dismissed on what the party says are deliberate efforts to keep him at Chikurubi Maximum Prison beyond this year’s general elections.
Zanu PF is rigging these elections, and CCC leader know it but, for selfish reasons pretend otherwise.
Mass voter registration is CCC’s flagship winning in rigged elections (WIRE) strategy and we know it is dead in the water but CCC leaders bury their heads in the sand and refuse to admit it. As of 30 May 2022, ZEC announced that only ¼ million new voters had registered or 4% of CCC’s set target of 6 million.
The voter registration blitz announced by ZEC has benefited Zanu PF who have bused in rural supporters to register in urban centres. We have seen videos of Domboshava, Goromonzi, etc. folk registering in Harare. Meanwhile opposition supporters seeking to register continue to face countless obstacles.
The real tragedy here is CCC are hell bent on participating in these elections regardless how flawed the process happen to be and, most important of all, that the flawed process is denying the ordinary people their right to a meaningful say in the governance of the country and thus the hope to have a competent and accountable government.
Chamisa and company are now actively keeping Zanu PF in power perpetuating the dictatorship and the nation’s suffering. They know this but clearly don’t care as long as they win the few gravy train seats on offer as bait!
We really need to bite the bullet and deal with this problem of political leaders who promise freedom and liberty, as Zanu PF did before independence, but delivered the dictatorship. MDC leaders were elected on a ticket to deliver democratic changes to end the Zanu PF dictatorship only to sell out on reforms and are now keeping Zanu PF in power in return for a share of the spoils of power. We, the people, must open our eyes and minds to see that MDC/CCC are hunting with the hounds and running with hare.
@ Mbofana
ReplyDeleteHe went into his grave still believing that the former liberation movement could still be salvaged and restored to its original principles.
However, this required the ordinary grassroots membership to bravely stand up against those who had hijacked the people's struggle for their own self-serving power interests.
It had become undeniable that, those who had taken over the country were not genuine liberators - but, merely there to enrich themselves through ill-gotten wealth from the plunder of our national resources.
Robert Mugabe and his cronies have brain washed our people into thinking that they are totally helpless without the party Zanu PF and the Zanu PF leaders. These last 43 years the people have found it very difficult to accept the party and the leaders can do any wrong and when they have been forced to admitted the party and leaders have failed rejecting them has been a bridge too far. And so the nation has been stuck with the corrupt, incompetent and tyrannical Zanu PF regime for 43 years because the nation did not have the courage to ditch Zanu PF no matter what!
The grassroot Zanu PF supporters are weak and feeble, they have no more power to effect change in the party than povo have at a national level. Zanu PF is serving the interest of the Zanu PF ruling elite and not that of the grassroot supporters anyone one who thinks the latter has any political power is naïve!
It was a quantum leap of faith for the many people who switched their political allegiance from Zanu PF to MDC/CCC but old habits die hard because they are now doggedly faithful to MDC/CCC party and leaders. MDC/CCC has been a failure but they blind as a mole followers do not see it.
Democracy needs the electorate to be informed and to be diligently ruthless in holding those in public office to democratic account. The Zimbabwe electorate are naïve and as timidity as a mouse in the presence of a cat. It is the leaders who are holding the people to account, it is the tail that is wagging the dog!
Mugabe created the political patronage system turning his Zanu PF MPs and Ministers into his concubines powerless and voiceless even in the face of US$4 billion Blue Roof or worse still the Gukurahundi massacre. He extended the patronage to MDC leaders during the GNU, they too became his political concubines and did not implement even one reform.
ReplyDeleteWe need to implement democratic reforms to not only free government institutions like ZEC, Police and judiciary but the concubine opposition!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNqd0tE8fp4
So we are going into these 2023 elections confident that CCC will win big because “history tells us that nothing lasts forever” and “God is in it (2023 elections presumably)”? This is really hopeless.
ReplyDeleteHow can CCC win big an election process so flawed and illegal there is no verified voters’ roll, Zanu PF has denied 3 million in the diaspora the vote or 37% of the potential electorate, not even one meaningful reform from the last rigged elections have been implemented, etc., etc. If this is a matter of divine intervention, then why this time; it certainly did not happen in 2018!
No two events in history are exactly the same but put aside the name of the victim, the time and place they died and other finer details and just focus on the act of having one’s head severed off history tells us the victim will die! Zanu PF is blatantly rigging the 2023 elections and it is insane to expect CCC to win especially after 43 years of this Mafia Zanu PF rigging elections.
Chamisa and company are hell bent on participating in these flawed elections knowing fully well that Zanu PF is rigging and will win and that their participating will only give the election process some modicum of credibility and an excuse for SADC to grant Zanu PF political legitimacy. Zanu PF will reward CCC and the rest in the opposition camp who participate with a few gravy train seats plus POLAD rewards for losers of the presidential race who publicly declare the rigged elections were free and fair!
Chamisa and company will never admit that it greed that is making them participate in these flawed elections. Never ever admit that! And so he has to put on a brave face and maintain his hen’s teeth lie of winning big because history and god Almighty says so!
There will be no new greater Zimbabwe without carrying out the tough tasks of implementing the democratic reforms. Chamisa must stop lying to the people and offering the easy solutions and false hopes.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiQHocnZXtQ
Zimbabwe considers the group a new force in international relations, a senior politician says
ReplyDeleteThe Zimbabwean government would like to become a member of the BRICS economic bloc, the speaker of the ruling party ZANU-PF said on Wednesday.
"We made it clear that we would like to become a member of the BRICS," Christopher Mutsvangwa told Russia's RIA Novosti news agency.
The official added that his country is interested in developing alternatives to the Western-dominated SWIFT payment network. In his view, BRICS could contribute to that.
If wishes were kisses
And kisses were songs,
I'd sing for you melodies
Vibrant and long.
Through crashing crescendos
And moments of grace...
Composing such music
I see in your face.
Magical, mystical
Harmonies sweet...
Possessing, expressing
Our souls' tender need.
Time would stand still
For our chorus again.
Beautiful notes
In a song without end.
The five BRICS nations are the emerging economic nations. Zimbabwe is a failed state drowning in its own “shit” as former US President Trump would say. Zimbabwe’s formal economy has all but collapsed to give way to the informal economy in which the majority eke a living and the black economy responsible for the billions of dollars of institutionalised wholesale looting by the Mafiosi Zanu PF ruling elite and their cronies.
South Africa’s continued BRICS membership is already in the balance give the country’s continue economic turmoil. Why would the other four country boot out SA for a sinking economy only to take in its neighbour whose economy sunk decades ago and, worse still, has no prospect of recovering in the near future if at all!
Teachers' unions have slammed government over the selective remuneration of its workforce following the controversial awarding of a 400 percent pay hike to the military and police.
ReplyDeleteTeachers are currently the lowest paid civil servants, earning around ZW$36,000 plus a US$120 foreign currency component.
The selective pay hike for security forces comes as teachers had rejected a 50 percent increase on their local currency wages during the National Joint Negotiating Council meeting last week.
When Mnangagwa took over from Mugabe following the military coup of 2017 he was cocksure his “Zimbabwe is open for business!” would open the flood gate to foreign and local investment and kick start the country’s comatose economy. Well, the flood of investment never happened.
Investors are savvy and shrewd lot, they were not fooled by the musical-chairs changes in Zanu PF brought on by the coup. Zimbabwe was still a pariah state ruled by corrupt , incompetent and murderous thugs who rigged elections to stay in power; the coup had removed one dictator only to replace him with another dictator. Not even the slick and aggressive self-promoting marketing could transform the pariah state into a healthy democracy. And by failing to hold free and fair elections in 2018 as Mnangagwa himself had promised, he confirmed that Zimbabwe was indeed still a pariah state masquerading as a democracy.
As long as Zimbabwe remained a pariah state, no one would both to do business in such a chaotic and hostile nation!
With the economy still in the ICU, Mnangagwa knew the economy was not generating enough revenue to keep all the state paid activities going, some will have to go to stop the runaway inflation of 2000 to 2008! Education and health were the first thrown overboard. It is no surprise that Mnangagwa has done his best to keep the security services happy given Zimbabwe is a Police State. The 50% pay rise for teachers and 400% for Army and Police is as one would expect in a Police State.
Still, the 400% pay rise for securocrats is in itself a tacit acknowledgement by the regime that throwing the teachers and nurses overboard was not enough to contain inflation. The regime will have to dig even deeper and start throwing overboard the bloated security services or inflation will only get worse! The dictatorship will collapse without the bloated security service particularly when the economic meltdown has made the populous as restless as bees whose hive has just been shaken! Mnangagwa is damned if he throws overboard some in the bloated security services and damned if he does not! One thing is certain, the dictatorship is doomed to collapsed because the centre cannot hold.
@ Hungwe
ReplyDelete“It's only in Africa...where the educated and the Christian world says Voting doesn't change anything...
You see a Doctor , Nurse Engineer ignoring the call to register to vote... then Giribeti wo zvake anofudza mombe kumusha kwa Checheche uko registers to vote and vote into power Cde Chinotimba who doesn't have an O level certificate..
Cde Chinotimba will go to Parliament then start making laws on how Doctors , teachers etc should be treated .. Then u see the educated start crying.. the Christians start saying ndivo mazuva ekutambudzika akanyorwa mu Bible..
Zimbabweans are educated but they live like vanhu vasina kudzidza..
People must go and register to vote..”
You are one of those village idiots who, having learned that “voting changes things” switched off and refused to listen to anything else because they thought themselves educated. The very fact that MDC garnered 73% of the votes in the March 2008 elections and yet failed to get the keys to State House should have forced even a dunderhead like you to realise there is something radically different about Zimbabwe elections. The process is so flawed that getting 73% is not good enough to deliver change!
You can participate in these flawed elections until the cows come home, you will never change anything of note as long as Zanu PF has the carte blanche power to rig the elections. The party is frogmarching rural voters to vote for Zanu PF, it has denied 3m Zimbabweans in the diaspora the vote cherry picking the electorate, has refused to produce the verified voters’ roll, etc., etc. Your participation will only give SADC the excuse to grant Zanu PF legitimacy.
“A little learning is a dangerous thing; drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: there shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, and drinking largely sobers us again.” Wrote the English write and satirist Alexander Pope.
You breathed in the vapour of Pierian spring and has been helplessly drunk ever since!