Minister Biti has reportedly bowed to MPs demands for their US$ 3.3 million allowance back pay. Why am I not surprised!
The country’s health and education systems, Prisons, etc. are all in a shocking state because for decades now government has failed to make adequate budgetary provisions for these important public services. The budget Minister Biti presented last week was no different; the rot in the public service will continue. And millions of Zimbabweans who now live in abject poverty for no fault of their own and are therefore totally dependent on these meagre public services will continue to suffer and dies.
A US$ 3.3 million budgetary allocation to the ministry of health can mean the difference between the buying enough polio vaccines for a million children, for example, or condemned them to heart breaking misery should they catch the disease. Yes, Zimbabwe’s budgetary squeeze has sunk to nauseating depth of depravity! It is in this contrasting light that the MPs’ US$ 3.3 allowance demand and Mugabe gobbling up of US$ 45 million on foreign travel alone - all paid from the same public pot - must be seen.
Mugabe has lavished power and money on all those holding in position of power from the lowly village heads and traditional Chiefs to MPs and Ministers to buy their blind loyalty and keeping him in power. Tsvangirai and his MDC MPs can complain about Mugabe refusing to honour everything else since the signing of the GPA but one thing; the tyrant has honoured his promise to let MDC members to enjoy the spoils of power same as his Zanu PF cronies. And for their part, Tsvangirai and company have been careful never to do anything to seriously threaten Mugabe’s hold on power.
MDC MPs joined Zanu PF’s own MPs in demanding the US$ 3.3 million out of a sense of entitlement; their share of the loot! Of course, Mugabe, Tsvangirai all these MPs know that their looting is the root cause of Zimbabwe’s economic melt down and the heart breaking suffering of the millions across the land and they do not care. All they care about is to hang on to their public office position and have a get as much of the loot as they can while they can.
The Zimbabwe economy has remained in the stuck in doldrums these last three years because the GNU has failed to carry through the necessary structural changes. The West has not given Zimbabwe a single penny for the much hoped for foreign aid because they do not pour water in a leaky bucket. God knows they have explained to Minister Biti what Zimbabwe needs to do. Biti did not push through any of these changes because he did not want to rock the boat. It did not take much arm twisting for him to give to the MPs the US$ 3.3 on this occasion! He too knows which side of his bread is buttered.
All MDC’s talk of democratic change is nothing but empty rhetoric. Tsvangirai and MDC have had countless opportunities to force through change and end this ruinous dictatorship but failed to follow through on all occasions because they are “now busy eating” as Tanonoka Joseph Hwande has so aptly put it!
Until we have quality leaders who will stand up to Mugabe and all those who have sold their souls to the tyrant for thirty pieces of silver; only then will Zimbabwe have real change and hope for a better future.
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