Mugabe is selling off the nation's treasures for a
song to buy his stay in power. Chinese and Indians know the tyrant is
desperate for money to finance his dubious ZimAsset plan. I say dubious because
these can be no doubt that the money will be wasted because the regime has done
nothing to end the rampant corruption and mismanagement, the root causes
of the economic collapse that landed us in this mess in the first.
As long as nothing is done to end corruption and
mismanagement, economic recovery will remain a pipe dream. Any money thrown in
the ZimAsset begging bowl will be a signal the regime has been waiting for that
it is business as usual.
The Chinese and Indians know the regime is desperate for
cash, there will be no competition as everyone else has been scarred away
by the regime's indigenisation laws and other misguided policies and so they
can name whatever price they want. And this is exactly what is happening here.
Zimbabwean will have the right to reopen the ZISCO
deal Mugabe signed with the Indian Steel company, Essar, and all
deals he signs with the Chinese on the grounds that the deals were not in
the public interest and that the regime, having rigged the July 2013 elections,
is illegitimate and therefore have no authority to enter into this contracts.
The Chinese are promising Mugabe $10 billion for his
ZimAsset begging bowl, this will double the national debt and we will still
have little to show for it. Indeed the debt burden would weigh so heavily
on the nation making it impossible for it to recover. The Chinese and Indians
are not exactly renowned for their generosity in cancelling debt!
It is ironic that Mugabe is the one who has been wittering to no end about black Zimbabweans should own the country's resources and yet he is the one who is busy selling the nation's resources for the tradition calico cloth and a handful of beads slaves were sold for!
11 comments:
Biti and Mangoma are the ones who should have known above all the others in the MDC why it was important to make sure the reforms were implemented. They knew but got distracted by the trappings of power. Their names, not just Tsvangirai's name, are mud!
ZISCO has been dormant for the last five years and its workers are re-portedly owed $110 million in unpaid salaries and other benefits. We wel-come the news that these expenses will now the finally paid. Still, one has to question why this chaotic situation has been allowed to go on for all these years because what those responsible for the chaos should not have forgotten is that life waits for no one.
ZISCO workers just like everyone else have to eat; what were they sup-posed to live on for five years. They have children whose school fees needed to be paid and school uniforms that should have been bought but it was not because there was no money. How many workers and their family members have suffered because there was no money for their medical expenses and how many have died?
The children whose schooling was cut short and all those whose lives could otherwise have been save the back pay will do nothing to help; to them it is all spilt milk! This Mugabe regime has caused so much suffering and death someone must hold the tyrant and his corrupt cronies to account.
The ANC has done a lot better economically than its blundering under Mbeki and Zumu leadership would indicate; the economy had a lot of fat reserves. The chickens of misrule are now coming home to roost; the fat has been burnt off. ANC will need to start coming up with sound economic policy and delivering the things people want or the party's days in power are numbered.
Yes is would have been great if SA had competent leaders after Mandela who would have used the country's fat reserves to improve the lives of its people instead of wasting it. Still this is where Mandela's legacy of bequeathing the nation a democratic system of government will start to pay off - South Africans will be able to kicked out corrupt and incompetent leaders. As a Zimbabwean I know only too well how important that is!
“A coalition excluding Tsvangirai or any other member is not the way out and Mavambo will not participate in that. We want an inclusive grand coalition excluding nobody,’ said Simba Makoni.
We are in this political mess because of the breath-taking incompetence of the MDC. If the competence or otherwise of someone does not matter in their elevation to national leadership position where the hold the destiny of the nation in their hands then tell me what matters.
All the likes of Simba Makoni wants is to get back on the gravy train as quickly as he can by hook or by crook. Zimbabweans have paid dearly for having incompetent leaders and it would be folly to let ourselves be misled by people like Makoni.
Ken Yamamoto is spot on Mugabe would never ever crackdown on corruption for the simple reason that he is the chief beneficiary of the corruption himself. Corruption is what has held Zanu PF together all these years and thus kept him in power and he himself has made a pile of money and has many assets.
Cracking down on corruption will mean losing his political power base, with it will go his iron grip on power and regime change will follow as sure as day follows night. he will lose his looted wealth and will be ask to account for all the human blood his regime has shed.
The prospect of someone turn Zimbabwe into a just and prosperous country is simply something Mugabe can not fathom; he can endure everything else but not that!
There are reports if MDC-T in SA splitting along the same fault lines as the split in Zimbabwe.
What is surprising is how there has been no meaningful debate amongst the mem-bership in MDC-T to at least clear the air on this muted point of whether or not Tsvangirai's leadership did leave a lot to be desired. Whether Mangoma used the right channels to call for a leadership renewal is a separate matter what can be dis-cussed separately.
The breath-taking incompetence in MDC-T is certainly not just confined to the top table but runs right down to the card carrying members!
The problem of poor leaders is a serious issue which MDC can try to fudge but will comeback again and again to beat them, Just as this split had its Genesis in the 2005 split failure to deal with the leadership then sowed the seed for the current split.
@ Gupta
First you have to accept that leaders like Makoni are not the answer; it makes you more receptive to new ideas.
Hanging on to failed leaders like Tsvangirai, Biti and Makoni is a sign that one has failed to understand what a disaster these individuals have been for Zimbabwe. If one can still not see this with the benefit of all the evidence before us; what else will make them see?
An electorate that understands the issues is a pre-requisite to a healthy and functional democracy. An electorate that will follow blindly even a village idiot like Tsvangirai is double trouble for any nation. It is little wonder we are in this mess.
It is not good enough to accept them and then add on some new leaders; they will only serve to dilute the new team, at best; at worst, they will contaminate the new team. A glass of sewage with a few teaspoons of milk is a glass of sewage. A glass of milk with a single teaspoon full of sewage is still a glass of sewage, especially if the sewage is has the bacterium Vibrio cholerae that cause cholera!
@ Smith
Yes they can lead themselves; Zimbabwe has had the great misfortune of having not even one competent leader in Zanu PF and now MDC. Having the white racist regime that forced the blacks to embrace tyrants like Mugabe as a better alternative to white racist oppression did not help matters!
SA has just held its fourth free and fair democratic elections proving that black Africans can indeed lead themselves!
@ Makate
I would readily agree with you that one cannot say "never ever" to Tsvangirai holding public office even with his record of breath-taking incompetence but that is so because the electorate is not smart enough to see the incompetence.
I what I said was that Tsvangirai would "never ever deliver the democratic changes"; that I would bet anything you want. How can he deliver something he clearly does not understand?
I would say people like Biti and Mangoma understood what the reforms were about; they failed to get any implemented because they were easily distracted by the trap-pings of power. Tsvangirai, even to this day, does not have the foggiest idea what these reforms are really about. Not a clue!
I would say it again that Tsvangirai will never ever deliver and democratic changes and take the people to the Promised Land because he does not know he needs to implement a raft of democratic reforms to deliver the changes and does not know where the Promised Land is or can he read the compass!
Once again another insightful article from Ken, thank you.
However the article has failed to mention the chances Zimbabwe had to end the Mugabe dicta-torship but all wasted because the people themselves but especially the opposition leaders were incompetent. The article is incomplete without telling this story.
The best chance for change was presented to the MDC led by Morgan Tsvangirai; all the party had to do was to implement the reforms already agreed in the GPA. They had five years to im-plement the reforms but failed to get even one reform implemented.
The people themselves failed to see the importance of the reforms and thus failed to push Tsvangirai at the time. The majority still does not comprehend the importance of the reforms and hence the seriousness of Tsvangirai's blunder in failing to get the reforms implemented - even now with the benefit of hind sight.
I agree with your prognosis that Zimbabwe still "rise from the ashes" but not without ending the Zanu PF dictatorship first! So far the opposition has proven to be breathtakingly incompetent in that and the people themselves are no wiser!
@ #263chat
Much as I would understand why people would want to discuss the bread and butter issues these people have to realize that the root cause of these economic problems are the political problems.
Mugabe has been very clever in defining areas we, the people, can talk about and what we can and cannot do. We have foolishly accepted and have been boxed in for all these last 34 years.
We are allowed to take part in elections, for example, but on the clear understanding that Mugabe will not accept regime change. And so he has cheated and rigged elections again and again and the people of Zimbabwe have allowed him to get away with it each time.
Mugabe blatantly rigged the 2013 elections and it was water off a duck's back for Zimbabweans and they started discussing how they could make the ZimAsset work - their bread and butter issue. The vote rigging is not their sphere of influence.
The truth is until there are free and fair elections the national economy will continue to sink - generating even more bread and butter issues without ever solving any! In other words until Zimbabweans start thinking OUTSIDE the boxes Mugabe has them boxed the country's economic situation will be get worse.
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