Zim economy is a runaway train with driver, Mugabe, shouting "Full steam ahead!"

According to Peta Thorncroft Mugabe’s latest “health junket” to Singapore, the third one in as many months, will cost the nation a staggering R20 or US$ 1.6 million.

One of Zimbabwe’s leading economist John Robertson said Zimbabwe could not afford the Mugabe family.

“Zimbabwe’s diplomats haven’t been paid for months. We have been expelled by Fifa from the 2018 World Cup because we cannot pay a coach. We are in dire straits and we cannot afford these kinds of extravagant foreign trips. Is he (Mugabe) saying he is more important than anyone else?” John asked.

John is right; Mugabe has become more important than the nation. Mugabe’s insatiable appetite for extravagant spending has ballooned way out of proportion even for a rich prosperous nation much less a poor country like Zimbabwe. The timing of his appetite could not have been worse; it is happening at the time when the Zimbabwe economy is shrinking at an alarming rate.

Decades of gross mismanagement and rampant corruption have taken their toll on the Zimbabwe’s once prosperous and promising economy. Many companies have closed down sending unemployment into the stratosphere of 90% plus; 16% of the population or 2 million people are already living in abject poverty, etc. and yet the situation is set to get a lot worse and not better because the criminal waste of human and material resources through mismanagement and corruption are set to continue.

As long as Mugabe and Zanu PF remain in office there is only one way the economy will go and that is down because the criminal waste of resources will continue. Mugabe’s own economic recovery plan, ZimAsset, is dead in the water due to lack of donor funding and lack of investor confidence.

The only real chance of any meaningful economic recovery is for Mugabe and Zanu PF to step down so that concrete steps can be taken to address the mismanagement, corruption and lawlessness and thus reset the clock.

For Mugabe and his cronies stepping down now is simply unthinkable; they know their balloon insatiable appetite will go from explosive inflation to explosive deflation of an exploding balloon. The shockwave will shake them to the core and so Mugabe and Zanu PF will resist regime change as if their very lives are stake which is indeed the case.

Zimbabwe's economic meltdown is now a runaway train with none other than train driver and his crew, Mugabe and his cronies; now fearful of the train stopping and their being forced to account for the past recklessness and mischiefs; are now shouting "Full steam ahead!" and shovelling more coal! The train is rattling horribly and sparks are flying from the wheels; unemployment is already a nauseating 90%, 16% of the population or 2 million people are already living in abject poverty, the few remaining companies are set to close, etc.

The economic situation cannot continue; the runaway train on a steep mountain track with a dead-end at the bottom; we have to overpower the maniac train driver or the train is going to crash!