"Zimbabwe is open for business!" cried ED in Davos, SA, ... now ZITF - still no investors, why

For the last 38 years Zimbabwe’s economy has been in decline and yet year on year without failure our political leaders have said steadfastly refused to even acknowledge the decline and talked of economic doom. When they were finally forced to acknowledge the economic decline, they have talked how they had fit on the answers to guarantee economic recovery.

If the country’s economic problems had been dealt with openly and honestly, in which failure was acknowledge and those responsible held to democratic account, the country would not be in the mess it is in today. Zimbabwe’s economy is in total meltdown. Unemployment is a nauseating 90% and has been 80% plus for the last decade already. Worse still, there is no reason to believe things are ever going to improve because, instead of dealing with country’s problems honestly, we continue to hear the same empty promises founded on conjuncture and wishful thinking.

“The ZITF remains an important platform to promote trade and investment for Zimbabwe, and is quite strategic under the new economic order of Government,” said President Mnangagwa. He was opened 59^th Zimbabwe International Trade Fair (ZITF).

“The theme for ZITF 2018, "Sustainable Industrial Development: Inclusive-Competitive-Collaborative" articulates an important pillar of the new trajectory that has prioritised industrialisation to contribute to sustained economic recovery of Zimbabwe.

“The Government is making significant strides to put in place and effect viable policies and strategies to improve the business operating environment and address challenges that have affected industrial development and growth. Attracting both domestic and foreign investments, mobilising funding for industrial development, supporting the agriculture and mining sectors, and infrastructure development, are key priority areas of focus expected to help attain sustained economic growth and development.”

But that is just the point, you keep talking of “the new economic order”, conducive to economic recovery, when there no such order and thus the recovery will remain a mirage!

Mr President, for the last five months, you have been selling the nation and the world at large the notion that the removal of Robert Mugabe from the presidency, booting a few of his G40 friends from power and the scrapping of a few obnoxious laws have completely transformed Zimbabwe. The country has shed-off its pariah state ruled by thugs status to become a democratic nation given to holding free elections and to upholding the rule of law. If all these things have happened, they would certainly constitute a new order; none of them have happened!

The regime says it has “zero tolerance policy towards corruption”. Yes, some G40 Zanu PF members have been arrested but no one else. It is nonsensical to even suggest that only G40 faction members in the party were corrupt. It is no secret that many of the November 2017 coup plotter also benefited of the wholesale looting of Chiadzwa and Marange diamonds. Whilst some people have since been brought before a Parliamentary Committee investigating the looting, the Army top brass is yet to do so. 

The “new dispensation”, as President Mnangagwa and his coup junta want to call themselves, had the golden opportunity to prove, beyond all doubt, that it was not the same corrupt, vote rigging and ruthless thugs by keeping its promise to hold free, fair and credible elections. The regime has time and time again scuffed its lines!

President Mnangagwa appointed retired Major Engelbert Rugeje, Zanu PF National Political Commissar. Rugeje in notorious for having led the Zanu PF military and party thugs who harassed, beat, rape and even murdered civilians in the election mayhem of 2008. The party was punishing the people for rejecting Mugabe in the earlier vote. The wanton violence of that year has been the benchmark of the nauseating heights of political barbarism Zanu PF would climb in its resolve to retain power at all cost. If President Mnangagwa was serious about transforming Zanu PF, then why would he appoint a notorious political thug to head the party’s organization, education and indoctrination! 

President Mnangagwa bought and dished out the twin cab trucks to all the country’s 282 Chiefs; Robert Mugabe had already promised to do this before he was deposed. Everyone knows that the Chiefs have always done a sterling job of carolling and frog marching rural voters to vote for Zanu PF. ED was making the down payment to the Chiefs to make sure they never tire!

The regime has refused to implement even one of the many democratic reforms Zanu PF had agreed to at the start 2008 GNU. It is impossible to see how the country can have free and fair elections without a free media, verifiable voters’ roll, independent ZEC, with the Army and Police meddling in the election process, etc.

President Mnangagwa has made his trademark “Zimbabwe is open for business!” proclamation from every platform, for these last five months. Sadly, there have been very few foreign and local investors who have taken up the invitation for one simple reason, they are not convinced Zimbabwe has changed.

No investors like to do business in a country that rigs elections and the next regime change can only be yet another military coup!

“I wish to reiterate that Zimbabwe is Open for Business. Both domestic and foreign investors are welcome to invest and do business in Zimbabwe and tap the diverse opportunities offered by all sectors of industry including investing in Special Economic Zones and infrastructure development,” continue President Mnangagwa.

Well, you can reiterate you call a thousand times a day, if you wish; no investors are coming. The idea that the November coup could ever transformer Zanu PF is laughable!

After 38 years of enjoying absolute political power, murderous abuse of power and some of the worst cases of looting in human history Zanu PF thugs have become addicted to power and the luxuries it brought along; Mnangagwa and the junta stage the coup, risking their very lives, because they could not bear the prospect of giving it all up. The junta has one additional reason why it cannot hold free and fair elections and risk losing to the opposition, with a dirty past, they can imagine the nightmare of having it all come out!

The nearly four decades in power had allowed Zanu PF dictatorship to grow into a monster in both numerical head count and in political power as the party’s influence extended its reach into every section and façade of the nation. The rot in the leaders was so deep set the party could only be transformed by uprooting the corrupt, vote rigging and tyrannical members. The November coup boot out of the party Robert Mugabe and a dozen or so others – nowhere near enough to justify President Mnangagwa’s claim the party was a “new dispensation”.

The party’s refusal to give up its dictatorial powers including the carte blanche power to rig elections has confirm Zanu PF has not change one bit; it is still a party of corrupt vote-rigging thugs.

So, as long as the “new dispensation”, “new era”, “new trajectory”, “new economic order”, remain fragments of President Mnangagwa and his coup junta’s imagination, no different from many imaginary changes by Robert Mugabe and his cronies; economic recovery will too remain a mirage. With unemployment already at 90%, ¾ of the people living on US$1.00 or less a day, etc. Zimbabwe cannot afford another rigged elections and another five more years celebrating imaginary economic recovery because real people need real jobs!

The booting out of Robert Mugabe from Zanu PF, influential as he clearly was, was not enough to transform Zimbabwe from a pariah state to a democratic one “open for business. Just as one swallow does not constitute a summer, Zanu PF will have to hold free, fair and credible elections to prove its Damascene democratic claims are not just a figment of President Mnangagwa’s wishful thinking.