Striking junior doctors have agreed to go back to work after meeting First Lady, Auxilia Mnangagwa.
“Pavavona mai zvinhu zvafamba. Vati mama zvakaoma hazvo asi todzokera kubasa. Vati vachakambaira kusvikira hufumi hwenyika hwanaka. Ini zvavandiudza ndichando kumbira kuvakuru ndakavamirira!” (When the junior doctors saw me things went well! They told me of their economic hardships and lack of equipment. They have agreed to end the strike and return to work. They agreed to suffer whilst they wait for economic recovery. I will pass on their requests to government leaders on their behalf!) said First Lady.
If this was not a life and death matter, people are indeed dying like flies because the country's health care has long collapsed; one would fall off the chair laughing.
What is laughable is Mrs Mnangagwa and the whole Zanu PF regime should continue to insult our intelligence repeating the lie the party going to finally deliver economic prosperity after 38 years and counting of doing the exact opposite! When Zimbabwe gained her independence in 1980, the country was a middle income nation with a robust economy and potential to be the South Korea of Africa. After 25 years of gross mismanagement, rampant corruption and lawlessness under Zanu PF tyrannical rule, the country was the poorest nation in Africa. And ever since the economic meltdown has got worse and worse!
The people of Zimbabwe have been painful aware that Zanu PF was bringing mass poverty instead of mass prosperity the party never tired of promising. Still the nation were unable to remove the regime from office because the party blatantly rigged the elections.
Following the November 2017 military coup that removed Mugabe from power, Mnangagwa, who took over as the new president, promised to hold free, fair and credible elections. He failed to keep his promise; Zanu PF blatantly rigged the 30 July 2018 elections just as the party had done in the past.
As much as Mnangagwa and the other Zanu PF leaders would want the nation to believe that the November 2017 transformed Zanu PF and Zimbabwe; this is just cheap propaganda. Zimbabwe is still a pariah state ruled by corrupt, incompetent and vote rigging thugs.
The country’s economy is not going to accomplish any meaningful recovery, much less prosper, as long as Zimbabwe remains a pariah state. Ever since the rigged July 2018 elections, the country has experiences serious shortages of cash, foreign currency, fuel, food, etc. - proof of the worsening economic meltdown.
Auxilia Mnangagwa did not meet the striking doctors because she is concerned about their economic well-being or the health needs of the millions of ordinary Zimbabweans. She knows by now that her “Zimbabwe is open for business!” clarion call of a year ago has failed to bring the flood of local and foreign investors.
Indeed, she has been careful to promise the doctors short term hardship for long term prosperity. The regime vision 2030 offers middle income status. This is a familiar tactic by the regime the people are asked to endure heart-breaking hardship in return for a mirage!
The real reason the First Lady met the doctors and is as keen as mustard to end the strike is because the strike and talks on more to come are posing a real pressure of her husband and Zanu PF’s hold on power. She knows that the party rigged last year’s elections. She also knows that most of the international elections observers have condemned the elections as “unfair and failed to meet international standards”! The worsening economic situation is increasing the pressure on the regime to step down and end her reign as First Lady.
If First Lady Mnangagwa believes the doctor’s strike is the last labour and social unrest Zanu PF will have to deal with; then she is more naive than I thought. After 38 years of being promised economic prosperity by Zanu PF only to get the opposite, the nation’s patience was finally reached breaking point!
Zanu PF has rigged elections in the past and got away with it. Not this time!For the good of the country, this illegitimate Zanu PF regime must step down and, in the end, the regime will be forced to step down.
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VETERAN journalist and founding editor of the Daily News, Geoffrey Nyarota, has been appointed head of journalism and communication training at the Christian College of Southern Africa (CCOSA).
In a country with very few people to be proud of there is a man who has done Zimbabwe proud! He will inspire many of his students to give their best, of that we can be 100% certain.
FIRST Lady Auxillia Mnangagwa's surprise intervention yesterday into the crisis in the health sector failed to end the strike by junior doctors, which has dragged on for the past 35 days.
Mnangagwa met representatives from the Zimbabwe Hospital Doctors' Association (ZHDA) at State House in the morning to try and break the impasse, with the two parties later issuing contradictory statements after the meeting.
ZHDA secretary-general Mthabisi Bhebhe yesterday said the strike for better salaries would continue until the doctors' demands were met.
If the Doctors are being paid $385 a month and the poverty datum line is US$650 this means government has to double their wages just to them back on the datum line! The situation is even more complex because the wages are paid in Bond Notes not US$ and the current exchange rate is 3:1 and so government must increase the wage six fold! In short the government will never do this, not this government given it has failed to revive the economy.
The truth is we have a regime that has dragged us into this mess but, like all tyrannical regime, it will not admit it failed much less allow the people to find their way out of the mess. Zanu PF is holding this nation to ransom.
Zanu PF rigged the recent elections and therefore has no mandate to govern the country. Now it is clear the regime cannot rig economic recovery and this time it must deliver economic recovery, meet the striking doctors’ demands, etc. or else step down.
We must never forget that it is Zanu PF thugs who frog marched the nation into this mess, the regime has never held free, fair and credible elections, the thugs refuse to admit they have failed and insist they and they alone can get us out of the mess. After 38 years of tyranny and with the nation up to its eyes deep in the cesspond; only the first class idiots would want these thugs to remain in office another day.
The only way out of the mess is for Zanu PF to step down, that is not negotiable!
ZIMBABWE’S restive civil servants have managed to nudge government into negotiations after they threatened to embark on a nationwide strike starting next week in protest over their poor salaries and the deteriorating economic situation in the country.
President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government, in a bid to avert a crippling strike, yesterday invited all heads of civil servants’ unions to a crisis meeting in Harare on Monday to address their welfare, amid threats by the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions and the opposition MDC to join the industrial action.
Zanu PF rigged the elections and Mnangagwa was cocksure he would rig economic recovery too. The truth is beginning to dawn on him that he cannot rig economic recovery and in the face of a worsening economic meltdown he is trying to sell it as a necessary price to be paid for economic recovery tomorrow. After 38 years of awaiting for Zanu PF’s economic prosperity only a first class fool would give these thugs another day in power!
Zanu PF rigged the recent elections to extend the party’s rule; the party has no mandate to rule, it is illegitimate, and it must not be allowed to stay in power. Zanu PF must step down!
Election officials in the Democratic Republic of Congo have delayed publishing the results of last Sunday's presidential vote, despite growing calls for the outcome to be announced.
The electoral commission said the result would be revealed "next week".
Earlier this week the influential Catholic Church, which fielded thousands of election observers, said there was a clear winner.
It called for the result to be made public to avoid political unrest.
This drew an angry response from the coalition in power which said the church was "doing something illegal" and accused it of "preparing the population for insurrection".
The Church had been vocal in its opposition to the extension of President Joseph Kabila's rule.
This is the trouble with many African countries we cannot even hold free, fair and credible elections! Each new coming government promises to end corrupt and hold free, fair and credible elections but as soon as they get their feet under the desk they immediately forget about their promise as they partake in the orgy of corruption. They also forget the promise to holding free and fair elections in a bide to extend their own stay in power to feather their own nests with all the looted wealth.
We live in the space age but not so for Africa, we might just as well be living in the stone-age. Only last week the Americans were talking of their space craft, News Horizon, zipped past Ultima Thule, a small icy world 4 billion miles from the sun, travelling at 31 000 miles per hour. The spacecraft is but a speck of dust in the vast empty space and yet NASA are still able to communicate with it; they have just received detailed photo of Ultima Thule.
Meanwhile, we in Africa are yet grasp the novelty of having clean water to drink and working sewage system. We are still plagued by such diseases as Cholera and typhoid because we s**t everywhere like cows!
DRC is one of the wealthiest nation on earth in terms of natural resources and potential and yet the country remains one of the poorest in the world because the people are brain-dead. Like us, Congolese have yet to understand what constitute free, fair and credible elections and hence the reason the country has yet to elect competent leaders with some common sense to take advantage of the human civilisation for the good of the country. We do not need to reinvent the science of growing crops, medicine to cure the various diseases, democracy, etc.; all we need to do is apply the knowledge to drag our people out of the stone age!
One can understand why people are concerned about the delay in announcing the elections results; DRC is cooking the result just as Zanu PF did last July! DRC, just like Zimbabwe is stuck on first base, cannot hold free, fair and credible elections and so the nation is stuck with having corrupt and incompetent leaders!
BULAWAYO and Gweru city councils have scaled up the fight against waterborne diseases such as cholera and typhoid, following the onset of the rainy season.
Bulawayo town clerk Christopher Dube said the local authority had started rolling out awareness campaigns to avert outbreaks of waterborne diseases, particularly against the background of sewer pipe bursts.
Try repairing and/or replacing the dumb pipes! You have raw sewage flowing everywhere and leave people with no other choice other than drinking contaminated water and you thing a cholera awareness campaign is the answer! How stupid is that!
Zimbabwe is in serious trouble and needs solutions to her problems and no more of these foolish false medicine!
Some people have said that First Lady Auxillia Mnangagwa is a simpleton just like Joice Mujuru and Grace Mugabe who love the glare of the limelight that has come with being First Lady or VP but have no clue what is really going on. Whilst the three women will probably know very little is anything at all of the details of the vote rigging, looting and political murders that has been going on these last 38 years. Still none of them can deny that they did not know these things were happening.
Indeed, each of the three pompous busy bodies have cherished playing the role of caring mother of the nation in public whilst in private they have happily pocketed the lion's share of the power and looted wealth brought in by the de facto one party state.
Auxillia Mnangagwa is shedding rivers of crocodile tears over the economic hardship the striking junior doctors, "vana vangu" (my children) as she called them, are facing. She readily acknowledges that our health services has all but collapse for lack of even the most basic equipment, no medicine, etc. She knows that she and her fellow Zanu PF ruling elite are the ones who cause all these economic hardship through gross mismanagement and the wholesale looting of the nation's resources!
Zanu PF leaders have perfected the art of giving with one hand and make a big song and dance of the party's generosity and rob even more from you with the other hand! Mai Mnangagwa is making a big song and dance about the extra mile government is going to improve the wages of the junior doctors and to keep whatever is left of our sub substandard health service. And yet Zanu PF has just blatantly rigged the July 2018 elections to secure another five years in power so the regime can continue to loot and rig elections to perpetuity.
Zanu PF is a corrupt and tyrannical regime whose only care is to retain its iron grip on power at all cost. The party will never get the nation out of this mess because it would have never dragged us into the mess in the first place. We demand the full restoration of our freedoms and democratic rights including the right to a meaningful say to who rules Zimbabwe.
Zanu PF rigged the July 2018 elections, the party has no mandate to govern and it must step down. Forget telling your husband to pay the junior doctors a few more worthless Bond Notes tell him to give back the people of Zimbabwe their freedom, human rights, their humanity and pride and, most important of all, hope of a better and brighter future!
@ Tshetshe Ndlovu
“We the people should stand up and uprise instead of writing good English doing nothing.”
I hear you but what is it we are demanding? I do not believe the ordinary people out there know exactly what they will be fighting for right now.
Are you asking people to go on the street and join the striking doctors and teachers in demanding an end to the economic hardships? Mnangagwa and his Zanu PF cronies will claim that is exactly what they are doing with their “austerity to prosperity programmes”. I do not believe any of the programmes will bring about any meaningful economic recovery as long as Zimbabwe remains a pariah state ruled by corrupt and vote rigging thugs.
Are you asking people to join Chamisa and his MDC Alliance in demanding that he and his friends must be asked to join Zanu PF in government. I do not believe Chamisa “has the key to unlock the economic recovery,” as he has often claimed. This will be a time wasting gimmick.
The only viable solution for Zimbabwe is for Zanu PF to step down, the regime is illegitimate because the part rigged the last elections, to allow the appointment of an interim administration whose primary task is to implement the democratic reforms necessary for free, fair and credible elections.
Since both Zanu PF and MDC leaders were involved in the 2008 to 2013 GNU that failed to get even one reform implemented, it is imperative that none of them play no part in the interim administration.
The case for an interim administration as the way out has been made but must be hammered in if there is any hope of succeeding this time. The people have risked life and limb in electing MDC leaders into office on the basis they will bring about democratic change, for example. After 19 years on the political stage, MDC has failed to bring about even one democratic change. The people had no idea what the democratic changes the nation wanted were much less how they were going to be accomplished. MDC leaders like Morgan Tsvangirai had no clue either but were quick sell-out to Mugabe on reforms.
This time as many people as possible should know what the democratic changes we want are, how they will be implemented, etc., etc. So as many articles as possible should be produced to cover every possible problem the interim administration will face, what kind of people should be appointed, how long should the administration last, etc., etc. Knowledge is power, my friend!
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