Mugabe makes U-turn on flag-ship indigenisation policy but only to shoot himself in the foot!

Zanu PF has repeatedly said all foreign owned businesses in certain sectors such as bakery, retail, etc. must other sell 51% shares of their business to black Zimbabweans or sell everything by 1^st January 2014. Those who do not do so will be forced to sell. The deadline day has come and gone and none of the white-owned farms invasions of the last 13 years have taken place.

 

Minister Nhema has made a humiliating U-Turn; the foreigner will be allowed to continue owning their business for another four years unmolested.  “In some areas, they will be given four years in some areas, five. It all depends on the area and individual circumstances,” he said

 

A few weeks ago, at the Zanu PF Congress, Mugabe said the takeover will go ahead contrary to what Minister Nhema had been saying all along. Well the deadline of 1st January 2014 has come and no foreigner-owned business has been taken away. Not even one.

 

The threatened takeover of foreign businesses was all hot-air. Not that there were that many businesses to loot anywhere. This is sure a humiliating U-Turn for Zanu PF but more so Robert Mugabe himself.

 

What makes the U-Turn a real tragedy is that not only has Zanu PF and Mugabe been humiliated but the grudging way the U-Turn was made has not done anything to restore confidence in the business sector. The threat of Zanu PF thugs walking in and taking over someone else's business continues to hangover the foreign business owners like the sword of Damocles. So none of these business owners would want to invest another penny in their business; they would be foolish to draw Zanu PF thugs’ attention onto themselves. There will be no new foreign investors; that goes without saying.

Mugabe in a meaningless U-Turn on indigenisation; a board will supervise the looting!

With the deadline of January 2014 for foreigners to handover 51% of their shares looming; the looters were getting as excited as hyenas at the smell of blood. So Minister Nhema has been forced to step in and hold back the hyenas. So the Minister told the concerned foreign business owners that they should not entertain individuals who seek partnerships or takeovers without going through the National Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Board (Nieeb).

“We are a business community, which should follow proper business procedures and maintain sanity in our country,” the Minister said.

Minister Nhema what you are doing is called looting. No business school will teach you that anyone could ever prosper from reaping where they did not sow. So what “proper business procedures” are you wittering about!

Unemployment is seating at a nauseating 85% plus, the Zimbabwe economy is in dare straits and the Zimbabwe government is broke following the reckless spending by Mugabe to pay for the vote rigging operations. Zimbabwe should be bending over backwards to keep the few businesses still operating in the country, to attract new investors and to attract financial help. Instead Mugabe and Zanu PF are kissing goodbye to any chance of economic recovery by continuing to pursue the country’s looting policies in the thin disguise of indigenisation.

Zimbabwe is in a deep hole. When you are in a hole; stop digging! None of the foreign business owners and would-be investors and financers will be assured the appointment of NIEEB, a board to supervise the looting.

Zimbabwe Catholic Bishops call for "national agenda for restoration" after decades of being in the tyrant's pocket!

Zimbabwe’s Roman Catholic Church Bishops call for a “national agenda for restoration and peace in Zimbabwe following the July 2013 National Elections" in a pastoral letter without saying what exactly is in this agenda.

Zimbabwe had a real chance to bring about meaningful political change if the GNU had implemented the democratic reforms necessary for free and fair elections as agreed in the GPA. The country's leaders had five years, FIVE YEARS, to implement the reforms and yet not even one reform was implemented.

Where were the country's civic and church leaders throughout the five wasted years? Why did they not get the politicians to implement the reforms?

It was not just the politicians that let the nation down but these good-for-nothing civic and church leaders too. Most of them were cheering and applauding the politicians along. They jointed the politicians in getting the people to vote yes to the weak and feeble Copac constitution which sealed the fate of the nation as far as getting any reforms implemented before the elections.

"Having been in the doldrums for more than a decade, Zimbabwe now needs both local and international support.” Father Clyde Murope SJ tells us. "Development and growth is possible only if we all oppose corruption and complacency."

If the truth be told, the Zimbabwe’s Roman Catholic Church’s cozy relationship with the corrupt and murderous tyrant Mugabe and his Zanu PF thugs has been unhealthy, to say the least. The Roman Catholic Church has become the church of the tyrant and his filthy rich cronies. Not the church of the poor and down trodden that Jesus Christ founded.

If the Zimbabwe’s civic-society is serious about ending the country’s culture of corruption and brutal political repression that has landed the nation in this hell-on-earth then they must start treating Mugabe as the tyrant he is. They can start by denouncing Mugabe for rigging the elections and join in the call for fresh democratic elections!

Civil servants are negotiating with Mugabe for a pay rise: how naive is that!

Progressive Teachers Union Leader, Takavafira Zhou says wage increase negotiations with government are not making progress. The real big surprise is that Zhou actually expects a pay rise.

 

The trouble here is that the civil servants are being led by individuals like Takavafira Zhou who really have got the foggiest idea what is happening. Zhou is just as incompetent as Morgan Tsvangirai they may just as well have fed from the same breast!

 

Zimbabwe is broke; years of gross mismanagement, corruption and looting have destroyed the country's economy. Mugabe's reckless spending in the last two years to rig the elections was the last straw that broke the camel's back. And yet people like Zhou are still expecting government to increase the civil servants' wages. The government does not have the money to pay even half the wages; only an idiot can therefore be talking of a wage rise.

 

As long as Zimbabwe look up to people like Zhou or Tsvangirai then the country has no chance of ever going out of this mess.

Tsvangirai says Mugabe is illegitimate and there should be fresh elections in his third flipflop position on the rigged elections

Tsvangirai in a third flip-flop position on the rigged elections. After the July elections Tsvangirai filed a court challenge of the “flawed” elections. A few weeks later, he withdrew his court challenge on the grounds that the courts were no cooperating with MDC’s request to ZEC to release the necessary documents including the voters roll.

 

The withdrawal of the court challenge cleared the way for Mugabe to take his oath of office and form the next government. Tsvangirai argued the nation to accept the new regime as the “political reality”.

 

The right position was and has always remained as that elections could not have been free and fair because none of the democratic reforms had been implemented. Tsvangirai had five years to implement the reforms and not even one reform had seen light of day. The only possible explanation for no reforms was that Tsvangirai was breathtakingly incompetent. Mugabe went on to blatantly rig the elections too making it blatantly obvious that he was illegitimate.

 

Why Tsvangirai withdraw his court challenge of the election result in the face of the blatant vote rigging is again a measure of the MDC leader’s breath-taking incompetence. It was for the courts and not MDC to ensure ZEC fulfilled its public obligations by releasing the public documents including the voters roll.

 

 In a reversal of his last position to accept Mugabe Tsvangirai is now calling Mugabe “illegitimate” and for fresh elections.

 

“We will be embarking on a global advocacy campaign to the AU, SADC and the internal community on the need for the reversal of the fraudulent result of 2013,” said Tsvangirai.  

 

“The lesson from the July 31 poll is that all reforms, including security sector and media reforms that were agreed to under the GPA, are mandatory if we are to have an undisputed election,” he admitted.

 

When he had the power, authority and opportunity to get the reforms implemented he not only failed to do so but even had the arrogance to ignore all those calling on him to do so. He “was too comfortable and forgot the reason why he was in government,” SADC leaders said of Tsvangirai.

 

The most important lesson SADC, the AU, the international community and the people of Zimbabwe have hopefully learnt is that Tsvangirai is breathtakingly incompetent and therefore not to be trust. It is time to ignore him!

 

We, the West by rejecting the rigged elections and those Zimbabweans who have refused to accept Mugabe rule as fait accompli, known Mugabe rigged the elections and is therefore illegitimate. We can push Mugabe to accept fresh elections and completely ignore Tsvangirai whose confused involvement will only serve to muddy the waters.    

Tsvangirai dismiss the Zimbabwe budget as "a mere fantasy" - now speaks the breathtaking incompetent who landed us here!

Tsvangirai dismisses the Zimbabwe’s budget and the projected 6.1% economic growth rate as “a mere fantasy”. Of course it is but do we need Tsvangirai to tell us that, given it was his breath-taking incompetence that landed us in this mess.

 

Tsvangirai told the nation that the 2013 elections would be free and fair although everyone who is anyone said that would not happen, not without implementing the democratic reforms first. Tsvangirai had five years to implement the reforms and he did not get even one reform was implemented. He was confident the elections would still be free and fair regardless.

 

Mugabe took full advantage of Tsvangirai's breath-taking incompetence and rigged the elections.

 

Everyone knows the Zimbabwe economy is in a real mess for years. For years now Zimbabwe's national budgets have been a wish list in which all the Ministries say what they wanted but never got the money to pay for any of it. MDC's Minister of Finance in the last GNU, Tendai Biti, admitted that he got none of the diamond revenue, for example, which he had given as a key revenue source in his budget.

 

Tsvangirai is now telling us the Zanu PF government will not have the $4.4 billion promised in the budget. This is just another wish list. What is important here is that we would not be in this mess of meaningless wish list again if Tsvangirai had implemented the reforms. It is therefore an irritant for him to be telling us what we already know, particularly when it was his breath-taking incompetence that landed us in this mess! 

SA's Metal Workers Union end its relationship with ANC over Zuma's failed leadership!

South Africa’s Metal Workers Union breaks it alliance with ANC over President Zuma’s failed leadership.

 

This is a sign that South Africans are prepared to reject ANC leaders on the basis of their performance and not hang on to failed leaders for sentimental reasons as is often the case in post independent Africa. The British people reject Winston Churchill, the country's Second World War hero, in the first post war elections. This goes to show that SA's democracy is healthy and kicking.

 

If the ANC was to survive then it must get rid of corrupt and incompetent leaders. It is that simple!

It is not the survival of a political party much less of an individual leader that is at issue but the survival of the country, the nation! SA will go on to prosper without the ANC or Zuma!