Hardly a week goes by without Mugabe calling for the targeted sanctions to be lifted. The must be hurting him and his cronies and he is calling on his “paid” MDC puppets to join in the call – he has always had nothing but contempt for MDC and to use them as his own errant puppets to West was the only reason Mugabe accepted to them join him in the GNU. It is laughable that the likes of Tsvangirai, Tendai Biti and Mutambara should now support the lifting of the sanctions on the grounds that lack of West support will result in the collapse of the GNU and increased suffering of the masses.
“So I told McGee and his friend that you must be careful as you deny us assistance, as you deny us credit line and investment, you are actually playing into the hands of those hawks and those foolish people who are undermining this government because their desire is to see a collapse,” Mutambara said. “The biggest losers in a collapse situation are the people of Zimbabwe. The biggest losers in a collapse are Morgan Tsvangirai and Mutambara.”
The primary reason Zimbabwe is in this mess is, of course Mugabe and Zanu PF. This ruthless and brutal dictator has destroyed the country’s economy and crashed the hopes and aspiration of ordinary people for peace, freedom and economic prosperity. He turned many of them into heartless monsters after his own image.
The second reason why we are in this mess is that we – the ordinary Zimbabweans, the West (showered Mugabe with praise and bankrolled his failed policies and corrupt practices), etc - let Mugabe have his way for too long.
The ordinary Zimbabweans have finally said “enough is enough” and voted for the opposition even though they knew the regime would punish them for it. Not that the people had any faith or confidence in the opposition, they did not; and for good reasons too. They voted for MDC because they were desperate for change.
For the first twenty years of our independence, the West showered Mugabe with praise and honours and bankrolled his failed “scientific socialism” experiment – there was nothing scientific about his reckless spending and rampant corruption. 1999 marked the end of second five-year ESAP sponsored by WB and IMF. The two programmes had failed stop Zimbabwe’s economic slid into the abyss because the Mugabe regime would not implement the promised reforms. The WB and IMF, in exasperation, finally pulled the plug of all financial assistance to the regime. Most West financial institutions and governments soon followed the WB and IMF lead; the West had finally realised their error and stopped throwing more good money after bad. Mugabe responded by playing his white colonial and imperialist tramp card.
Mugabe hit back by instigating a lawless and violent take over of white owned farms throughout Zimbabwe for his own selfish political gains. He has given away the seized farms to his political supporters, cronies and the ruling elite to buy their continued political support. He maintains the farms were given to the landless peasants, which is a lie. The regime has never seized all the white owned farms and for the last ten years has stirred up this issue by having fresh waves of lawless and violent invasions each time the party wanted to commit some political mischief. For example the campaign of intimidation and murder before the presidential run-off elections last year where preceded by fresh farm invasions and party thugs deployed to stop white farmers threatening to retake their lost farms.
The West had responded to increasing lawlessness and rampant corruption by the Mugabe regime by imposing targeted sanctions against Mugabe and his inner circle who were economically thriving in the face of growing poverty and despair of the masses.
If there is one thing Zimbabweans have learnt from the brutal betrayal by Mugabe and his Zanu PF party; it is not to trust the country’s politicians. MDC last year received 47% of the popular vote. With the country a total economic melt down, one would expect the opposition to do a lot better than that. The result showed the electorate had very little confidence in the opposition and for good reasons too.
Tsvangirai, Mutambara, Biti and all the other MDC leaders have blundered again and again. Signing the GPA and agreeing to work with Mugabe, particularly with the later in charge and keeping all his dictatorial powers was one of MDC’s greatest blunders. MDC called the arrangement “imperfect but workable” which is of course nonsense. Even if farm invasions stopped; that will not count for much if Mugabe has his thugs on standby and drawing US$ 1.5 million in wages. Stopping their wages will not be enough either, those responsible for the violence and murder of 200 Zimbabweans last year alone must be smoked out and punished!
The very fact that MDC leadership should want the West to lift the targeted sanctions and resume bankrolling this dictatorship is itself proof that the MDC have got the foggiest idea of why Zimbabwe is in this mess. If they did they would know that allowing Mugabe to have his way again will get the country nowhere. Of course the other simple explanation is that Mutambara and company are now part and parcel of the Mugabe ruling elite – they are benefiting already. Ordinary Zimbabweans have never benefited from bankrolling an incompetent and corrupt Mugabe regime before and it would be naïve to believe that they will do so now.
“Mugabe has failed already. Fifty quintillion percent inflation, 10 years of destroying the economy, how can he fail more than that?” said Mutambara. So it is nonsense to talk of government collapse when the regime collapsed a long time ago.
When Mutambara and others in MDC joined Mugabe they too become parties to this failure. What Mutambara, Biti, Tsvangirai and company want is the West to pump money into this failure – they know without a total overhaul there will be no economic recovery and they know too that Mugabe will not allow any such change to the political system that has served his dictatorial needs well – so they too will have chance to enrich themselves. Mugabe allowed them into the elusive ruling elite club on condition they get the West to lift the targeted sanction and restart bankrolling the regime; he is desperate to have the targeted sanctions lifted. To me; that means the sanctions are indeed working.
Renewed funding and appeasement of Mugabe will only give the dictatorship another lease of life and that will not help the ordinary Zimbabweans in any way. Indeed all their sacrifices this far would all have been for nothing!
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