Zimbabwe’s Members of Parliament have threatened to hold demonstrations after the minister of Finance refused to review their allowances upwards. “Kenyan MPs earn $13,500, Somalia MPs earn $700, our MPs are earning US$350, they are starving, they have not been getting their sitting allowances,” complained Mr. Simba Mudarikwa, an MP from President Mugabe’s Zanu PF party. Zimbabwe’s teachers, nurses and many other civil servants who are earning even less than the MPs at USA$ 200 for the top paid and threatening to go on strike because the Minister too failed to award them a pay increase.
The Minister of Finance has a simple reason why he can not give any one a pay increase – the Zimbabwe government is broke. The country was hoping to get foreign aid to finance its $2.2 billion budget but has since got very little.
It is perfectly understandable that civil servants should go on strike on the low pay. MPs demonstrations; that is a sick joke! The former have to pressure the country’s MPs to get off their back sides and rein in Mugabe, JOC and all his cronies who continue to disrupt the nation’s efforts to put the nation’s economy back on a recovery path. Mugabe cronies continue to disrupt farming by carrying on with fresh farm invasions and hanging on to thousands of farms although they have clearly failed to keep up them productive, for example. If the MPs do not have the power or see it as their responsibility to force the Police to act against these thugs; then who does?
The very fact that MPs are complaining about their low pay underlines the fundamental weakness in Zimbabwe today – we have leaders who are in position of power for personal gain and nothing else. They view public funds as a bottomless source of money. You would think that of all the people they would know by now that the thirty years of gross mismanagement and rampant corruption by Mugabe and his tyrannical regime have bankrupted the nation. There is no money! They clearly have neither common sense, sense of public duty nor the vision thing. What the nation is dying for is leaders who will guide it out of this mess not more thugs to rob it clean.
6 comments:
@Fungayi
You real are a moron.
1) One has to dismiss your statement "The US has condemned as ... " as nonsense because the US is a vibrant democracy that does not allow for sweeping statements like that. What the US government says is not necessarily what the American people say. Even within government; President Obama condemned President Bush’s war on terror policies for example.
2) The videos about killing of Afghan and Iraq civilians if it was the US Army killing Americans the American public would be united in condemning it no question about that. And so they should too; if they can not trust their own Army and government to protect them, who should they trust then? Farai Maguwu was flagging a situation in which the Zimbabwe government, the Police and the Army was beating and murdering Zimbabweans; only a moron like you would think that should be a State Secrete!
For a well paid propagandist you are as cheap as they come – Mugabe must be desperate to keep an idiot like you on his payroll!
"To subject a sovereign head of state to a warrant of arrest is undermining African solidarity and African peace and security that we fought for for so many years," AU chairperson Mutharika said Sunday.
But did we fight for a regime that would deny its own people the basic human rights and freedoms including the right to life itself? What Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir is accused of is mass murder of hundreds of thousands of innocent people. It is down right stupid and irresponsible for any national leader worth his salt to suggest we must sweep that under the carpet in the name of “African solidarity and African peace and security”.
Those seeking to have these things swept under the carpet are the one who are undermining Africa and have condemned it to the dark ages. African leaders were united in condemning American involvement in Somalia; claiming it was an African problem that required an African solution. Two decades later Somalia is still burning and African leaders are wringing their fingers!
Africa must put its own house in order; treat its people with respect and not as if they are the scam of the earth. And return to rule of law, no one should be above the law. Failure to do mean the continent will continue to be marginalised and its people condemned to abject poverty and endless conflicts. Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni will take over as AU chairman – a ruthless dictator in charge of a radical democratic agenda – let us just say Africa will be going nowhere for a long, long while!
@John Simons
Yes of course to sanction the arrest of one of their own will be hard for the African leaders to swallow. But is it any easier for them to continue to condone widespread human rights violations and mass murder? Yes up until now it has been easier to treat the ordinary man, woman and child as if they are the scam of the earth but that MUST now change. The cup is full and overflowing; this simply can not be allowed to go on.
African leaders have a simple choice they can accept change and allow the continent to evolve. Or they can try to resist changed and the growing pressure for change will rich the critical point to blow them aside. We will either evolve or there will be a violent revolution. Dictators like Robert Mugabe and Omar al-Bashir have too much blood on their hands to chose but there are other African leaders whose hands are still clean; they will be foolish to let the tyrants dragged take them down with them. Very foolish indeed!
@Fungayi
Let me try again.
Would you agree that the human rights violations in the video realised by Bradley Manning reported of human rights violations of Afghans and Iraqis and NOT American citizens? Would you also agree that if the US Army or Government were involved in human rights violation of American citizens the American people will be up in arms about it? In other words; the American people will consider the whistle-blower of human rights violation of American citizens a true patriot. Not even the American government would dare try to cover up that one – “There will be no cover up in Richard Nixon’s White House!”
I assume that you agreed with the two assertions above – even a moron like you can not dispute they are true. Would you agree it would be logical to then conclude that American’s political system, call it what you will, is strong enough to protect the basic human rights of American citizens? Yes! Good.
Assuming you are not disputing the fact that there were serious human rights violation in Marange and they were perpetrated by the Zimbabwe National Army and by the Zimbabwe Republic Police. The State’s quarrel with Farai Maguwu is that he should not have reported the violations to the world.
Now let go back and compare and contrast the facts of the two cases before us.
1) Farai Maguwu exposed human rights violations of his fellow Zimbabwean citizens and not of foreigners – fellow Zimbabweans like you and I should considered him a hero and not a “traitor” which is what you, Fungayi, have called him.
2) The Zimbabwe political system – I call it a repressive and ruthless dictatorship because that is exactly what it is – has clearly failed to guarantee the human rights and freedoms of Zimbabwean citizens.
3) America’s political system has allowed American citizen to expose human rights violation of foreigners committed by the American Army. The American Government and people may not approve of such expose but the fact still remains that Manning has done it!
You are a Zimbabwean yourself and surely you should be concerned when those in positions of power and authority abuse their positions and violate the rights of fellow Zimbabweans. You should be concerned out of empathy with the victims of the violations but also out of self interest. You should ask yourself: If the regime can violate the rights of “A” with impunity what will stop them turning on me next? Only a moron would argue that the violation should be a “State secrete!”
@Fungayi
You are a first degree moron alright, Fungayi – if you were accused of murder you would be convicted of a first degree murder because you are clearly not insane. Greed and the blood of the hundreds of thousands of innocent Zimbabweans you people have murdered have clouded your reasoning, I will give you that much but other than you are otherwise sane and thus a first class moron.
“Human rights violations are human rights violations.” You say – music to my ears. Great, we are getting somewhere. Would you agree there have been serious human rights violations in Zimbabwe? I put the case before you of a clique of powerful individuals who having defeated a white colonial regime turned their guns on the civilian population to force them to vote for them. And in their thirty years in power the clique has yet to hold free and fair elections and have ruled with a iron fist.
I put the case to you that a few years ago the clique cash-striped – having looted and destroyed the nation’s capacity to generate wealth – decided to muscle in of a diamond field so they could get themselves the much needed cash. The clique went into Marange with armed Police, Soldiers and gunship helicopters; the usual iron fist tactic. Careful now, put the case to yourself that with all this heavy handed approach many civilians ended up being beaten and some killed. Put the last bit carefully to yourself Fungayi because there is this moron who continues to deny there were any human rights violations in Marange.
“The state secret that Maguwu was arrested for was to do with security arrangements and nothing to do with violations” you say?
If there were not even any possibility, proven or otherwise, of human rights violations in Marange why would the Kimberley Process withhold their certification?
Human rights violations are human rights violations, you know that much. What you will not accept is that Mugabe and his henchmen and thugs are committing serious human rights violations because you are one of the few gaining from it. You thought you would get away with it, did you? Well now the net is closing in and the hangman’s noose is waiting!
@Fungayi
“All countries in the world have had their moments of excesses, come on we had slavery, colonial brutality and apartheid.” So it is ok for Mugabe to have treat Zimbabweans as if they are the scam of the earth deny them a meaningful say in the governance of the country and even deny them the right to life? The irony of it is that the idiot still considers himself to be a liberation hero!
@Dread Dread6
“Please note the difference between Zimbabweans in general and Zimbabweans who are ZANU-PF supporters. It is ZANU-PF supporters who will not think twice to fund the noble works of their revolutionary party,” you said.
When Zanu PF built its “Shake Shake” headquarters in Harare party supporters as well as none members were asked to contribute. Civil servants and workers in government controlled companies had money docked off their wages and, of course, no one dare complain. Mugabe’s mansion, fees for his daughter in Hong Kong and all the money to pay for all the other luxuries for him, his family and all his cronies was taken from the national coffers; the Zimbabwe public had no say in it. Only an idiot like you would come up with a stupid suggestion that anyone would freely agree to have money taken away from school and hospitals so that it can be wasted of foreign trips, cars, mansions, etc.
Zanu PF supporters would not “think twice to fund the noble works of their revolutionary party!” What noble works? What revolutionary party? Power is a strong drug and absolute power even more so. Mugabe and others are drug addicts and ever since they got into power they have become more important than the people and the revolution was to get them into power. The revolution was to create a Zimbabwe where the people enjoyed freedom, liberty and human dignity; that sadly is yet to be accomplished. And THAT will be accomplished; Mugabe and his gang of thugs will be swept aside just as Ian Smith was swept aside.
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