MDC has unveiled a new economic program, known as The Jobs, Upliftment, Investment, Capital and Environment Plan, or JUICE. The party claim the program will create a million new jobs from 2013 to 2018, expand the economy by 8% a year over the period and increase power generation to 6,000 megawatts. The party has conveniently ditched its last program, RESTART; without even bothering to explain why the promised economic recovery never materialised. If MDC get back on the gravy
JUICE will seek to reverse the Zanu PF flagship policy of indigenisation in which white owned mines, banks and other companies are forced to sell 51% of their equity to blacks – in practice to Zanu PF loyalists. “The problem that indigenisation poses is that it kills investor confidence,” said MDC Minister Mashakada. And yet for the last four years the party has done nothing to stop this policy being rammed down the nation's throat.
But Zanu PF spokesman Rugare Gumbo was quick to respond “indigenization is a reality and it is not reversible.”
For the last four years MDC had the chance to clean up Zimbabwe’s mudded political system, sadly the party has failed to get not even one of the raft of reforms implemented. PM Tsvangirai has already endorsed the Copac draft constitution although it will do nothing to end the country’s culture of political violence and restore the people’s individual rights. In these mudded political water it is Mugabe and Zanu PF who will thrive and so corruption and looting (indigenisation is but one manifestation of the looting) will continue.
PM Tsvangirai and MDC have lost a lot of political credibility in the last four years – they promised democratic change but delivered nothing. JUICE is nothing but a juicy election gimmick to once get the people’s vote; once back on the gravy train the program will be discarded just as RESTART was!
