Chinamasa admits the Zimbabwe economy is "dead" but, no doubt, Mugabe will want to hang on!

A World Bank report released in February says 46 percent of Zimbabwe's 13 million people run individual, small or medium-sized enterprises, a figure that contrasts with 17 percent in South Africa, and 13 percent in nearby and impoverished Malawi.

In a conference speech last month, Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa said the government had to embrace the commerce of the street as a new economic order.

"This is an economic revolution, and we need to learn how to deal with the small man. The old economy is dead," he said.

 

The effects of the 'new order' can be seen everywhere.

 

The business of kiya kiya is a tough one. Day in day out these men, women and children carry heavy burdens of oranges or t-shirts anything they think they can sell up and down the street all day. With so many others doing the same thing the market is super saturated with sellers and no buyers. The kiya-kiya town dwellers are the subsistent peasants of our shanty towns.

 

Yes, Minister, the old economy of factories, proper shops and regular proper jobs paying living wages are all “dead”. 34 years of gross mismanagement and rampant corruption have killed them all. And, worse still, Mugabe and Zanu PF do not have the foggiest idea what to do to revive the old economy. The fact that not even the Chinese have contributed even 1.00 Yuan (= US$ 0.16) to Mugabe’s US$27 billion ZimAsset flagship recovery programme means the recovery is dead too!

 

The longer Mugabe and Zanu PF remain in power the deeper the national economy will sink; that much is clear. What is also clear is that Mugabe and Zanu PF have no intention of accepting that they have failed and stepping down – it is not in the nature of tyrants to give up power.

 

So Zimbabweans face the two choices:

1. Step out of this self-imposed mental comatose that has stopped them see what Mugabe has been doing and thus demand real and meaningful change all these last 34 years. If they do finally wakeup, they will demand change and stop the rot.
2. Or else allow Mugabe to stay in power and thus accept the consequences of the national economy sinking even deeper and throw the whole nation into even worse economic suffering and misery.
    

 There is no doubt that the Zimbabwe economy is dead and that Mugabe and Zanu PF killed it. And it is us the people who have let this tyrannical regime kill the economy and our future and that of future generation!

 

We welcome independence in 1980 but we were clearly not ready to take on the responsibility of the citizens of holding those in positions of power and authority to account. Until we learn to take this critical task with the seriousness and urgency it demands the country’s future will continue to be hopeless.