Zimbabwe’s Minister of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Emmerson Mnangagwa bulldozed the electoral bill through parliament without taking into consideration the concerned raised by the opposition and civic society.

“Parliament was elected to make laws for the people. It is not for the people to do the work of Parliament,” said Minister Mnangagwa.

The Minister is right on, it is the prerogative of parliament to make the law what is at issue here is who elected these MPs who are writing these laws which we the people are expected to obey? It should the people who elect MPs and the State President and we know Zimbabwe is yet to hold free and fair elections in which the people have a meaningful say on who govern them. The July 2013 elections were blatantly rigged; Minister Mnangagwa knows that better than anyone else for he is a member of the Joint Operations Command which masterminded the vote rigging.

If this parliament truly represent the will of the people of Zimbabwe and was sure it has the people’s mandate to rule then its first task after the 31 July 2013 elections should have been to clear the air and order a through independent judiciary investigation into all vote rigging allegations. This parliament has failed to even order the release of the voters roll it is now a year since it should have been made public.

The voters roll is the smoking gun in the rigged 2013 elections.

Many of MPs seating in parliament today are the beneficiaries of the rigged July 2013 elections. The illegitimacy of Mugabe and his regime is not in doubt and it is only the poor judgement of people like Tsvangirai who have even tried to accept the regime as a “political reality”. Any monkey can steal and wear the crown but no only a fool would pay homage to it as king; Mnangagwa knows that and we all know it!

The passing of this electoral law confined what some of us have said all along that we will need to implement wide ranging reforms first if the next elections in Zimbabwe are going to be free and fair. This illegitimate Mugabe regime cannot be trusted to implement any meaningful reforms, Mnangagwa has just confined that!

EU is being irresponsible in offering Mugabe $318 m before the core issues are addressed - another painkiller but not the cure!

“ZIMBABWE could receive €234 million (about US$318m) in development assistance from the European Union (EU) if the bloc lifts its decade-old embargo on provision of direct financial support to Harare at a meeting set for November,” reported the New Zimbabwe. The EU is being totally irresponsible!

The last thing the people of Zimbabwe want is for anyone to encourage Mugabe hope that his regime can somehow fudge the economic recovery by getting a few million dollars from the EU, the Arabs, AFDB; sell even more of the nation's treasures to the Chinese and Indians for a fraction of their true value and so on. And thus avoid having to tackle the two tough issues that this nation must deal with decisive now or pay an even bigger price if we delay any further

The two tough issues the regime has tried to avoid but cannot do so any more are:

1) the cancerous problems of mismanagement and corruption. The national economy is in this mess because no economy can thrive when it is subjected to so much criminal waste of material and human resources as has been happening in Zimbabwe these last 34 years. 

For example, two weeks ago Nehanda Radio reported of a “US$654 million dodgy deal involving the Zimbabwe Power Company (ZPC), a subsidiary of power utility Zesa Holdings” in which new subcontractors had been surreptitiously added after the Solar Panel Projected had been awarded and the agreed contract price was then doubled in some areas. Ultimately it is the impoverished ordinary Zimbabweans who will end up paying one way or the other the additional costs.

Over the years mismanagement, corruption and looting have become got worse and worse in Zimbabwe and today they are rampant. It is nonsense to talk of economic recovery when there is so much waste!

Mugabe has allowed the mismanagement and corruption to go on all these 34 years because they constitute the very heart and soul of the Zanu PF patronage system that has kept the party together and in power. Mugabe and the party popularity with the electorate are rock bottom and the party’s iron grip on power is now totally dependent on political patronage system. The party cannot afford to dismantle it; not now!

2) the need to attract direct foreign investment. Whilst the loans from donors like the EU is supposed to be used in rebuild the country's economic infrastructure like water and electricity supply, roads, etc. this alone is not enough to produce the much hoped for sustainable economic recovery. The country needs direct foreign investment too. (The regime is so cash strapped it will use infrastructure loans to pay the boasted civil service wages too.)

The regime has been told again and again, particularly in the last few months, that to attract foreign investors back in the country Zimbabwe must restore investor confidence that their investments will be safe. The Australian Ambassador to Zimbabwe compared investing in Zimbabwe to swimming in the crocodile infested Zambezi River. No investor would want to see 51% of his or her investment taken away and be yoked to a partner from hell which is what Zanu PF’s indigenisation policies have been calling for! 

Since the rigged July 2013 elections Mugabe and his Ministers have been forced to accept that no investors will want to swim in Zimbabwe’s crocodile infested economic waters and they have been have been toning the anti-white rhetoric, cutting back of the shares investors will be obliged to sell and even scrapping this requirement in some cases. Of course the would-be investors have remained decidedly unimpressed. 

After 34 years of lawlessness, of disregarding trade agreements with other nations for example; the Mugabe regime has opened a credibility gap as wide and as deep as the Grand Canyon; bridging it now is proving to be impossible. 

For anyone to give the Mugabe regime money whilst these two core problems of mismanagement and corruption on the one hand and failure to restore investor confidence on the other remain unresolved in being totally irresponsible because the loans will be wasted and added to the country’s mountain debt. But, worse still, the loans will keep Mugabe in power for a few more months and thus post pone the day of reckoning compounding the problems and making recovery even more costly. 

The only realistic solution for Zimbabwe is for the country to hold fresh free, fair and credible elections, get a new government that will have the people's mandate to rule and the respect and confidence of the international community and investors. Fresh elections is the cure; EU loans are but painkillers to someone with a broken leg. The patient would not have broken the leg if Mugabe had not rigged the July 2013 elections; leg could be save if fresh elections are held without further ado but gangrene will soon set in. Once gangrene has set in then the leg must be amputated or the patient will die! 

The EU has forced its own member countries like Greece and Spain to take some bitter medicine to address their fundamental economic weakness as a condition for financial aid from the rest of the union. Yet the same EU is now telling Mugabe that the Zimbabwe economic will recover regardless of the rampant mismanagement and corruption and with no foreign investment! How dishonest is that?

Zimbabwe is subject to the same laws of thermodynamics and basic economic as any other nation; it is very patronising, to say the very least, of the EU to be tells us otherwise!

Mugabe ask Tsvangirai to repay $1.5 million "vhara muromo" loan - a coup de grace since former PM does not have even a farthing!

The only time Tsvangirai and MDC ever stood up to Mugabe was when the party announced that it would not attend the cabinet meeting until Mugabe implemented “all the outstanding issues”. The standoff ended when Mugabe granted Tsvangirai a loan of $1.5 million initially for the MDC leader to buy a house although the government got him a $4 million mansion later.

Mugabe did nothing on any of the really important outstanding political issues like having AG Johanis Tomani and RBZ Governor Gideon Gono removed from their respective positions. MDC had raised those matters to bolster their bargaining position with Mugabe and the later rightly guessed that upgrading the MDC leaders’ gravy train bribes would silence them. It did!  

“The loan ($1.5 million) was arranged from above … it was simply a housing facility at a critical juncture in our history as a country and a critical juncture in the life of the government of national unity after their (MDC-T) first disengagement (from the coalition government,” a source in the RBZ told New Zimbabwe.

“How the former prime minister used the money is neither here nor there … but you may recall that he was, later on, able to spring a surprise when he reportedly paid (former wife) Lorcadia Karimatsenga a six figure sum in November 2012 to end their relationship.

“However, he has not repaid a cent and we have a situation now where the government is pressed for money. We expect that Treasury will soon demand that Tsvangirai repay the loan as government is struggling to raise civil servants’ salaries.”

There are those who simply did not want to believe that Tsvangirai and his MDC's friends failed to implement the democratic reforms necessary for free, fair and credible elections because Mugabe bribed them; now they will have no excuse but to accept this reality. 

"Vana Tsvangirai vakapiwa vhara muromo," boosted one Zanu PF crony in reply to the nagging question why MDC was doing nothing about implementing the democratic reforms three years into the GNU. "Vakadzidza kudya vanyerere!" (Tsvangirai and his friends were bribed. They have since learnt to enjoy the gravy train life quietly.)

What was really surprising though was that after five wasted years in the GNU Tsvangirai and his MDC friends thought they could still go out and win the 2013 elections. They had not implemented any reform because Mugabe paid them well to do nothing and they had kept their end of the bargain and did not to rock the boat. They knew without the reforms Mugabe would rig the elections and they expected to win the elections regardless. They were not just being naive but showed how breathtakingly incompetent they are!

Of course Mugabe went on to blatantly rig the elections shattering the nation’s hopes and dreams of end the Zanu PF dictatorship that had brought so much suffering, misery and death to the nation.  

Over the years Zanu PF officials have borrowed billions of dollars from RBZ and other institutions to the buy homes, cars, farm inputs, farm plant and equipment and a myriad of other things and most of these loans have never been repaid. Tsvangirai thought as PM he too was entitled to some of this free money; after all he was doing Mugabe the greatest favour – he would not implement the reform and so save the tyrant from seeing his Zanu PF dictatorship dismantled brick by brick!

Mugabe had granted Tsvangirai the $1.5 million loan and instructed the Police to back off when they tried to investigate the circumstances surround the loan. But now that the tyrant has what he wanted - the dictatorship retained untouched after the GNU - he has no use for Tsvangirai. 

Zimbabwe's history is full of good and honourable men and women Mugabe has used and abused and then discarded like used toilet paper. Take Walter Kamba, for example, Mugabe appointed him chairman of the Election Supervision Commission and deliberately under resourced so that it ineffective. He needed Kamba's good name to give the elections credibility whilst taking advantage of its ineffectiveness to rig the elections. By the time Walter Kamba retired as Vice Chancellor of UZ and from the Commission; his name was mud. 

Mugabe has similarly used Tsvangirai and now the tyrant is moving in to deliver his coup de grace on the former PM - a savage kick in the teeth. Everyone knows MDC is broke; donors have deserted the party disappointed at its failure to implement even one reform and membership fees will not raise much given that most of the members and either unemployed or are kiya kiya vendors. 

Whilst other MDC leaders had a profession to fall back on when their gravy train ride ended after the July 2013 rigged elections; Tsvangirai, bambo vangu, had no skills and no gainful employment to do. He could have saved some money during the gravy train GNU years but not Tsvangirai; he squandered it all on generous settlement payments, expensive sea cruises with women of ill repute, etc. Now, he is as rich as Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist when the orphan arrived in London; "Not a farthing!" 

It is hard to have any sympathy for people like Tsvangirai; if it was not for his greed and breath-taking incompetence Zimbabwe will be a democracy today and the task of rebuilding the nation will have started in earnest. Instead the nation is still suffering under the yoke of this corrupt and murderous Mugabe regime. No, Tsvangirai deserves all that is coming to him! Indeed, he should be kicked out of the $ 4 million mansion too!

Zimbabwe bank to quit if Mugabe passes the law limiting foreign share holding to 25%.

Standard Chartered Bank says it will quit if the Mugabe regime enact the law limiting foreigners owning a maximum of 25% of the shares in any financial institution bank’s Africa Chief Executive Diana Layfield told the Wall Street Journal.

If the law was to be passed no doubt Mugabe may want to buy the 75% share in Standard Charter for his daughter Bona. She is now looking for cushy job being appointed CEO of Standard Charter Bank will be a good start. Ms Diana Layfield would be moved out of her present office and reassigned to branch manager of a growth point branch or something!

As the new CEO Bona will expect a new company house fully furnished and staffed, a chauffeur- driven company cars one for her and a second one for her husband, a generous salary package complete with equally generous allowance.

Not that Mugabe will spend a penny of his own money to buy the shares, he only has to express an interest and the shares are his.

The Banks will be granting huge loans to Zanu PF loyalists on the strengths of the applicant's political connections that is all the collateral the banks will be expected to value above all else.

One can understand why Standard Chartered will seriously consider quitting; life will be very difficult because the only rule that counts is what regime wants and that is a very tough rule to live by.

Chinamasa takes his ZimAsset begging bowl to the Arabs: they must know most of the money will be wasted!

“FINANCE and Economic Development minister Patrick Chinamasa has been invited to the Arab Bank for Economic Development (BADEA) headquarters in Khartoum, Sudan, to tie loose ends on a possible funding arrangement for infrastructure,” reported Newsday Zimbabwe.

The report also said the Saudi and Kuwaiti were also interested in funding Zimbabwe.

The report did not say how much money any of these institutions and nations were going to put in the ZimAsset begging bowl.

The present economic melt-down has for the first time in his 34 years in power forced Mugabe to reconsider his life time believe that there was a mountain of money and wealth and his challenge was to see how much he could spend. When you have a mountain of money to spend the waste through such things as mismanagement and corruption regardless how significant they become compared to what was in the pot are ignored because you get an even bigger pot.

Mugabe has no problem borrowing $27 billion for his ZimAsset project and thus increases the national debt nearly four-fold from $10 billion to $37 billion it is part of his bigger pot philosophy.

Whilst most people are worried about the $10 billion debt already, Mugabe is not even bothered because his challenge is how much he can spend; he has no intention of ever paying back.

Whilst Mugabe's challenged is a mountain of money to spend what he is leaving for future generation is a mountain of debt to pay back and means to pay back the debts with since most of the borrowed money is being wasted through mismanagement and corruption.

All those institutions and nation bankrolling Mugabe's spending spree must know that most of the money is going to be wasted by the tyrant; there is overwhelming evidence of this out there now. They must therefore then know that future governments in Zimbabwe will have no obligation to repay any of the money they gave the Mugabe regime knowing it will be wasted.

A Dutch company is a planned takeover of a Zanu PF oil company - a bid to prop up the cash strapped regime!

Trafigura, a controversial Dutch multinational oil trader is planning to takeover a Zanu PF linked Sakunda fuel group. The move is seen as Trafigura cementing its long standing good relationship with the Mugabe regime design to prop up the cash strapped tyrant.

Trafigura was the company behind the 2006 UN story of toxic waste shipped to Cote d’Ivoire resulting in the death of 17 and injury of over 30 000.

It is tempting for companies like Trafigura and countries like China to prop up the corrupt and tyrannical Mugabe regime because they know the regime is desperate for cash and will sell the nation's treasures for a song. These vultures are banking on two things:

1) that the tyrant will remain in office long enough for them to fleece the country and get a return on their investment. 

2) that the regime that will follow the Mugabe regime will be composed of incompetent individuals whom they will bribe with a sea cruise to the Seychelles or something and everything will be forgotten. 

What these vultures must now take into consideration is the reality, not possibility but reality, that they are wrong on both counts!

Implementing democratic reforms is key to ending Mugabe dictatorship but none will implemented until people understand this!

By the late 1990s “democracy” and “democratic change” these were the buzz words everybody was talking about in Zimbabwe. After nearly two decades of a corrupt and oppressive de facto one-party dictatorship the nation had finally realized that the only way to end the chronic cancers of gross mismanagement and the corruption was by replacing the tyrannical autocracy with a healthy democratic rule.

The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), the political party led by Morgan Tsvangirai was launched in 1999 on the crest of the democratic change wave. Even in the face of the usual beating, rape and even murders by Mugabe and his thugs, the people braved all that and voted for Tsvangirai and MDC in drove of the promise MDC would deliver democratic change.

To be perfectly honest, ever since Morgan Tsvangirai took centre stage in the Zimbabwe politics his blundering incompetence was impossible to miss. But it was the failure to get even one democratic reform implemented throughout the five years in the GNU that has come to define just how breathtakingly incompetent he and his MDC co-leaders really are. They really did not have a clue what the raft of democratic reforms agreed in the GPA were about, how they were supposed to be implemented and, much less, the consequences of going ahead with the 2013 elections with no reforms implemented.

And only did Tsvangirai and his MDC friend have no clue about the reforms but so too did the Zimbabwe electorate. MDC had stood on a ticket of bringing democratic change and yet even the leaders did not know what these changes were. The people had risked life and limb for democratic change without knowing what changes they wanted.

It is not as if the concepts of democratic changes complex and therefore hard to understand; they are not, they are in fact common sense.

Take the need to reform the Police, for example; even the rural people were aware of how Zanu PF thugs had beaten raped and even murdered innocent people and yet none of the culprits ever arrested and punished. Even my Aunt in the rural backwaters who does not understand the niceties of democracy understands that a none-partisan Police Force is important for a justice society.  

One expected that political leaders like Tsvangirai, Biti and Mangoma, especially the last two since they are lawyers and were MDC’s negotiators in the GPA, would understand that to have a none-partisan Police Force it was necessary to end the State President powers to appoint and dismiss the Police Commissioner without reference to parliament. Parliament or a parliamentary committee should have the powers to call the Police Commissioner and hold him/her to account and have the individual replaced if founding wanting.  

SADC got Mugabe to sign the GPA and accept that a whole raft of democratic reforms, including Police reform, would be implemented if the next elections were to be free and fair. It is not rocket science to see why without Police reforms, for example, it would be impossible to stop Zanu Pf operative hell-bend on rigging the elections.

As it happened MDC failed to get even one democratic reform implemented although the party had the majority in the GNU parliament, the majority in the cabinet, had the full backing of SADC who was the guarantor of the GPA and had five years to do it. Not even one reform was implemented, not one!

There are two reasons why Tsvangirai and his MDC friends to get even one reform implemented; one, they were all side tracked by the trappings of power. Mugabe welcomed them on the gravy train and denied them nothing; Tsvangirai got his $3 million mansion, was glob-trotting, etc. SADC leaders disappointed that none of the reforms had been implemented accused MDC leaders of “enjoying themselves and forgetting why they were in the GNU”.

The second reason MDC leaders failed to get even one reform implemented and still agreed to take part in the 2013 elections against advice not to that they are breathtakingly incompetent and naïve. It was not until the afternoon of the election-day that the penny finally dropped that people like Tsvangirai realised how naïve he had been.

With not even one reform implemented Mugabe was able to use the Police, ZEC, the Judiciary, etc. to blatantly rig the elections.

The consequences of the rigged elections is that the Mugabe and Zanu PF dictatorship got back into power and the cancers of mismanagement and corruption which had crippled the national economy took off after the GNU pause with vengeance. The political repression too was emboldened by the electoral victory!

What has been really disheartening is that the electorate still at a loss as to what went wrong, even with the benefit of hindsight and all the evidence of Tsvangirai and MDC blunders, they still fail to see why the failure to implement the democratic reforms was central to this nightmare. All that talk of democracy and democratic change was empty slogans repeated without ever understanding what they meant.

Whilst the nation still recognizes the need to end the Mugabe and Zanu PF dictatorship as a necessary step in bring about change in Zimbabwe few people realise that nothing can ever be accomplished with implementing the democratic reforms. Hence the majority still put their trust in leaders like Tsvangirai and Tendai Biti because they never comprehended that it was their breath-taking incompetence and failure to implement the reforms that landed the nation in this mess.

Implementing the democratic reforms is the key to ending the corrupt and oppressive Zanu PF dictatorship but none of these reforms will ever be implemented properly until both the politicians and the people, especially the people, really take the trouble to understand that these reforms are. How can the people hold the leaders to account when their understanding of the subject matter is superficial, at best! 

Africa Bank offers Zimbabwe way out of the crippling debt: false promise to unfocus Zanu PF minds!

THE African Development Bank (AFDB) says it is considering ways to help Zimbabwe clear it US$ 10 billion debt.

“We have three or so options that we think Zimbabwe can pursue and get out of this debt quagmire," said AFDB Chief Economist Mthuli Ncube told a news conference.

The reason why the country is in this “quagmire”, as the AFDB Chief rightly pointed out, is because of the decades of gross economic mismanagement and rampant corruption by a regime that is not democratically accountable to the electorate. So any solution that does not address the central issue of democratic accountability will only serve to reaffirm the Zanu PF view that there is no need for democratic reforms and on the economic front, it is business as usual.

Since the rigged July 2013 elections the regime has failed to attract not even one dollar towards its $27 billion ZimAsset economic recovery programme because the foreign donors and investors have lost confidence in doing business in Zimbabwe. The Australian Ambassador to Zimbabwe has aptly compared doing business in Zimbabwe to swimming in the crocodile infested Zambezi River.

If Mugabe was to get all the $27 billion for his ZimAsset programme and the mismanagement and corruption continues, there is no reason why these should stop, then the nation will end with its debt burden swollen up to a staggering $40 billion and still have nothing to show for it. The nation is struggling to repay its present debt what more when it is four times as big!

AFDB Chief Economist Mthuli Ncube said the Bank will reveal its three point plan for Zimbabwe in three months’ time. In the past the AFDB has offered economic solutions which completely ignored the glaring reality of the lack of political will to implement the solutions.

Today, Wednesday 21 May 2014, the Zanu PF politburo was going to meet and discuss the country’s worsen economic fortunes. The reality of the mockingly empty ZimAsset begging bowl has help to focus the regime’s minds. This AFDB announcement will unfocuse these Zanu PF minds.

As long as the regime believes there is a chance for it rig economic recovery – get the ZimAsset cash without giving an inch on democratic reforms and accountability - it go for it. So the politburo is not going to make any meaningful decision until AFDB plans are made public and have failed.

Meanwhile another three more months of this accelerated economic melt-down will see even more companies closing and the economy sink even deeper in the quagmire!  The AFDB is not offering Zimbabwe a way out of the debt quagmire but rather offering Mugabe and his cronies the usual false solutions that landed the nation in the mess.  

EU ask Mugabe to turn words on indigenisation into action - still it would be as futile as the baboon declaring himself king of the mountain!

“The EU has noted with great interest the declarations by President Mugabe and minister Chinamasa about the flexibility of the indigenisation policy and the fact that it will not be applied with a one-size-fits-all approach. I think that is good news for any investor, not just European ones.” EU head of delegation to Zimbabwe, Aldo Dell‘Ariccia told the News Day reporter.

“The declarations of intentions of the government of Zimbabwe are most welcome. Now we are waiting to see how these declarations are translated into concrete legislative acts (approved by Cabinet and gazetted) and implementing policies with rules and regulations which are accessible, transparent, verifiable and applied equally to all.” 

Of course the Ambassador is not serious in saying there is anything this illegitimate Mugabe regime can do that will restore investor confidence. The Mugabe government has signed trade agreements with SA, Netherlands and Germany, for example, in which citizens of these nations were assured their investments in Zimbabwe would be secure. The Ambassador should know that the Zimbabwe government did not lift a finger to stop Zanu PF hooligans invading farms belonging to nationals of the three countries.

Does Ambassador Aldo Dell‘Ariccia really believe any of those investors will return if Mugabe signs yet another trade agreement with SA, Netherlands, etc.?

The EU has been blowing hot and cold on its re-engagement with the Mugabe regime in that the EU jointed the US, Australia and Canada in refusing to accept the blatantly rigged July 2013 elections as legitimate. The EU then broke rank and started wooing the regime, pushed mainly by Belgium whose only real reason was to have access to Zimbabwe’s bloody diamonds from Marange and Chiadzwa.

Belgium pushed the EU so hard it got what it wanted; the EU ban in the trade of Zimbabwe’s diamonds was lifted. But true to his untrustworthy nature, Mugabe did not keep his promise with the Belgian company that had lobby for the lifting on the ban on his behalf. Instead of selling the Zimbabwe diamonds in Belgium the tyrant was selling the in the Middle East.

Even if the Mugabe regime scrapped the ill-advised indigenisation and empowerment policies and sign in blood new treaties with every nation guaranteeing the security of all new investors’ property and intellectual rights that will not restore investor confidence. Never!

What investors want to see the rule of law and legitimacy fully restored in Zimbabwe and that has to start with removing this illegitimate regime and replacing it with a legitimate one. An illegitimate regime cannot confer legitimacy on anything it does no more than a baboon, declaring himself king of the mountain, would expect the world to pay him homage.

Zimbabwe’s economic melt-down is serious and millions of Zimbabweans are suffering already and many are dying. Mugabe needs to be told in no uncertain terms that he rigged the elections but cannot rig economic recovery and therefore he must now resign so the nation can get a legitimate government, a prerequisite for economic recovery.

The EU should stop playing cat-and-mouse games with Mugabe by giving the tyrant false hopes that they can somehow help him rig economic recovery. It is the millions of Zimbabweans who are playing dearly for these games with their daily suffering and their very lives!

China's growing influence in Africa is the continent's new slavery curse: Zimbabwe is already caught in China's mouse trap!

The Chinese Premier Li Keqiang is on his visit to Africa said China’s relationship with Africa is based on equality and mutual benefit. What is he on about?

 

Whilst the Chinese economy has grown in leaps and bounds in the last 20 years lifting millions of Chinese out of poverty Africa’s economy has hardly moved. Whatever little growth Africa’s enjoyed on the back of China’s growth it has been short term and, worse still, at the cost of its long term interests.

 

China has flooded Africa with mass produced low tech products; the kind of products Africa was producing already or should be looking at producing to get its foot on the industrial ladder. Right across Africa millions of workers have lost their jobs as local industries have been forced to close because their products could not compete with mass produced products from China. Millions of Africans are now earning a living in the informal sector selling all manner of cheap Chinese goods.

 

Africa’s trade with China has grown in leaps and bounds in terms of the volumes of raw materials being harvested from Africa and shipped to China to fuel her industrialization. China is now starting to compete with the developed nations on high tech products but has still remained the world’s greatest producer of low tech stuff.

 

China’s willingness to trade with Africa regardless of the individual country’s bad governance record has been Africa’s greatest curse because the continent was hoping the end of the cold war between Russia and the West in the 1990s, at the time China’s industrial recovery was just starting to take root, would focus the spotlight on Africa’s bad governance. Indeed there was a head of steam building only to be lost as China stepping on the stage.

 

Tyrants like Mugabe realised he did not have to hold free and fair elections as long as he could count of Chinese and Russian support on the diplomatic front. China’s economic clout bankrolled the tyrant’s financial requirements. Mugabe needed money and China needed Zimbabwe’s mineral wealth; yes it was a relationship that benefited China and the Zimbabwe tyrant but not the millions of ordinary Zimbabweans whose future and hopes the tyrant was sell cheap for a piece of calico cloth.

 

Africa suffered greatly as millions of Africans were sold as slaves during the slave trade. When that ended, Africa suffered under white colonial exploitation and oppression. It is just 20 years since the last chapter of white colonial domination was closed with the end of apartheid rule in SA and already a new form of very subtle and yet just as damaging neo-colonialism has already taken shape – Chinese.

 

Africa’s future is set; the continent’s experiment with democracy is over China will be using its growing influence to create regimes in Africa after its own Chinese Communist Party image. Africa will supply China with raw materials to fuel her industrialization and world dominance in return for the money to finance the corrupt and tyrannical ruling elite’s wasteful lifestyles and cheap Chinese products for the impoverished masses.

 

God only knows how and when Africa will be able to finally remove these Chinese shackles because countries like Zimbabwe are already up to their ears in debt with China and have sold billions of dollars of mineral wealth and tracks of prime agricultural land to the Chinese already. Zimbabwe is already caught in this Chinese trap of a mountain of debt and Chinese owning most the resources, sold for a song, already!    

Diarrhoea claims 300 lives; a wakeup call for Zimbabwe as the nation looking into the abyss!

“Common diarrhoea claims over 300 countrywide,” screamed the headlines in the New Zimbabwe.

 

The death happened all over Zimbabwe in the last five months and they are attributed to unclean water. Most have no choice but to use untreated water after the collapse of the water supply system, one of the many things and services that have collapsed.

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For 34 years Zimbabweans have allowed this corrupt and murderous Mugabe regime run amok and now the nation is paying the heavy price. Whilst the nation is being haunted by diarrhoea for lack of clean drinking water, because there is no money to buy the chemicals; meanwhile the tyrant has been splashing $1 million of a birthday party and $10 million on his daughter's wedding! And the people have said nothing about this criminal extravagance waste and misappropriation of resources; it was all water off a duck's back!

 

This is a wakeup call, things are set to get a hell-lot worse; the people of Zimbabwe must now pay serious attention on how the task on hand - how to remove this Zanu PF dictatorship.

 

Those looking to Tsvangirai and his now estranged MDC colleagues as the answer must be dismissed and asked to go and skin the goat - kundovhiya mbudzi - in the true Shona tradition.

 

Tsvangirai, Biti and the rest should have implemented the reforms which would have stopped Mugabe blatantly rigging the elections. They had everything in their favour and five years to do this. The only reason they failed to get even one reform implemented is because they got distracted by the trappings of power, the gravy train treaties Mugabe knew they would find impossible to resist, plus the fact that they are breathtakingly incompetent.

 

The MDC leaders have proven beyond all doubt that they are corruptible and incompetent it is folly for the nation to grant these same failed individuals yet another chance to prove something we already know. Those who think we should go and do what those with no useful thing to say do -go and skin the goat! 

 

Zimbabwe is looking over the edge of the precipice beyond awaits serious outbreak of diseases, economic melt-down, rioting and even civil war. Are we going to blunder over the edge just as we have blundered along in the past?

Mugabe "a shadow of his once vibrant self" says Minister - no one wants his crown of thorns now!

“He (Mugabe) no longer has a firm grasp of issues, but he tries to be in control by meeting ministers regularly so that he is up to date with developments. But the energy and interest are gone; the man is now a shadow of his once vibrant self even though he still chairs cabinet,” said a senior cabinet minister according to a Zimbabwe Independent report.

Rigging the 2013 elections was a job and a half and it left Mugabe thoroughly exhausted; it was the first elections he has had to rig without having to resort to his tried and tested method of using violence. He had to find the billions of dollars required to pay hired crowds to his party rallies, the party youths who were bussed around to vote, the CIO and other Officials who made it all happen, NIKUV who corrupted the voters roll, etc. All in all it must have costed billions of dollars which left the party and nation stone broke.

Irony of ironies in rigging the elections he inadvertently started an even bigger problem for himself the economic melt-down. After the reckless spending to finance the vote rigging the country had no money to finance the economic recovery and the party’s anti-investor indigenisation rhetoric to win domestic votes had scarred away all outside investors. So Mugabe was left holding an empty $27 billion ZimAsset begging bowl but without getting even one dollar to rattle the bowl. Not even the Chinese would give me even one Yuan!

Holding that empty begging bowl for nine months would depress a spring chicken and Mugabe is no spring chicken! I would challenge the cabinet minister, whoever he/she was, to hold that mocking begging bowl for a month, just one month and they too will know just how stressful it is.

Even if Mugabe was to retire tomorrow whoever takes over and has to hold that empty ZimAsset begging bowl will have the “poisoned” chalice! No wonder the fight to replace Mugabe has been eerily quiet these last few months; who wants to inherit a crown of thorns?

Dehwa Mavhinga dismiss MDC-T factional fighting as "mind boggling" when they had "coalesced" with the tyrant, Mugabe, in the GNU!

According to a report in the New Zimbabwe some Church groups, NGOs and civic organisations have refused to take part in Tendai Biti’s grand coalition project. This is contrary to Samuel Sepepa Nkomo’s claim, one of MDC-T MPs on the renewal team, that the coalition “was taking shape”.

“Dehwa Mavhinga slammed the squabbling MDC-T factions which he said were preoccupied with their own political ambitions while failing to look at the “bigger picture”,” reported the New Zimbabwe.

“He said it was “mind boggling that the MDC-T factions who found cause to coalesce with bitter rival Zanu PF in the erstwhile unity government would fail to tolerate each other to a point of going separate ways”.

Dehwa chairs Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition, hit the nail on the head right there!

In July 2012, a year before Mugabe was to go on and blatantly rig the election and plunge the nation into this debilitating economic and political crisis, Tendai Biti gave an extensive and exclusive interview in the Herald. In the interview Tendai went to the moon and back in praise of Mugabe, calling the tyrant “unflappable” and “father of the nation”.

 

This corrupt and murderous tyrant who has completely destroyed the nation’s economy force millions into a life of abject poverty and has murdered over 30 000 innocent Zimbabweans to establish and maintain his Zanu PF dictatorship; a father of the nation!

 

Whatever sacrifice Mugabe and his cohorts made in the fight to end colonial oppression was not because they valued freedom, liberty, justice and the human rights and dignities of all Zimbabwe but for the sole purpose of becoming the next rulers. That was the price they wanted and the ordinary Zimbabweans were to have no say whatsoever in this.

 

To be double sure the ordinary Zimbabweans would have no say Mugabe and his cohorts set out to deny the people the basic right to a meaningful say in the governance of the country by undermining all the democratic institutions. The tyrant did not hesitate to beat, rape and even murder to drive his tyrannical message home. He even boosted of having “several degrees in violence!”

 

Mugabe and his cohorts fought side by side with the nation’s true liberation heroes and heroines but what they have done since 1980 show that they were mercenaries who cared little about the cause but only cared about the reward. For they betrayed all the values and principles for so many had died for to collect their reward – power, absolute power!

 

These last 15 years Tsvangirai has proven to be corrupt and breathtakingly incompetent; that is a matter of historic record. Still if anyone can work with Mugabe and call him “father of the nation” then he or she would find it infinitely easier to get along with Tsvangirai. For one thing Tsvangirai’s hands are not red with shed innocent blood!

 

Tendai Biti has accused Tsvangirai of being “undemocratic and violent”. We need to get things in perspective here. Even if it was Tsvangirai who authorized the beating of Elton Mangoma; how can that be compared much less consider worse than all the beatings, rapes and murders carried out by the tyrant with “several degrees in violence”?

 

I agree with Dehwa, the turf between Biti and Tsvangirai is petty and contrived and a reflection of just how incompetent the two individuals and their respective supporting teams of acolytes really are. Anybody who let themselves to be dragged into this fiddler –crab’s fight must be prepared to get muddy and be dismissed as someone with poor judgment and therefore of no consequences.