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.
12 comments:
@ 48Mheta11
Mugabe has denied the ordinary people of Zimbabwe the right to a meaningful vote under the pretext that it was not Zimbabweans who wanted regime change but the West. This is the same nonsense Ian Smith used by insisting the blacks did not want change but the Communists and their puppet blacks!
This is about restoring the basic right of every Zimbabwean's right to a meaningful and free vote. Mugabe rigged the 2013 elections just as he rigged past elections; the difference is he is not getting away with it - not this time!
You can witter all you want about economic sanctions; that is not going to change anything because sanctions, real or imaginary, will never justify why people are denied their basic rights. Never ever!
@ Pidigu 65
Why should the international money lenders give a country more money when it is failing to repay what it has borrowed already? You can deny that Zimbabwe was failing to repay its debt but can you also deny the current $ 10 billion debt which both Chinamasa and Mugabe have acknowledged exist?
@ Tawona
"Other speakers (at Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries conference attended by country’s business leaders as well as Government leaders) said Zimbabwe should not behave as if it has an avalanche of investors waiting but should understand that there is huge competition worldwide and government should do the right thing to attract investors in the country," concluded Marcus Tawona.
So the speakers called on government “to do the right thing" but none of them actually said what that “right thing” is. Typical!
In other words the conference was just another one of those talk-shops the country is renowned for; everyone knows the problem is the elephant in the room but they all talk endlessly about how to get rid of the ticks, the dandruff, everything except the elephant itself.
To win back the confidence of donors and investors alike that Zimbabwe is a safe country for them to do business, the country must demonstrate its commitment to the rule of law. Only a legitimate regime with the electoral mandate of the people of Zimbabwe can enact laws and treaties that will be worth the paper they are written on and not an illegitimate regime that rigged the last elections! That is the “right thing”, the elephant in the room, the conference buffoons would not spell out.
At the heart of Zimbabwe’s political and economic problems is a corrupt and oppressive tyrannical regime and we must have free and fair elections if we are to free the nation from this nightmare. Get rid of the elephant and the tick infestation, the clouds of dandruff, etc. will go with it!
@ The Zimbabwean Editorial
The Mugabe regime can scrap its ill-advised indigenisation and black empowerment policies and have these publicly endorsed by all its war veterans and party thugs in every growth point and village across the land; that will not be enough to restore do-nor and investor confidence. The regime has made similar promises and signed treaties with other nations in the past only to flagrantly violate them. The regime has lost all credibility when it comes to upholding law and the rule of law.
Mugabe demonstrated his contempt of the rule of law by blatantly rigging the July 2013 elections; no one will believe he can also be the champion of the rule of law at a flip of a switch. What guarantees do they have that the switch will not be flip back to contempt just as easily!
Mugabe can either stay in power and donors and investors will stay away or he can resign and allow the country to return to rule of law and legitimacy. He cannot have both!
After 34 years of absolute power he is used to having his cake and eat it too; what he has yet to accept is that his dictatorship is over. The economic melt-down is real and is set to get even worse the harder he tries to hang on to power. The pot is boiling and the pressure for change will only go up the more he tries to keep the lid on!
@ 48Mheta11
The right to have a fair share of the nation's wealth and not have someone spend $1 million on a birthday party or $ 5 million on his daughter's wedding whilst millions have to drink dirty water because there is no money to buy the chemicals to treat the water.
The right to a free and fair vote without being cheated, beaten, raped or even murdered. The regime has murdered over 30 000 innocent people to establish and maintain its de facto one-party dictatorship.
Not that I expect you to understand any of what I have just said; the regime has allowed you a share of the loot and now you are as blind as a mole. Indeed you may have shed some of the innocent blood for Mugabe and are now scarred that you will be called upon to account for it. Well, you will lose the loot and punished for the blood on your hands!
@48Mheta11
Sure, donated by the same Zimbabweans who are part of the 80% unemployed, the parents of the 100 children who are dying every day of preventable diseases be-cause the health service has collapsed, etc.
We all know why you will never say anything bad about this corrupt and repressive Zanu PF dictatorship - a part of it! Well the regime is on its final legs and the decades of corruption and brutal repression are coming to an end!
@ Mukandabhutsu
Tsvangirai had his best chance to remove Mugabe during the GNU; he had the ma-jority in parliament, majority in cabinet, had SADC and the international community solidly behind democratic change and he had five years to implement the agreed reforms. He did not because he was breathtakingly incompetent.
What else does he have to do to show that he is incompetent?
The trouble with people like you is that you have your heads buried in the sand and simply refuse to see the reality before you. Tsvangirai is incompetent that is a historic fact. The blind loyalty to failed and tyrannical leaders is the root cause of Zimbabwe's economic and political problems.
As long as we have people like you who have welded shut the shutters to their brains so that no light of reason can shine through; the country has no chance of ever getting out of the mess. None!
What makes China's involvement in Zimbabwe totally unacceptable is that the the Chinese are propping up a corrupt and tyrannical regime politically and undermining the nation's efforts to achieve real and meaningful democratic change for their own selfish gain.
China's position on human rights and good governance is well known - these are internal matters. China will continue to do business with regimes with some of the worst corruption records and human rights violations. The Mugabe regime has some of the worst human rights records in human history.
With Mugabe China has gone the extra mile with Mugabe in that the Chinese have actively interfered in the country's internal affairs by propping up the dictator. The Chinese have held build Mugabe's oppressive Zanu PF machinery, selling his shipload of arms and is right now building Zimbabwe's $200 million spy university.
It was not out of generosity that China has propped Mugabe all these decades; the tyrant has rewarded them by awarding them very lucrative contracts and unfettered access to the country's resources. Mugabe has been selling Zimbabwe one piece at a time to the Chinese for what tantamount to nothing more than a piece of calico cloth.
The Chinese know Mugabe has failed to raise even a single dollar for his ZimAsset economic recovery programme and the tyrant is desperate for cash so desperate he will sell everything of value left in the country and the nation's future and hope just for a few million Yuan. The Chinese are driving a hard bargain, they are moving in for the kill!
What the Chinese must know and understand here and now is that the next democratic government in Zimbabwe will NOT honour any of the dodgy deals Mugabe has signed with China.
The mockingly empty ZimAsset begging bowl is sure driving Mugabe and his cohorts bananas; they are now doing nothing else but beg! They must have visited every Embassy in Zimbabwe.
“As a rule, Brazil does not give any support to sovereign nations and we don’t give out hand-outs either. Usually, we find synergies and business opportunities where we can work with people on various projects,” Marcia Maro Da Silva Brazil’s Ambas-sador to Zimbabwe told the Daily News.
“Zimbabwe is a rich country and does not need donations but investments. ZimAsset offers opportunities for Brazil to come and invest in infrastructure and other sectors but there is need for clarity on the country’s economic policies.”
It is clearly not out of the generosity of their hearts that the Chinese are offering to bankroll this corrupt, wasteful and ruthlessly oppressive Mugabe regime. The Chi-nese know Mugabe is desperate for money and he will sell Zimbabwe piece by piece for the traditional piece of calico cloth and a handful of beads.
What the Chinese must know is that there is no way the people of Zimbabwe are going to going to have their hopes and dreams wiped out by honouring the dodgy deals Mugabe signs with the Chinese just to buy himself as his cohorts a few more months in power.
This is madness indeed; here is a regime that is proposing to cut teachers' wages because it has no money but it has money to splash on CCTV!
@ guduza
If by “they” you mean Mugabe and Zanu PF; then the answer is no they will not "allow the rule of law to flourish in Zim". How can they? This is a regime that has enjoyed absolute power for 34 years and are now totally addicted to it with a lot of loot to protect and many skeletons to keep under wraps.
The ultimate expression of allowing the rule of law, as we all know, is allowing free, fair and credible elections and in Zimbabwe we all know that will result in regime change; the very thing that Mugabe and Zanu PF simply cannot contemplate.
The mistake we as a nation have made is that we have allowed Mugabe and Zanu PF dictate what they wanted. It is high time that the people dictated what they want. The people have a right to free, fair and democratic elections, one of the many rights Mugabe and Zanu PF have denied them for 34 years.
It is high time the people put their foot down and demanded their basic and fundamental right to free, fair and credible elections. This is the only way to restore rule of law, to restore investor confidence and out of this mess!
Mugabe can talk of "confusion" in the party's indigenisation policy and revise it a thousand time and take out the sectors to be affected one by one until there are none left that will not change the two basic realities:
1) that the indigenisation policy was enacted to empower Mugabe and his cronies to take away individuals' property rights without recourse to the law. The policy has been implemented with the usual ruthlessness that has become the hallmark of the regime. There was no confusion there whatsoever!
2) The regime enacted the policy out of disregard of the rule of law, even if the regime scrap this law completely now that will not be enough to restore confidence that Zimbabwe is now a country with rule of law, not as long as the regime remains in power. If it disregarded the law in the past what is there to stop it doing so again in the future!
The only way out of this fix is for Zimbabwe to hold free, fair and credible elections; only a regime that has the mandate of the people of Zimbabwe to govern has the power and authority to scrap offending policies like the indigenisation and to be believed! Mugabe rigged the 2013 elections and has disregarded the laws so many times in the past; he has lost all legitimacy and credibility!
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