Vice President Joyce Mujuru, with three ministers
in tow, met China’s Vice President Li Yuanchao; ZimAsset begging bowl in hand.
The Chinese leader is on four and five day state visit to Zambia and Tanzania respectively.
His whistle-stop in Harare was so brief he never left Harare International Airport,
which where VP Mujuru and her begging party went to meet him.
It is now nearly a year
since Mugabe launched his ZimAsset economic recovery plan and still the begging
bowl has remained mockingly empty! The regime has begged from the West, from China
and has even tried begging from other developing countries but failed to raise
even a dollar. The situation is now so desperate the regime is now resorting to
ambushing visitors like the Chinese VP!
ZimAsset was Zanu PF’s flagship economic recovery
plan in its 2013 election manifesto with a very ambitious $27 billion price
tag. Mugabe was confident the plan would be oversubscribed; he expected the
West would be accept his election victory – of which he was very confident of,
his vote rigging plans were water tight and guaranteed to delivery victory for
him and his party – and would want to kiss and make up. And what better way for
them to do that than contribute generously to his ZimAsset fund!
Mugabe was genuinely shocked when the West refuse
to endorse his rigged elections as free and fair and, worse still, would not
contribute even a dollar to his ZimAsset. But, the cunning man he is, Mugabe
had plan B.
Mugabe was so sure that his Chinese friends would
only be too keen to shame the West by bankrolling his programme. Mugabe even
mentioned that the Chinese would oversubscribe and pay $30 billion even; that
was in September 2013. By October the
regime was saying China would pay $10 billion; in early November it dropped to
$3 billion.
Fininance Minister Patrick Chinamasa was flying
in and out of Harare and Beijing like a yo-yo; with Mugabe telling him not to
comeback without the money and the Chinese wait, they are thinking about it. By
the end of November 2013 Chinamasa had whittled the amount the Chinese would
pay to $400 million. A few weeks later the Chinese Ambassador to Zimbabwe
dropped the bombshell, China would not be paying a single Yuan to the ZimAsset
fund.
“Let’s be careful about vana Ali Baba ava. They
will cheat us and make us run and run and expect and expect, nothing, nothing,
nothing will come our way.” Mugabe responded, at the Zanu PF Congress in December
2013, in sheer exasperation.
Chinamasa was sent on a charm offensive to the
West but after six months the West has remained decidedly unimpressed and hence
it is back to the Chinese again!
“There is a lot that we
feel China can also try to look at and work with us so that this (ZimAsset) blueprint
becomes a reality because it is a programme that the generality of this country
is looking forward to,” VP Mujuru begged the Chinese visitor.
“For years since independence,
we have been failing to deliver fully . . . yes we got the land, but the land
has not given the full results which the Head of State and our party and his
people are waiting to see,” explained Mai Mujuru.
Her Chinese visitor was
not one to be so easily fooled. Zanu PF has failed to deliver, period! The only
reason the Chinese are unwilling to contribute to the ZimAsset fund is that
they know the regime will waste the money through mismanagement and corruption.
They will never get a penny of that money back; the regime is up to its eyes in
debt already and none of the debtors have ever been paid.
The Chinese know fully
well the money will be wasted but are nonetheless considering bankrolling the
regime on condition they are granted concessions to Zimbabwe’s minerals and the
minerals are given as collateral security.
“Securitisation of
minerals is one way of financing things; however it brings a lot of risks,” said
the outgoing World Bank economist to Zimbabwe, Mrs Nadia
Piffaretti, a week ago. “It’s not an easy
solution because you might end up giving away more than you are getting. It is
really not advisable at your (Zimbabwe’s) development stage.
“You might just take
away the future of your children.”
Of course the Chinese do
not give a damn that Mugabe is sell Zimbabwe piece by piece for the classical
piece of calico cloth and a handful of beads blacks sold their own kith and kin
for to slave traders. What the Chinese are concerned about is whether the
bailout will be enough to save the Mugabe regime at least long enough for them
to recoup the bailout money.
The Chinese know that
after the Mugabe regime collapse whatever government that comes in will not
honour an deals that blatantly took away the nation’s future.
The Chinese must know
that the bailout will do nothing to stop the mismanagement and corruption, the
two cancers that have been eating away at the country’s economy and have grown
so big they are killing it. Second, the bailout will do nothing to attract foreign
investors who are scared of having their investments seized given the Zanu PF regime’s
indigenisation policies.
In short the Chinese
bailout, if they are foolish enough to give it, will only delay the economic
collapse by a year or two at most. When the economy collapses it will take down
this Mugabe dictatorship with it; hence all this frantic begging by Mai Mujuru
to keep the economy tottering on. Will one or two years be enough for the Chinese
recoup their bailout money?
What the Chinses VP and
his government must know is that Zimbabwe will never honour any deals selling away
the country’s future!
5 comments:
Yeap! That ZimAsset begging bowl is driving the regime nuts! Now they are resorting to ambushing visitors and beg. Soon all planes with a VIP on board over flying Zimbabwe's air space will be forced to land so the regime can beg for some money from the VIP.
The regime is now really desperate next time Mai Mujuru will have a ZimAsset begging bowl, civil servants pay begging bowl and most important of all Singapore begging bowl!
@ Petal
Yes Ambassador Aldo Del’Arricia can speak English. Even if he could not the rot and decay and abject poverty is everywhere in Harare, he does not have to be driven out of the city to see it! He does not need to ask or hear anything; his eyes and nauseating smell of rotting garbage and open sewers will tell him all he needs to know!
@Cathy
Cathy give me the name of one ordinary Zimbabwean who has not been abused and let down by Mugabe and Zanu PF, just one person? I agree that white Zimbabweans and those of mixed race have been easier to pick off than the blacks but trust me being a black Zimbabweans in Mugabe's Zimbabwe has been hell for blacks too. The level of political harassment and intimi-dation in the rural areas, especial during elections or droughts, etc. is heart breaking.
Zanu PF is a corrupt and oppressive regime and we are all; whites, coloureds, black, Shonas, Ndebele, men, women, Christian, or whatever else; we are all victims of the regime. Of course the regime will always want to make one group feel that they are being favoured over the other; it is part of its divide and rule strategy. We must not allow ourselves to fall into that cheap trap!
Instead of dealing with the corruption that is fuelling the country's economic meltdown Mugabe is going after the editors who uncovered the corruption.
This is a sign the tyrant has always known corruption was rampant but just did not want to admit it or deal with it. It is no secret that he is not himself above corruption, his $1 million birthday party, $5 million wedding for his daughter and $ 20 million Blue Roof mansion bespeaks of his own looting. The regime has enjoyed absolute power for 34 years and has been looting none stop throughout all those years. The nation is totally impoverished to the point the regime cannot even pay its bloated civil service much less maintain even the most basic services like clean running water.
It is resorted to its old tired and trusted ways of using brutal oppression to silence its critics and remain in power. Just as the mismanagement and corruption were economically unsustainable; brutal oppression too is not politically unsustainable. Out of the former has come the economic meltdown and the tragic human suffering born out of grinding poverty and out of the later, if this is allowed to go one much longer, will come civil unrest in the form of street riots or worse, civil war.
Mugabe has been importing weapons none-stop for years, making Zimbabwe one of the heavily armed nations in the region. Now that Mugabe can see that power is slipping out of his hands his last act in power could well be to light the fuse start the civil war. Nothing would please him more than see the nation burning the day he steps down and thus “prove” that he was the only one capable of ruling the nation.
We must remove the bottle neck created by this Mugabe regime to gratify its own insatiable appetite for power and wealth; end the brutal political repression the criminal waste of human and material resources. This regime must now go; there is simply no reason why it should be allowed to remain in power for even one more day!
@ Chimbwido
The regime is failing to pay its bloated civil service or I you denying there are no civil servants? Unemployment has soared to 85% or are you saying all these people are subhuman and there-fore do not count.
On Wednesday VP Mujuru ambushed the Chinese VP Dr Li Yuanchoa at the airport begging for money to finance ZimAsset. Of course the Chinese know the regime will waste the money and will not be able to repay it and hence the reason it is demanding Zimbabwe pays the loan in min-eral and other resources. If the deal goes through then China must know that the people of Zimbabwe will not honour the deal.
Anti-Chinese resentment in Africa has been growing because of China's policy of lifting millions of its own people out of poverty on the back of millions forced into poverty In Africa. Zimbabwe will never accept become one of China's slave nations, living in a country that is their own on paper but might as well be China because all the resources were sold for pittance to the Chinese by Mugabe.
Post a Comment