We owe IMF "huge amonts of money" Chinamasa reprimands errant Mutsvangwa in a IMF meeting.

“We owe countries and international financial institutions huge amounts of money, hence we should not politicize the situation,” said Minister Patrick Chinamasa.

 

The Minister was reprimanding the errand Minister of Information Chris Mutsvangwa who had taken the Zanu PF’s tradition adversarial stance at the recent meeting of government officials with visiting IMF officials. Mutsvangwa was holding the old and well-trodden position blaming ALL Zimbabwe’s problems on “ZEDRA and illegal sanctions imposed by imperialist British and their Western Allies”.

 

If you borrow money you must pay back or no one will lend you any in future; that is common sense really. But in country like Zimbabwe ruled by thugs common sense is not common; what is common is rhetoric. Mugabe has used every occasion inside the country and outside to denounce the West and blaming them for all the country’s economic problems.

 

He maintained the West was denying financial assistance as punishment for his 2000 land reforms which saw the regime forcefully seize white owned farms supposedly to give to the landless although Mugabe and his cronies were the main beneficiaries. This was nonsense because to start with the Zimbabwe economy was already in trouble as far back as 1990 hence the reason adopted the two five-year Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP).

 

The two programmes failed to revive the economy because the Zimbabwe government had failed to implement the agreed reforms. Instead of owing up to its duplicity the Zanu PF government blamed the IMF and WB, who had financed the two programmes, and refused to repay its debt with the two institutions and all the other lenders. The lenders had no choice but to stop lending the Zimbabwe government any more money.

 

IMF stopped lend Zimbabwe any money in 2000 for failing to service its debt and that had nothing to do with the targeted sanction imposed on Mugabe and his cronies by the Western governments after Zanu PF rigged yet another election. So blaming Zimbabwe’s failure raise any financial assistance on the targeted sanctions was all rhetorical nonsense by Mugabe and his ministers to fool the naïve and gullible.

 

After a decade and a half of dishing out all this sanctions rhetoric and with the national economy now in totally meltdown Mugabe has been finally forced to eat humble pie and admit Zimbabwe owes IMF and other creditors a lot of money. Chinamasa had no choice but to remind die-hard Zanu PF thugs like Mutsvangwa that the days of the party giving two-finger salute to the world are over.

 

So Africa’s fire-breathing Robert Mugabe has finally calmed down and came to his sense! He now accepts the simple reality that even fire-breathing tyrants like him cannot pay their debts with empty rhetoric they too have to pay in cash – US$ and not Z$. After 15 years of ranting and raving Mugabe is back at the negotiating table with the IMF. “Penga udzoke!” as one would say in Shona.