“We cannot have a country of people without any purpose because the economy is not providing them with opportunities which they want. The focus of the President, immediately, is how to revive this economy. That is where his attention is focused on,” he told a Zanu PF Mashonaland West provincial coordinating committee meeting, according to State media.
No doubt the State Media now have several teams follow Mutsvangwa everywhere he goes and give everything he says or does prime-time coverage. (I have send a copy of this article to both the Herald and Chronicle, knowing fully well the email will be deleted on receipt and trash emptied. The place is crawling with CIOs masquerading as journalists and they all live in constant fear of their colleagues telling the powers-that-be that they were working for regime change – a crime worse than high treason.)
“The route which we have taken is the route of wealth, the route of money, prosperity and building a model African country, which no other African has ever done. The route of having an economy that grows at a rate of 10, 15, 20 per cent per annum for the next 10 to 20 years,” said Mutsvangwa.
This is just a repeat of what the deposed President Robert Mugabe and the rest of the Zanu PF leadership including Mutsvangwa and Mnangagwa had said soon after independence. “Gutsa ruzhinji!” (Mass prosperity!) the nation was told then. Today Zimbabwe is the poorest nation on earth with unemployment soaring to the nauseating height of 90%. 72.3% of our people are living on US$ 1.00 or less a day.
So, instead of mass prosperity the nation got mass poverty.
It is not that the people of Zimbabwe did not know the root cause of the country’s economic decline, we did. It was the gross mismanagement and the rampant corruption brought about by the Zanu PF political patronage system spawned by Mugabe and the Zanu PF dictatorship. The political patronage system’s primary task was to help Mugabe establish and retain the de facto one-party dictatorship at all cost. The economic decline was one of the costs but well worth the price, as far as Mugabe and his cronies were concerned.
Zimbabwe’s economic decline was caused by the gross mismanagement and rampant corruption in the first instance but these have been allowed to grow and spread to the life-threatening cancerous tumours they are total because for 37 years the nation could not do anything to end the mismanagement and corruption. Zanu PF rigged elections to stay in power and as long as the party remained in office the regime stop the dismantling of the patronage system that helped it to remain in power.
For the last 20 years, the nation has turned its attention from dealing with the economic problems to address the political problem of the dictatorship itself. Until we found ways to stop Zanu PF rigging elections, there was no hope of the regime dismantling the system it has created to keep it in power. Implementing democratic reforms to ensure free, fair and credible elections has become the clarion call.
“Leave our President alone. Give him a chance. He means well for Zimbabwe and the people of Zimbabwe are solidly behind him. Please do not try him before he has even started. Don’t condemn him before he has even started,” pleaded the passionate Mutsvangwa.
“I am saying this because all the papers have started attacking the new President. He is being judged in 37 hours more than someone who has been in power for 37 years.”
If the truth be told Special Advisor Mutsvangwa, President Mnangagwa and 99.99% of his administration have been in the Zanu PF government and/or dictatorship for donkey years. Mnangagwa himself has been Mugabe’s right hand man and chief enforcer for 37 years and it is therefore a nonsense this Mnangagwa administration to pretend it had nothing to do with the disastrous failures of the last 37 years. Worse still, this administration cannot disown the Zanu PF dictatorship but only as a cover for doing nothing to dismantle it.
As Mutsvangwa himself readily admitted President Mnangagwa is focusing all his time and energy on the economy and has never ever said anything about implementing the democratic reforms necessary for free, fair and credible elections. Mr Mutsvangwa just supposing Mnangagwa fails to deliver on his promise of making Zimbabwe “a model African country” just as Mugabe before him failed to deliver “gutsa ruzhinji”, with no guaranteed free, fair and credible elections we will once again be stuck with him until another putsch force him to resign.
President Mnangagwa can continue in his efforts to revive the economy, we all welcome that. But there is no excuse why he cannot implement the democratic reforms necessary for free and fair elections.
Indeed, the economic measure to end mismanagement and corruption are best done by a regime with popular electoral mandate of the people and not by a regime whose political base is totally dependent on the men and women behind the mismanagement and corruption.
No Mr Mutsvangwa you can plead all you want for the people to focus on the economic issues as the important issues of our time we know that Zimbabwe is in this economic mess because the nation failed to remove Mugabe and his dictatorial regime even when it was clear it was corrupt, incompetent vote rigging and oppressive. Removing Mugabe but only to replace him with Mnangagwa and fail to implement the democratic reforms designed to dismantle the dictatorship itself means the corruption, etc. will continue.
“Seek ye first the political kingdom and all else shall be added unto you,” said Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first post –independence president.
What he meant was simple and clear enough; it is only when the people have a meaningful political say that they can force those in power to share out the economic wealth fairly. Before independence Mugabe and his cronies sort to wrestle political power from the white. But as soon as they were in power they have usurped the ordinary people’s political power to hold the regime to account.
Zimbabweans are today back to where we were before independence fighting for a meaningful say in the governance of the country as the first step to securing our other political freedoms and economic rights.
Comrade Mutsvangwa, Mnangagwa and the rest in the Zanu PF dictatorship are doing their best to convince us that we do not need free and fair elections because they have our economic interests at heart. After 37 years of ruinous misrule, we would be very foolish to fall for that empty promise again. We must seek political reforms, free and fair elections and the economic prosperity will follow.
So, President Mnangagwa the model African country we want is one in which the freedoms and basic human rights including the right to a meaningful say in the governance of the country and the right to life of all the citizens, not just a select few, a guaranteed. Only a democratic Zimbabwe as contrast to the corrupt, vote rigging and tyrannical dictatorship in power now, has any hope of economic prosperity.
1 comment:
The one tries to talk about political rights such as free and fair elections the more some people will change the subject and talk about "jobs, jobs, jobs" as President Mnangagwa said in his inauguration speech. Whilst cunning people like Mugabe would see the futility, as Dr Kwame Nkrumah clearly did, of talking about economic rights when there is no meaningful way to hold the ruler to account if he/she should fail to deliver on their promises. There are however some people who genuinely fail to see the link used as they are to have discussion with no beginning, middle or end. They will happily talk in a circle and never realise they are getting nowhere.
After 37 years of being promised heaven on earth and finding themselves living in what has to be the hell on earth giving what the country’s potential is and how it is all wasted, you would think that the penny has finally dropped. Zimbabweans would be saying no to talking about the economy and focusing on the mechanism to ensure those who fail to deliver of their promises can finally be removed from office.
Even if President Mnangagwa had been a completely new face, not the man who was Mugabe’s right hand man and chief enforcer for the last 37 years, it would still be wise for the nation to demand the implementation of the reforms before considering the merit or otherwise of his economic policies. After being stuck with a corrupt and tyrannical regime for 37 years we should be very careful that we do not allow the same to happen ever again.
Indeed, the stubborn refusal of President Mnangagwa to commit to implementing the democratic reforms is a clear sign that he does not wish to be held to democratic account. That should only make us even more weary and determined to make sure the reforms are implemented a.s.a.p. The longer we allow him to stay in power with no meaningful democratic reforms in place the harder it is going to be to get the reforms implemented. With no reforms, it will be near impossible to remove him from office as we have already seen with Mugabe.
If we do not get the democratic reforms implemented timeously then we will be stuck with Mnangagwa, regardless of how poor his performance should turn out to be. We will have to once again hope for a military coup to force him out of office.
Our ability to self-govern is dependent on how well our system of government is on delivering our people’s political and economic rights. The last 37 years have been a total failure and the real test here is whether the nation has enough men and women of substance to acknowledge things are not working, identify where we gone wrong and have the courage and vision to put things right.
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