The striking doctors and teachers will never be paid a living wage because the Zimbabwe government is broke; most people accept this as a matter of fact, which it is! They want the doctors and teachers to go back to work on the same starvation wages they are getting.
“Let us give Mnangagwa a chance to turn round the economy,” many are arguing. Their optimism reminds me of a witty remark on misplaced optimism.
“Zvinhu zviyedza chembere yokwa Chivi yakabika mabwe!” (One should always try something, an old lady from Chivi tried cooking stones!) one would remark.
What is sickening here is that Zanu PF has been promising the nation this delicious and nourishing stone stew for the last 38 years and there are still people insane enough to still believe this nonsense!
For the first 20 years or so after independence, Zanu PF promised economic mass prosperity, “Gutsa ruzhinji!” as Robert Mugabe never tired of saying. The national economy took a totally different trajectory, one of stead decline in response to the criminal waste of human and material resources through mismanagement and corruption under Zanu PF misrule.
For the last 20 years, Zanu PF has changed its tune; the party has grudgingly accepted the economic rot and so has been promising to revive it. The party got us into the economic mess and now it is claiming it will get us out of the mess. This beggars the question: why did the party got us into the mess in the first place?
Worst of all, Zanu PF claimed it was the ONLY party competent to deliver mass prosperity and now still claim it is the ONLY party competent to revive the crumbling economy. The party has done this by ruthless imposed the de fact one-party, Zanu PF, dictatorship. It has effectively denied the people their basic freedoms and human rights including the right to a meaningful say in the governance of the country.
With no democratic voice to hold the Zanu PF ruling elite to account, the mismanagement and corruption of the first 20 years have gone into overdrive. In 2016 the then President Robert Mugabe admitted the country was “swindled out of US$15 billion in diamond revenue.” He never arrested even one swindler. President Mnangagwa has not done any better; he too has yet to arrest the first diamond swindler!
A year latter, in 2017, the then Minister of Finance, Patrick Chinamasa, told parliament that government was still receiving 1/6 of the expected diamond revenue. There is nothing to suggest the situation has improved in any way. So we can be 100% certain the wholesale looting of Zimbabwe’s resource is continuing to this day!
In Zimbabwe corruption has now been institutionalised making even more difficult to uproot. The country’s army, ZDF, has its own diamond mining concession, for example, and so all the top brass in the army are benefiting from the looting. The Police, CIO and other state institutions have their own mining concessions. It is one thing taking on one or two corrupt generals and quite another taking on all the top brass in the Army, Police, CIO, etc., etc.!
Even rich nations like America or Japan cannot sustain a US$15 billion revenue haemorrhage much less an impoverished country like Zimbabwe with a GPD of US$10 billion!
Mnangagwa has done nothing to end the gross mismanagement and the rampant corruption, the two cancers killing the economy and yet promises living wages to government workers and economic boom for us all! He is the proverbial old man of Mberengwa cooking a stew of stones!
After 38 years of being conned by Zanu PF first about mass prosperity and now economic recovery, it is shocking there are still Zimbabweans out there insane enough to still believe in Zanu PF’s delicious and nourishing stone stew!
Mnangagwa is only going to drag this nation even deeper into this hell-on-earth Zanu PF landed us in. The deeper we go the harder it is going to be to get out, assuming we have not already gone beyond the point of no return!
The doctors and teachers should stop wasting time demanding a living wage from this Zanu PF regime, the party will never deliver a stone stew. They should be demanding instead that Zanu PF steps down following the rigged July 2018 elections so the nation can start implementing the reforms necessary for free, fair and credible elections. We need to end the curse of rigged elections if we are ever to get out of this hell-on-earth.
“Give Mnangagwa a chance!” Yeah, right!
2 comments:
Zanu PF thugs have used the gun to end white colonial rule but have also used the gun to impose their own tyrannical rule on the nation. The party has rigged elections and claimed victory and no one has dared challenge them. They rigged last July's elections and the brutal violence of the 1 st August was meant as a timely reminder to us all of what the regime would do to all who dare challenge its claim to power.
This nation has suffered a great deal under this Zanu PF dictatorship, unemployment has soared to dizzying heights of 90%, 75% of the population now live on US$1.00 or less a day and basic services like clean running water and health care have all but collapsed.
The regime has murdered over 30 000 innocent civilians in the drive to establish and retain the de facto one-party dictatorship.
Mnangagwa and his junta will never deliver and meaningful economic recovery because they have failed to deal with the root causes of the economic meltdown such as ending corruption and lifting the curse of pariah state. All they care about is how they are going to hang on to absolute power to protect their privileged position, the right to loot and to keep their dodgy past under wraps.
The people have suffered and many are dying unnecessarily for no other reason that to feed the insatiable greed of Mnangagwa and his junta friends. Enough is enough this madness must be stopped and, mark my words, it will be stopped.
@ Eddie Cross
" Look at the shambles in South Africa and Zimbabwe – "leadership", nothing else," you said and I totally agree. But was it not you who was praising Mnangagwa only a few moons ago?
Zimbabwe had its golden opportunity to end the Zanu PF dictatorship during the 2008 to 2013 GNU and MDC leaders, including you, Mr Cross, wasted it. You failed to get even one reform implemented in five years of the GNU. Talk of failed leadership, you should look in the mirror to see one!
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