“GOVERNMENT will continue to double down on its re-engagement policy notwithstanding the negative attempts by some British legislators to continue isolating Zimbabwe, a senior Government official has said,” reported Zimpaper.
The official was Mr Nick Mangwana, Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services Permanent Secretary.
Poor Nick, Zimbabwe’s re-engagement policy is now long dead in the water.
The British, through their last Ambassador to Zimbabwe, Catriano Laing, had certainly tried very hard to get Zimbabwe accepted back into the commune of nation. She worked to get IMF, WB and Paris Club to renew financial assistance to Harare, to clear all the obstacles for the re-admittance of Zimbabwe into the Commonwealth, etc.
But when Mnangagwa blatantly rigged last July’s elections the British realised it was a waste of time trying to sell Zimbabwe as a reformed and democratic nation when the country was clearly still a pariah state ruled by corrupt and vote rigging thugs.
Ambassador Laing’s parting shot to the acting President Kambo Mohadi (Mnangagwa was in the USA for the UN GA) was that Zanu PF had rigged the July 2018 elections because “the play field was not level”!
Last month Zimbabwe’s flamboyant Finance Minister, Professor Mthuli Ncube, Mr Know-It-All, visited the Paris Club, IMF and WB confident they will grant Harare the much needed lines of credit. He did not get even one dollar. No one, especially bankers are not interested in empty rhetoric and froth; they want substance.
Last week UK MP, Kate Hoey, called for increased pressure on the Zanu PF regime following the violent crackdown by Zimbabwe security services in January which were clearly designed to silence public outcry in the face of the country’s worsening economic meltdown. Nick Mangwana seized on MP Hoey’s comments to blame her for Zimbabwe’s failed re-engagement drive!
”Her (Hoey) utterances in the build up to the 30 July elections are instructive. Her hostility to the party (Zanu-PF) of Government is on record and her ignorant campaign is not informed by a love for this country, but by her hatred to the association her Labour Party has with those on the opposite side of our politics,” ranted Nick Mangwana.
"By now she should be aware that this idea of campaigning to keep Zimbabwe in the cold has been discredited. It's a blunt instrument that has proved to impact more against the vulnerable of any society than the governing elite.”
The people of Zimbabwe now know that it is the 38 years of corrupt and tyrannical rule by this Zanu PF regime that has resulted in the total economic meltdown pushing unemployment to the dizzying heights of 90%, forcing the collapse of basic services as supply of clean water and health care, etc. Zimbabweans are now the poorest nation in Africa with 3/4 of them living on US$1.00 or less a day.
The people have known for decades that Zanu PF was corrupt and incompetent; they have failed to remove the regime from power because the party rigged elections.
Zanu PF has used brute force to establish and retain this de facto one-party dictatorship.
"Whilst as a sovereign country we will do all that serves the interests of our people, we will not bend backwards to appease anyone in any way that jeopardises our national interests," continued Mangwana.
By repeatedly rigging the elections all these last 38 years Mnangagwa and his Zanu PF cronies were certainly not serving the interests of the ordinary Zimbabwean. They were serving their own insatiable greed for absolute power, influence and looted wealth.
Mnangagwa never doubted for one moment that he would fail to delivery the much needed economic recovery. The flood gate of investors he was sure would follow his “Zimbabwe is open for business!” mantra of his first year as President has failed to materialise.
Mnangagwa has since convinced himself that the country has to go through a period of austerity to enjoy prosperity. How long the austerity is going to last he has not said. He has since appointed a 24 member President Advisory Council (PAC) to help him deliver his Vision 2030 by then the country is supposed to be a middle income nation.
Vision 2030 is but a mirage. Zimbabwe will never achieve any meaningful economic recovery as long as the nation remains a pariah state ruled by corrupt and vote rigging thugs. PAC members are expected to make the economic recovery and prosper regardless the wastefulness through gross mismanagement and rampant corruption inherent in this Zanu PF dictatorship.
If any of the PAC members were honest individuals who cared about the long suffering ordinary people then they would have refused to be associated with self-serving power grab scheme doomed to fail. All the members know that Zanu PF rigged last July’s elections and the regime is now using brute force to impose its continued rule.
The regime shot dead six civilians on 1st August 2018, soon after the rigged 30 July elections, in a move calculated to scar all would-be protesters protesting yet another rigged elections.
On the 14 January 2019 the people organised to protest the country’s worsening economic situation including the shortages of cash, foreign currency, medicine and the 150% increase in the price of fuel. Once again the regime has responded with brutality and barbarism. The Police and Army have beaten or raped hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans, arrest over a thousand and shoot dead at least 12 unarmed civilians.
There three things one can say are as certain to happen as the sun rising in the morning and setting in the evening:
- The Zimbabwe economic is set to get worse as long as the country remains a pariah state ruled by corrupt and vote rigging thugs. Zanu PF will blame everyone else for the worsening economic situation but the real culprit is Mnangagwa and his cronies who rigged the elections and are now using brute force to impose their continued rule.
- No amount of brutal repression by Zanu PF is going to stop the people demand an end to their poverty induced suffering and deaths because no amount of coercion can ever force human beings to suffer and die in silence like sheep in a slaughter house.
- In the end, this Zanu PF dictatorship will be dismantled. The tragedy for the nation is that it is proving to be a violent and protracted process because of Zanu PF leaders like Mnangagwa and Mugabe’s, before him, greed and intransigency. It would have been better for the nation if the change had been orderly and peaceful.
9 comments:
VP Chiwenga has been flown to Hospital in Cape Town. Zimbabweans have been demonstrating demanding that he is send back to Zimbabwe.
How much does it cost the taxpayer to fly these chefs to other country for their health needs? Mugabe's trips to Singapore cost US$3 million each. It beggars belief that with that kind of money the country would not have even one five-star hospital!
The International Development Committee is holding an urgent evidence session on the situation in Zimbabwe. Following the recent violent crackdown by Zimbabwe’s security forces, this session allows the Committee to explore how the UK, and DFID in particular, should respond. The Committee will first hear from a panel of academic experts before then questioning the Minister for Africa, Harriet Baldwin MP, and the head of DFID Zimbabwe
There is no doubt that the British made a serious foreign policy blunder during the day of former ambassador Catriano Lang's tour of duty by bending over backwards to embrace Mnangagwa and his regime. The British were naive to believe that the regime was transformed by the November 2017 coup. It has emboldened the regime and now it is showing it true colours.
The best the British can do to help Zimbabwe now is to pile the pressure on the regime to step down; Mnangagwa rigged last year's elections and he must be forced to step down. Zimbabwe needs to implement the raft of democratic reforms agreed at the onset of the last GNU.
Both Zanu PF and MDC leaders were in the last GNU and failed to get even one reform implemented hence the reason they cannot be in the next GNU.
Mnangagwa is using brute force to hold the nation to ransom, that must not be allowed!
Zimbabwe has been ranked among the worst corrupt countries in the world by Transparency International in its 2018 index. The index was released last week
Out of a total 180 countries, Zimbabwe is the number 160. Zimbabwe’s score out of 100 is 22. African countries worse than Zimbabwe include Angola, DRC, Burundi, Chad, Libya, South Sudan, Congo, and Somalia (ranked worst corrupt country in the world).
Mnangagwa said he would end corruption when he took over office and now over a year later he has yet to arrest one of the swindler involved in the looting if US$15 billion in diamonds! “There will be zero tolerance to corruption!” he said.
The only hope of ending corruption in Zimbabwe is by having a fresh star; implement the raft of democratic reforms and hold fresh free, fair and credible elections.
So Moyo is concerned more about Chiwenga going to SA and not China when most Zimbabweans are angry that Zanu PF has destroyed the nation's so the chefs now have to go to foreign lands for their heath needs whilst the ordinary Zimbabweans have to make do with the collapsed service. Moyo has no qualms with Mugabe going to Singapore at US$3 million each trip.
Where did Jonathan Moyo go before the November 2017 coup? Where does he go now? No doubt he escaped with a suitcase full of cash and diamonds! People like Moyo should be brought back to Zimbabwe and face justice!
@ Grant
You are right sanctions was a red herring and it is a great pity that someone as important and SA President Cyril Ramaphosa made a complete ass of himself in Davos a few weeks ago talking about sanctions as the big issue stopping Zimbabwe develop. To underline his stupidity Mnangagwa was in the news with his Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner hired jet. The jet was costing US$74 000 per hour and Mnangagwa was going to have it for 10 days. Meanwhile Zimbabwe government was offering junior doctors $20 pay rise to their $129 per month. The country’s poverty datum line is US$650 per month.
You are right to say “South Africa – and the rest of the region, for that matter – ignore developments in Zimbabwe at their peril.”
Both SA and SADC have ignored development in Zimbabwe and Zimbabwe and the whole region is paying dearly for it. The quality of leaders in the region has been pathetic and it shows!
Patrick, Professor Mthuli Ncube, Kirsty Coventry, the 24 supposedly respectable members of the community recently appointed members of the President Advisory Council, etc. all know that Zanu PF rigged last year's elections. What is more, they have known all these years that Zanu PF has been rigging elections and using wanton violence to impose its rule on the nation with the tragic consequences we see today. They have all chosen to pretend that Zanu PF was the legitimately elected last July and the party has never cheated let alone commit treason.
Their appointment has elevated them from just being an ordinary citizen into the exclusive ruling elite club.
Professor Ncube and the others listed above are not the first ones to see tyrants like Mnangagwa as great leaders because they were offered a seat on the gravy train there are many, many others who have fallen into the same trap. People like Professor Walter Kamba, the late Bernard Chidzero, Professor Jonathan Moyo, Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC friends, Zanu PF members themselves including Mugabe and Mnangagwa themselves; the list is endless.
Zimbabwe is well and truly stuck in this rut all these last 38 years because those who had the power and opportunity to set the nation on a democratic path failed to rest the temptation to seek their own selfish interest at the expense of the common good. Whilst there have been many opportunities to end the corrupt and oppressive Zanu PF rule, they have all been wasted because those who should have helped to make that happen have all failed to resist the honey trap.
The white supremacists have often said black Africans are incapable of self-government, Zimbabwe has become the basket case of an African failed state. And if I had to pick one thing that has made Zimbabweans incapable of self-government it has to be our failure to resist the temptation to use public office for selfish gratification at the expense of the common good.
We have condemned corruption only when we are in no position to end it; whenever the opportunity to end it has arisen when could not do it because it invariably came with the opportunity for us to be corrupt! The same is true of good governance. We have paid lip service to good governance, rule of law, etc. but have failed to uphold any these noble values because we have lack the intellectual fortitude to resist the folly of selfishness and greed.
People like Professor Ncube are helping to keep Zanu PF in power and for all their claim to intellectual ability. We are just going round and round in circles and it beggars belief how these people can continue to pretend they cannot see it!
Zanu PF wants to have their cake and eat it too! The regime blatantly rigged last July's elections confirming that Zanu PF was still a party of corrupt and vote rigging thugs and Zimbabwe was still a pariah state. After all the years of investors shying away from Zimbabwe because it was a pariah state Mnangagwa and company must have known this would continue. And yet they still continue to expect the world to ignore Zimbabwe is a pariah state and invest?
Of course, the world has ignore Mnangagwa and company because the world has to deal with reality and not the diktat of a tyrant. There will be no meaningful economic recovery in Zimbabwe as long as the country remains a pariah state, period!
@ Chibundo
When security forces beat, rape and even killing civilians - even if every one of the victims was involved in the rioting and looting that took place - that can never ever be justified. The Police and Army were supposed to arrest the criminals and present them before the courts complete with the evidence of wrong doing and not to be the arresting officer, the judge and be the one dishing out the sentence and punishment all in one.
There is no law in Zimbabwe security officers can take the law into their own hands under any condition and it is nonsense to suggest otherwise.
“The security forces have an obligation to defend and safeguard the country and they must carry out their mandates without fear or favor,” you said. That is just nonsense and you know it!
“The Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN) notes the establishment of an inter-ministerial taskforce to address recommendations and issues raised by the various election observer missions and the Motlanthe Commission on the 1 August 2018 shootings.”
Of all the foolish ideas this must be one of the worst! Zanu PF will never reform itself out of office, that is one thing that no thinking person would still doubt given the country’s history. Of course, it is insane to try the same thing over and over again even after 38 years of trying, and hope for a different result!
ZESN people should stop wasting the nation’s time and resources. “ZESN ngavaende kundovhiya mbudzi!” as one would say in Shona.
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