“Mnangagwa's govt taking initiative to woo Joe Biden, Washington!” reported Daily News.
"From the historical narration, the election of Biden may mean more of the same for Zimbabwe, although we believe that a lot of water has gone under the bridge,” commented Zanu-PF spokesperson Patrick Chinamasa.
"Having said all this, we are urging our minister of Foreign Affairs to immediately engage the incoming US president's administration and bring to his attention the reality that for sanctions to target the country's economic pillars like they are doing is not promoting democracy.
"It is this sanctions law (the USA's Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act, ZDERA) that has prevented Zimbabwe from getting support from the IMF (International Monetary Fund), World Bank and the African Development Bank.”
What Zanu PF must be reminded, in they have conveniently forgotten, is that President-elect Joe Biden was one of the senators who sponsored ZDERA in 2001. He will not need anyone to remind him that the political and economic situation in Zimbabwe is a hell lot worse now than it was in 2001. The revision of ZDERA, to make the targeted sanctions more effective and to produce the desired meaningful democratic changes, is long overdue.
The targeted sanctions must be expanded to include the targeted individuals’ family and cronies. Unlike the last 20 years, the sanction must be ruthlessly enforced.
Individuals like Professor Mthuli Ncube, Minister of Finance, have agreed to work for the regime knowing Zanu PF rigged the July 2018 elections and is therefore illegitimate. Zimbabwe’s opposition leaders have participated in flawed elections giving the process some measure of credibility and the result some modicum of legitimacy. All these individuals are propping up this Zanu PF dictatorship for selfish reasons and they must now be added to the sanctions list.
Trump called for vote counting to stop but was powerless to do anything beyond tweeting endlessly about it. In 2008, Mnangagwa ordered voting counting to stop and it stopped immediately. It took the next six weeks to cook-up the vote count (six weeks to count 5 million votes) to reduce Morgan Tsvangirai’s 73% votes, according to Mugabe’s own Freudian slip, to 47%, enough to justify a run-off. Such is the enormity of Zimbabwe’s democratic deficit.
America is having a problem getting President Trump to concede electoral defeat and to orderly vacate the White House after he was in office for only four years. How much more difficult would it be to get him to leave if he had been in office for four decades and had corrupted the judiciary, legislature and all the other state institutions; as has happened in Zimbabwe!
Four decades of gross mismanagement, rampant corruption and rank lawlessness have left Zimbabwe in economic ruins and political paralysis. Unemployment has soared to 90%, basic services such as education and health care have all but collapsed, millions are now living in abject poverty, etc. Zimbabwe is facing a serious existential threat, the country is standing on the edge of the abyss.
What the country needs to turn away from the brink is an end to the decades of corrupt and tyrannical rule. We need to implement democratic reforms necessary for free, fair and credible elections.
As long as Zanu PF remains in power there will be no meaningful reforms implemented and so all pressure must be brought to bear to force the regime to step down. The targeted sanctions from the USA, EU and other western nation are an important part of this pressure to force change.
So President Biden replace the outdated 2001 ZDERA with the upgrade and update ZDERA mark 2 designed to deliver the desire democratic changes in Zimbabwe in 20 months not another 20 years. If Zanu PF is allowed to remain in office until 2023, the party will go on to rig that year’s elections too! It will be bad enough for Zanu PF to remain in power until 2023; it is simply unthinkable that the party should rig the elections and extend its rule by yet another 5 years!
ZDERA mark2 and all the other economic and political measures must end the Zanu PF dictatorship by 2023, at the latest, without failure!
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THE Government have warned that teachers who did not report for duty will not get bonuses for this year as it starts implementing a no-work no-pay principle.
Government will this week start paying civil servants' salaries and bonuses. Public Service and Social Welfare Minister Professor Paul Mavima told Sunday News last night said if teachers do not report for duty, Government will not pay them bonuses as well as their salaries.
If the wage is not enough to pay for transport, let alone other essentials, no amount of threats will make the teachers go to work. This is exactly what incapacitated means and Zanu PF keeps pretending it does not know the meaning.
2020 has been a complete write off, the children have learned nothing and they will all be pushed up one level. Even if everything was to return to normal next year many of the students will never ever catch-up. This is a whole generation that is being written off.
What kind of nation is this that ignores the eduction of a whole generation?
BULAWAYO continues to record a spike in Covid-19 cases as 12 new cases were recorded in the city on Saturday from 21 infections that were reported countrywide.
The country has so far recorded 8 786 Covid-19 confirmed cases since March inclusive of 8 096 recoveries and 257 deaths.
How many tests were carried out? Zimbabwe has one of the lowest covid-19 tests per capita. And since the official covid-19 cases and deaths are based on the tested cases only it is no surprise that the official figures are very low. There are hundreds if not thousands of covid-19 deaths who are not included in the official figure.
By failing to test and follow up with isolation the country has left thousands of infected in the community to infect others, making a bad situation worse!
Zimbabwe is standing on the edge of the precipitous abyss; indeed hundreds of thousands have tumbled over the edge already. If we do not do something quick smart; Zimbabwe will have the social unrest or worse turning it into another Libya or Syria and drag the whole nation over the edge into the abyss.
Unemployment has soared to over 90%, our education and health care services have all but collapsed, etc. taking us where we are today - right on the edge of the abyss. These things did not happen over night whilst we were fast asleep or in a year or two, taking us by surprise. This has taken 40 years of gross mismanagement, rampant corruption and rank lawless. Zanu PF has rigged elections to secure absolute power to loot and ride roughshod over our freedoms, rights, hopes and dreams. We, for our part, have wrung our hands and let it all happen.
Even if the incoming President Biden administration was to update and upgrade the 2001 ZDERA targeted sanctions and made sure, this time, they hit bull’s eye of the intended target; it will not be enough to stop the Zanu PF juggernaut. We, the people of Zimbabwe, must acknowledge the role we have played in our own downfall, learn from it and only then can we deliver the coup de grace to end the Zanu PF dictatorship and not be taken advantage of by the entourage of corrupt and incompetent opposition parties who have been running with povo whilst hunting with Zanu PF.
@ William Nkomo
“The Reverends, Bishops and Pastors come and go, but the Bible remains the same.. So is the American Constitution cannot be changed by changing the presidency.. I don’t think the binny man Cde Chinamasa is the right card to play in an American game. He is so arrogant and lacks diplomacy needed at such high levels of engagement.”
Zanu PF’s primary objective is to resist implementing the democratic reforms and thus retain the dictatorial powers at all cost. The party has engage some real slink and very expensive PR companies to spruce up its tarnished image but with little success, the Banana Republic image has remained and so too have the sanctions.
A challenge you to name anyone or company that can sell Zimbabwe as a successful, prosperous and democratic nation when every day there are stories of rampant corruption, of the country’s collapse education and health services and millions of ordinary Zimbabweans are living in abject poverty!
If “Mr Bin” Chinamasa and his fellow Zanu PF thugs had trace of human empathy left in them, after all these decades of gluttonous and murderous rule years, they would step down now and end the gratuitous suffering and deaths they have visited on this nation. They are hanging on to power to the bitter end and, rest assured, they too will drink to the dregs of the bitter end.
@ Tawanda
“Nomsa you need to do a research and find out if sanctions have ever achieved the desired goals in the history of mankind. You will notice that more often than not, they emboldens the targeted elite, becoming more rogue than before, giving them a scapegoat for their failings, making them more corrupt and looters of the national resources. You will also discover that the so-called targeted are men of means and may not suffer as much as the masses. In other words sanctions hurt more the ones they seek to protect than the ones they seek to punish. Did they have desired effects in Cuba, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Smith's Rhodesia etc?
“With regards to Biden, the irony is that if he assumes office, he is himself a product of a fraudulent election and his legitimacy is contested (and I believe Mr Trump is not wrong). So his credibility to exercise so much power and influence is questionable. What we need to do as a nation is to find each other and come up with national solutions to our problems.”
Even if targeted sanctions have very little or no effect on the targeted individuals because they are able to circumvent the sanctions; the fact still remains that they are there to underline that it is not business as usual.
Yes Zanu PF has blamed sanctions for all the nation’s problems but only the naive and gullible, like our neighbours across the Limpopo River, believe that nonsense especially with all the evidence of billions of dollars wasted through corruption. It would be foolish to lift the sanctions to appease the village idiots who believe everything put no questions asked.
“What we need to do as a nation is to find each other and come up with national solutions to our problems!” Only a bully, with his big foot crashing the victim’s toes, would say that.
Zanu PF has rigged elections for the last 40 years and blatantly rigged the July 2018 elections. To Zanu PF “Let us find each other” means “the party is in power and its dictatorial powers are not negotiable, now let us negotiate.”
Only a fool would fail to see that there is nothing to negotiate. Nothing!
Zanu PF rigged the July 2018 elections, that is a historic fact, and per se the party is illegitimate and must step down. Zanu PF will never reform itself out of office, that is a historic fact, true yesterday and will never change. The party has held the nation to ransom these last 40 years, that too is a fact and a reality. This cannot be allowed to continue and that is not negotiable!
@ Tawanda
“They are using the sanction narrative as a scapegoat for their failings man. By mentioning them a 1000th times they want the whole populace to believe that it is because of sanctions that we are in our current situation. Now you can not hold them responsible for the sorry state of things and you would believe that sanctions are really hurting them. Yet behind the scenes the elite are living large while the general populace is languishing in poverty.”
You are 100% correct, the ruling elite “are using the sanction narrative as a scapegoat for their failings”. The solution is not to lift the sanctions but to educate the naive and gullible who have failed to see that sanctions are a scapegoat.
President Cyril Ramaphosa’s failure to see that Mnangagwa was blaming sanctions for Zimbabwe’s problems to draw attention away from the real causes, has to be one one of the most foolish things Ramaphosa has ever done! Who would have guessed that our neighbours across the Limpopo River could be so shallow, thick and slow!
@ Nyoni
“hey you people you are silly minded you are benefiting from those sanctions that's why you celebrate the suffering of ordinary citizens you think sanctions are good for you. you want someone from another country to come and tell you what to do instead of your own home grown solutions. we are not in gvt but we are suffering are we the ruling elite please smell the coffee and wake up.”
Actually it you who must wake up and smell the coffee before it is too late! In 2015, Mugabe admitted the country was being “swindled” of US $15 billion in lost diamond revenue alone. That should have set off alarm bells ringing like Church bells in your empty head!
No country, much less Zimbabwe with GPD of US$ 10 billion, could ever afford US $ 15 billion economic haemorrhage. With US$ 15 billion Zimbabwe could have built Batoka Gorge Dam at US$3 billion (a second Kariba Dam to you), built and fully equip a Parerenyatwa size Hospital US$ 1 billion @ in every province in Zimbabwe and still have US$ 2 billion change for any emergency!
After that his US$ 15 billion corruption admission, Mugabe never again blamed sanctions for the country’s ills because he knew whatever monetary value he and his apologists could attribute to sanctions, it will never add up to US$15 billion! Mnangagwa has gone back to blaming sanctions for the country’s ills for two reasons; one he had no other scapegoat and two, he was sure there will be many village idiots who will have forgotten Mugabe’s admission already!
Part 1 of 2 @ Tawanda Majoni
“You just need to lie that you are a smallholder commercial farmer with so many hectares of land that you want to put under maize or some such crop that you can pronounce without much difficulty. Not too many questions asked. Who you know or claim to know is your qualification. After that, you must just find a small truck, claim your “loaned” seed, fertiliser and other agrochemicals and find the next roadside to vend your loot. That’s how it is, as easy as ABC.
“This is how things have been happening in the last three or so years when the command agriculture scheme was revived. There are no worries about explaining how you used the inputs and equipment next season when the scratched record is played over again. No one is caring about keeping records and that’s how things must be.
“It’s never going to be flattering that the scheme is being supervised straight from President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s office. Because it is being run from the OPC, it means that the president, his deputies and, of course, just about the whole executive know what’s happening. Since they are in the know, they must also be party to the eating club.
“That must be the only reason why they are insisting on the scheme every season despite the truth that command agriculture is yielding very small–if any–results for Zimbabwe’s economy and food security. That’s the reason why Kuda Tagwirei, a chap you may call an elite crony, Sakunda Holdings and connected cartelists have not been touched despite evidently cheating billions out of the scheme in recent times.
“That’s the reason why the Auditor General’s Office, a statutory department, can’t access information and documents relating to the scheme. That’s the reason why government is made to fund and manage this mega-billion project outside the national budget. And that’s the reason why no audit is being done around this stubborn ogre.
“The Zimbabwean parliament must, for a change, find teeth to bite and get to the bottom of this scam called command agriculture. But that sounds like asking for too much. Parliament is dominated by Zanu PF. You have also just heard that a very important senator is out in the maize field without fretting about anything. And who doesn’t know that just about every lawmaker from Zanu PF is a command agriculture beneficiary?
“So, when the president’s office and parliament are largely captured in this regard, who will guard the maize fields and the orchards? Where is the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission and civil society in this? What’s the media doing?
“Tawanda Majoni is the national coordinator at Information for Development Trust (IDT)”
Part 2 of 2
@ Tawanda Majoni
“Tawanda Majoni is the national coordinator at Information for Development Trust (IDT)”
Once upon a time, Zimbabwe produced enough food to not only meet the nation’s needs but had plenty leftover to be the breadbasket of the region, earning lots of foreign currency in the process. Mugabe and his corrupt and wasteful ruling elite started running out of resources to loot and turn on the farming sectors. They seized the farms often to the accompaniment of some gratuitous violence for political reasons.
Agricultural production took a nose-dive as the Zanu PF leaders and cronies, the new farm owners, had no clue how to farm. “Munda hauzvirimi!” (Having a productive farm is one thing make it productive is another!) as my late mother would have said.
Zanu PF has come up with command agriculture ostensibly to address the nation’s need to increase food production but, like many of the regime’s initiatives, it has because a conduit to loot. It has now become the norm for millions to face starvation every year, just the excuse the regime needs to justify allocating even more funds to command agriculture.
How ironic that the country has gone from being the breadbasket of the region to the basket case Banana Republic where those response for destroying the country’s productive agricultural sector are the ones benefiting greatly from the ensuing chaos!
Indeed, as long as these Zanu PF thugs remain in power they will remain on the farms, holding the nation ransom, and claim the command agriculture payout, annual hostage down payments.
It is heartbreaking that the people of Zimbabwe have lost so much and suffer so much to Zanu PF corruption. It is hard to feel sorry for them since they have done very little in the last 40 years to end the Zanu PF dictatorship. Many Zimbabweans out there have no clue what constitute free and fair elections, for example, hence the reason they have allowed Zanu PF to rig elections and stay in power regardless.
People often get the government they deserve, Zimbabweans certainly deserve Zanu PF and all its corrupt and utterly useless surrogate opposition parties. The country is standing on the edge of the abyss, its very survival is on the line, the ultimate price for the people’s life time laissez-faire indifference to call to end the curse of rigged elections and bad governance.
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