IMF: Zimbabwe is one of the poorest nations.

Mankind is a creature of reason, it is our ability to think that have made us the most dominant creature on earth. 

But just as having feathers is the common characteristic that has enabled birds to fly; it is common knowledge that not all birds have the same mastery of the air. So too with the human brain; not all humans have the same mastery of thinking. The individual, groups, nations, etc. who have shown to be marginally more rational, systematic, etc. had the edge over the competition and fared better. 

It is said that the couch potato is more fat than muscle because muscle tissue, if not exercised, atrophies to fat. Brain tissue may not atrophies to fat, still there is no doubt that an unexercised brain is not as quick, dexterous and capacious as a well exercised one! 

“International Monetary Fund’s most recent edition of the World Economic Outlook indicates that Zimbabwe is one of the poorest countries in the world,” wrote Steve H. Hanke, Professor of applied economics at The Johns Hopkins University, in an article in Spotlight Zimbabwe.

“Zimbabwe’s collapse shows up in every international rating of the economy. In the World Bank’s Doing Business 2018 index, Zimbabwe ranks 159 out of 190; in the Cato Institute’s Economic Freedom of the World listing for 2018, Zimbabwe is 127 out of 162; in the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report 2018, Zimbabwe ranks 128 out of 140.”

Yet 38 years ago, Zimbabwe was a middle-income country with the potential to be the South Korea of Africa. What happened? 

“We have had the great misfortune of being stuck with an incompetent, corrupt and murderous Zanu PF dictatorship that rigged elections to stay in power against the people’s democratic will!” is the standard answer to that question. 

But that has to be the lazy-minded’s answer because it provokes the follow-up question: why was the nation stuck with the Zanu PF dictatorship for 38 years? 

Whenever the devil and his imps closes the door to imprison mankind; the Lord always opens a window. It is inconceivable that in the last 38 years, the Lord has failed to open the window to allow the people of Zimbabwe to end the Zanu PF dictatorship. 

There have been many golden opportunities for the people of Zimbabwe to end the de facto one-party dictatorship but they have all been wasted. During the 2008 to 2013 GNU the nation had the “get out of jail” card and failed to use it.

SADC forced Mugabe and his Zanu PF thugs to agree to the implementation of a raft of democratic reforms design to dismantle the dictatorship. All Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC friends were tasked to do was implement the reforms. They failed to get even one reform implemented in five years. 

To blame the corrupt and incompetent MDC leaders for why the country has been stuck with the corrupt and tyrannical Zanu PF dictatorship will a partial answer because it too beggars the question: why did the nation risk life and limb to elect and entrust the sell-out MDC leaders with the important task of ending the Zanu PF dictatorship?

The answer to that question is that we, the ordinary Zimbabweans ourselves, have become the intellection couch potatoes. We have lacked the mental capacity to understand what Zanu PF has doing in systematically corrupting the country’s democratic institutions, much less the mental agility to do something to stop the regime. 

It took 20 years for many Zimbabweans to finally understood the need for democratic change as the only way to stop Zanu PF rigging elections. Still many, even to this day, have no clue what these democratic changes are hence the reason MDC leaders were able to sell-out on reforms and get away with it. 

In the long run, the people get the government they deserve; Zimbabweans certainly deserve this corrupt, incompetent and vote rigging Zanu PF dictatorship complete with its entourage of corrupt and incompetent opposition parties. Zimbabweans deserve to be one of the poorest nations on earth.

Worst of all, there is nothing to suggest Zimbabweans are ever going to get out of this hell-on-earth the nation is now stuck in because there is nothing to suggest an desire to question pertinent questions to show a willingness to fire-up their brain and start thinking. 

Zanu PF has just rigged the recent elections confirming the country is still a pariah state, for example. This has dealt a hammer blow to all hopes of meaningful economic recovery because the much hoped for inward investment will never come. No one invests in a pariah state ruled by corrupt and vote rigging thugs. None of these political and economic realities have even registered in minds of most Zimbabweans. 

The EU, the Americans and other outsiders are more interested in holding President Mnangagwa to account for failing to hold free, fair and credible elections than most Zimbabweans. Whilst every thinking human being would consider the individual freedoms and rights including the right to a meaningful say in the governance of one’s country and the right to life sacred and worth dying for Zimbabweans consider them to be privileges, at best. 

In many other countries Mnangagwa and his junta will be is serious trouble for the wholesale looting, blatantly rigging the elections, staging a military coup, multiple murders, etc.; in Zimbabwe they are heroes because the people have yet to register these activities as unlawful much less treason. 

Zimbabwe is one of the poorest nations on the planet but only because we allowed ourselves to become couch potatoes mentally. And, until we snap out of our mental slumber, there will be no escaping from our self-inflicted poverty.

By Jeff Kurai Chakanyuka