Zimbabwe is in serious economic and political mess and there are many who have taken to shouting “Don’t panic! Don’t panic!” only to help spread the panic!
“Ideally, the key thing is to establish ways of making positive contributions rather than criticising without proffering solutions,” argued News Day stoically, only to muddy the water its proffered “solution”.
“However, Mnangagwa must not wish Chamisa away. He’s a potent opposition political leader, who was voted by nearly half of the voting population and space must be created for him if the country is to achieve its economic goals or Mnangagwa’s 2030 vision.
“It does not make sense for that matter — be it Mnangagwa, Zanu PF, Chamisa or the MDC — to deny the legitimacy question or insist that sanctions on Zimbabwe should remain when other leaders, like South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, are arguing Zimbabwe’s case at meetings with other key Western economic block demanding that they should lift the embargo against the country.”
It is disappointing that some many people are still confused about the sanctions particularly those whose principal task is to inform and educate the populous. If the Rabbi of Rob is at sea then so too are his followers!
Zimbabwe’s economic meltdown was not caused by the sanctions but rather by the criminal waste of human and material resources through gross mismanagement and rampant corruption. How can any nation sustain, much less prosper, a $15 billion revenue haemorrhage from diamond industry alone especially a nation like Zimbabwe whose GDP is a mere $10 billion.
The corollary is equally true; it is naive to expect the country to register any meaningful economic recovery until the nation is cured of the cancerous tumours of mismanagement and corruptions. And the medicine to cure the cancer is to implement the democratic reforms and hold free, fair and credible elections.
It was President Mnangagwa and his Zanu PF junta who corrupted the country’s democratic institutions; hence the need to now implement the reforms; to imposed the de fact one-party dictatorship and consolidate the party’s iron grip on absolute power. Implementing the reforms will dismantle the party’s patronage system which is central to its retaining a tight grip on power but also the root cause of the mismanagement and corruption; hence the reason the party has resisted implementing reforms and holding free and fair elections.
The Americans have gone to town explaining the linkage between holding free, fair and credible elections and the lifting of sanctions. 3 million Zimbabweans in the diaspora were denied the vote, there was no free public media, the regime failed to produce something as basic as a verified voters’ roll for Pete’s sake, etc. The conclusion is self-evident, Zanu PF failed to hold free and fair elections and therefore why should the sanctions be lifted?
It is bad enough that reporters in News Day are still, after all these years of the issue being discussed at length, failing to get their heads round the sanctions debate; it is a great national tragedy that someone as esteemed and political powerful as Cyril Ramaphosa, President of the Republic of South Africa, is himself lost at sea too.
In 1986 a number of nation imposed economic sanctions on Apartheid ruled SA, just as sanctions on white ruled Rhodesia. The majority of blacks in SA and Rhodesia supported the imposition of the sanctions as a necessary measure to force meaningful political change. So President Ramaphosa believed sanctions were necessary to end white tyrannical rule but not necessary to end black tyrannical rule?
It is no secret that SA is not exactly a model nation with a booming economy and everything running smoothly; the country has blundered from pillar to post from one corruption scandal to another. Yes, SA is nowhere near the political and economic mess one sees in Zimbabwe; still there is plenty for South Africans to start worrying about.
On the issue of lifting sanctions on the Zanu PF vote rigging
thugs, President Ramaphosa is hopelessly out of touch with
reality.
BY JEFF KURAI CHAKANYUKA
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