Mugabe has disowned people

Source: Mugabe has disowned people – NewsDay Zimbabwe April 7, 2017

IF Zanu PF supporters – and whoever voted for the party and its leader President Robert Mugabe in the last elections – ever doubted that the nonagenarian leader never had their interests at heart, this is the time to revise their thinking.

Comment: NewsDay Editor

It is ironic that after Zanu PF was re-elected in 2013 on the strength of creating 2,2 million jobs within five years, Mugabe is now shifting goalposts, urging the very people he promised the jobs to create “their own”.

In other words, the President is saying it is not Zanu PF’s business to create jobs for the majority of people. If this is not careless speech, we do not what this could be. There is no doubt that Zimbabwe is in this state of economic mess, corruption and political instability due to Mugabe’s bad leadership and misgovernance.

Essentially, Mugabe’s utterances prove that Zanu PF’s desire is to completely destroy the formal economy by pushing everyone into the overcrowded small-to-medium enterprise (SME) sector dominated by millions of people forced into vending by the governing party’s anti-social policies instead of reviving the economy.

It is quite surprising that Mugabe would say Zimbabweans should not moan about the high unemployment in the country but to create jobs for themselves when his Zanu PF party leadership promised to create jobs for the majority.

Is Mugabe admitting that the promises were false? Or, clearly, the party leadership knew they were selling people a dummy and knew their supporters would fall for it even as history was repeating itself?

Zanu PF has a record of promising the impossible every time elections draw close and these promises are shelved as soon as it’s voted back into power, to be dangled again before the very same electorate.

It’s a vicious cycle that has been going on for many years and – for all the claims that Zimbabweans are among the most educated Africans – they continue to fall for it.

So what else will Zanu PF use as a ruse at the 2018 harmonised elections?

Understandably, people should not necessarily wait to be offered jobs, but after someone makes a promise, the expectation was that the promise would be fulfilled, unless if it was an outright lie for an ulterior motive.

The fact that SMEs have become the mainstay of the economy, replacing big corporates, simply demonstrates that Mugabe and his Zanu PF are focussing on fixing the symptoms rather than the root problem.

This is clearly an admission that the Zanu PF regime is clueless on how to resolve the economic collapse facing the country. Surely people can’t always be fooled, there shall come a time to fight back.