via MDC split diverting attention – DailyNews Live by Jeffrey Muvundusi 6 MAY 2014
The current power tussle in the opposition MDC has become the talk of town, with screaming headlines of suspensions and expulsions surrounding the opposition party.
While this has consumed much of the local media space, observers say it is a fortuitous diversion of attention from the prevailing harsh economic conditions faced by the public.
Since the July 31 elections, things have been falling apart in the economy, that had shown great potential during the coalition government.
Of late, most Zanu PF and government gatherings have been characterised by long speeches centred on the controversial economic blueprint, the Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation (ZimAsset).
For instance, at the just-ended Zimbabwe international Trade Fair (ZITF), speeches of government officials were characterised by droning populist rhetoric and repetitive and monotonous chants of the government’s economic blueprint ZimAsset.
While ZimAsset maybe a well thought out document, its implementation has not been as loud as President Robert Mugabe and his acolytes sing about. It is receiving a lukewarm response from different stakeholders.
In his address to journalists at the Bulawayo Press Club recently, president of the smaller MDC Welshman Ncube criticised the ZimAsset document.
“There are few who will doubt that the economy is far worse than it was before July 31 last year. Many of us are now worse off economically than we were before the elections. There are not many who will doubt that after nine months, the government of today has failed, notwithstanding the nice sounding clichés, ZimAsset, they have no clue on how to turn the economy,” Ncube said.
The blueprint reflects on the strong need to fully exploit internal relationships and linkages that exist between the various facets of the economy.
These clusters include food and security and nutrition, social services, poverty eradication, infrastructure, utilities, value edition and beneficiation.
But Ncube had no kind words for the document: “Slogans will never manage an economy. You may have an avalanche of nice sounding words, little tunes that children sing to but they will never manage the economy,” he said.
Towards elections, Zanu PF promised heaven on earth to the electorate, thereby managing to woo many souls who had previously lampooned the party for its annihilation of the once effervescent economy.
Ten months down the line, there are no signs of economic revival on the table, except the continuation of primitive rhetoric on promises which are not seeing the light of day.
Worse still, Finance minister Patrick Chinamasa, who early this year presented a national budget which economic analysts said was far from being pro-poor and failed to address the basic need for economic revival, told journalists in Bulawayo recently that Zimbabwe was in serious debt.
“Currently, I have got no capacity to pay the arrears or the principal debt which, by the way now, stands at $10,4 billion,” he said.
“This is excluding the RBZ debt which comes to $1,3 billion. We are more or less $7 or $8 billion in arrears owed to international financial institutions if we take all the debts into account.”
Chinamasa indicated that it had been made clear to him that Zimbabwe did not qualify for another loan as long as the arrears remained unpaid.
The IMF has always had a problem with Zanu PF’s numerous controversial policies such as the land reform programme. The chaotic land reform programme has been cited by the IMF as one of the reasons they would not consider providing debt relief anytime soon.
While the MDC infighting has suddenly hooked public attention, people seem to have forgotten what they are currently going through.
In Bulawayo alone, where more than 100 companies have shut down, ZimAsset has been cited by Zanu PF as the panacea to the crises through a Special Economic Zone provision which analysts say is far-fetched.
Reason Ngwenya, the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions Western regional director told the Daily News that the Zanu PF government was doomed in its bid to revive the economy.
“As things stand, the economy is sinking deeper, the liquidity crunch has just taken over,” Ngwenya said.
“The government has a lot of work to do in terms of holding the situation because if left unchecked by March next year, things will have worsened. Remember for any situation that we are in right now, the government is responsible.”
Ngwenya appealed to government to engage relevant stakeholders to try and save the economy from sliding further into the abyss.
Nicola Brown, the mainstream MDC Bulawayo legislator, concurred that the current squabbles in her party had actually obscured the challenges the country is going through at the moment.
She commended ZimAsset as a very good document which is lacks of funding.
“ZimAsset will be a very great document if only they tell us where the money will be coming from. As it is, there is no money to fund the blueprint and yet we all know the government has no money. Now it’s the taxpayer who has to fund this amidst all the corruption that is taking place in Zimbabwe,” Brown said.
She said the downward spiral of the economy has seriously shocked the ruling party to such an extent that it had been left clueless on how to contain the situation.
“We are now living in a nation where a huge gap has been created between the rich and the poor. The majority of people are wallowing in poverty and deprivation,” Brown added.
COMMENTS
“MDC split diverting attention” My attention is not diverted. An think of it I m just an ordinary Zimbabwean.
“While ZimAsset maybe a well thought out document”. ZimAsset is not a well thought document at all. If economy continues on current downward trend, four years down the road a graph ploting actual figures against ZimAsset projections will show actual figures in straight lines and wavy projection lines. How on earth does a whole government promote a plan that has projections going up and down. That picture distorts the meaning of a projection yet that is what you find in ZimAsset.
dangerous and shame mugabe
ZimAsset is not well thought out as it is fictitional. A good plan considers the current situation and maps a way to get to desired destination. ZimAsset starts from fantasy land, in which Zimbabwe is creditworthy and institutions and foreign governments are queuing to lend it money to kickstart the project; as if businesses are queuing to invest foreign funds into the economy.
It ignores the fact that Zim is broke. It wrongly assumed China would grant Zim 30bil. It forgot to note the current laws, however well crafted, do not guarantee investors anything as the lawless Zim disregards its own laws when it feels like doing so. That as one end of government is putting on a smile and pretending to welcome new investors, the other end is bashing those already invested and is forcefully grabbing their equity.
Not matter how nice bob and crew may profess to be, no investor will take them seriously enough to believe them knowing what a hypocrite he is. The only solution is ZANU MUST GO and drag mugabe with them.
The goings on in the various MDCs may be an object lesson in how not to handle matters, but they can hardly divert attention from reduced standards of living on the part of most Zimbabweans.
i hope those hundreds of thousands of people who voted for ZANU in return for a reduction in their electricity bills are having a chance to fully evaluate the consequences of what they did.
In the mean time ZANU is unable to find a way to work things out with the owners of capital. Cheap populism, brute force and the other standard ZANU nostrums will not solve this problem. They are stuck.
The demise of MDC whether real or perceived does not add an iota of value or credence to the ruling Party. Both Parties are swimming in murk. When the ruling Party stops laughing and open their eyes in the morning the country will still be riddled with debt and no investors trouping through the borders..end of
Its just the eye of the hurricane, ZANU, It had to be.
Is the MDC “split” showing up the zanu influence and infiltration, i think so and justifies greater regional pressure to have an interim govt without any of these existing players….pave the way for a truly free and fair election with all reforms implemented.This split is not diverting attention its accentuating the need for change.
This split was inevitable given the different values the leaders hold to. In any dynamic & progressive organisation succession planning is essential however both major parties have failed in this regard to the extreme detriment of the people of Zimbabwe. The truth of the matter is that the MDC failed to remove Mugabe at a time when they held all the cards i.e. implementation of the GPA. So for me no surprise that they have split once again not to mention the loss of many thinking supporters.
“The current power tussle in the opposition MDC has become the talk of town, with screaming headlines of suspensions and expulsions surrounding the opposition party,” said Jeffrey Muvundusi. I agree we have read of little else for the past few weeks.
“While this has consumed much of the local media space, observers say it is a fortuitous diversion of attention from the prevailing harsh economic conditions faced by the public,” continued Jeffrey. I too have heard many people say that.
Whilst I would agree with the rest of Jeffrey’s piece on the basis that the media’s fo-cus on the MDC infighting has diverted the nation’s attention from what really mat-ters, the very serious economic melt-down the nation is going through. What Jeffrey failed to understand and so did the media is the weeks of screaming headlines were all barking up the wrong tree.
The Genesis of all this infighting in MDC – T can be traced back to Mugabe rigging the July 2013 elections. This was an election Tsvangirai and MDC should have won; they had the numbers on their side but alas not the quality leaders to turn popular public support into electoral victory.
If the media, now writing all these endless commentary on the MDC-T split, had been object and alert as they should have been then they would not have failed to see that MDC had failed to implement the democratic reforms agreed in the GPA. And, worse still, that there was no way MDC would win the elections without the re-forms.
“We failed to secure critical reforms before participating in the elections,” admitted Samuel Sipepa Nkomo in a recent interview. “The whole world advised us not to get into the elections without reforms, and so in everything that we have been saying we have failed to acknowledge that we also made a mistake.”
MP Nkomo did not include Zimbabwe’s Independent Media in “the whole world ad-vised us” on reforms because most if not all Zimbabwe independent media houses were all solidly behind MDC going into the elections. None of them even notice that not even one of the pre-requisite reforms had been implemented or gave it a second thought if they did.
The importance of the reforms was missed by Zimbabwe public and the media played a role in that in that it failed in its duty to INFORM the public.
Tsvangirai, Biti, Ncube and the rest of the MDC leaders’ failure to implement the re-forms and then ignore the warning not to go ahead with the elections without the reforms was a monumental blunder for which there was no excuse. None! They were distracted by the trappings of power and “forgot why they were in the GNU” as SADC leaders rightly pointed out.
The MDC leaders’ breath-taking incompetence in failing to implement the reforms shows that they cannot be trusted to hold public office ever again.
In a health and functioning democracy the media would be leading from the front calling for all the MDC leaders who played a part in this monumental blunder to re-sign from their party and public office. Sadly Zimbabwe clearly does not have such a focused media capable of distinguishing the woods from the trees.
Politics and the economy are in fact intertwined and not one a distraction of the other if viewed from the right angle. The immediate cause of the country’s economic melt-down if the Mugabe’s regime’s failure to get even the Chinese to contribute one Yuan in the ZimAsset begging bowl. But the trace the problem back; and it is the breath-taking incompetence of MDC that looms large because if these idiots had implemented the reforms as they should have done that Mugabe would not be in State House!
Mukori, bang on the button. Leadership is lacking. I would even go further and say that if the MDC is serious on getting rid of ZANU, they must all boycott parliament. Totally leave the house of fools and stop bickering about which MPs belongs to who.
They can never stop anything that ZANU wants to do . Why give it credibility? Let ZANU mess up on its on. Resign now !!!!!
Resign now!!!
There is nothing for you in that idiotic house except rubber stamp Mugabe’s wishes.
Let’s reverse these acts of treason and leave that house to Mugabe.
Ngatonge EGA tione kuti arikutongachii.
Why does the MDC volunteer to controlled by Mugabe?
Leave the sanile part alone.
I would not want to be associated with it ,never
Treasonous malcontents.
By telling Tsvangirai, Biti, Ncube and the rest of the incompetent idiots that the nation has lost confidence in their continued leadership will force Mugabe to seat up and listen. The tyrant is smart enough to know that once the nation has swept the house clean of MDC blundering idiots Mugabe and his thugs will be next!
Mugabe has stayed in power these last years only because he was able to out wit Tsvangirai and his stupid MDC friends. As long as the nation continues to have incompetent leaders in the opposition Mugabe and Zanu PF know that they stay in power is secure.
There will never be a Zimbabwe again. Forget it. In discussing African economies, nobody talks about Zim any more!
Even if you bring a New Party from the Moon to contest Zanupf it wl fail again.who on earth will be able to force Zanu to do a fair election in which they wil lose? People talk a lot on this forum and they dont know how zanu operates and no one will change that except they use Guns ,without that you can form yr useless parties until people are tired of suporting those parties and they leave Zanu there fo the next 100yrs.Tsvangirai this that wil never work face reality.if Biti has brains to lead why didnt he wait for Congress and he went a step further to destroy a party he help build for what?? Slipt the votes to whose advantage??thats thinking thats what you call leadership?The truth is these Rnewal guys are just trying to play with poor peoples minds, what are they going to do which they didnt do wth Morgan?Renewal heading where?