via Mugabe economically illiterate: Mandaza 17/12/2013 NewZimbabwe
Don’t tell me there is no cash … Mugabe last week ordered his treasury chief to find money. Zimbabwe needs new leadership … Ibbo Mandaza
THE government’s new economic blueprint is a fanciful political programme with no relationship to reality and Zimbabwe’s “economically illiterate leadership” has no hope of ending the country economic crisis.
This was political analyst Ibbo Mandaza’s damning assessment of Zanu PF’s new economic programme – the Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation (Zim Asset) – and the party’s prospects of lifting the country of the present mire.
Addressing the leaders for Africa network conference held in Bulawayo last Friday, Mandaza who joined Simba Makoni in the 2008 elections, said the Zanu PF leadership was unequal to the country’s worsening economic challenges.
“They are failures!” he charged.
“I couldn’t be part of them. It’s a pity you now all focus on (President Robert) Mugabe; you need to look forward. In fact, he (Mugabe) is not even there, is he? So prepare for the future and look beyond him.”
He added: “One of the biggest failures of the Zimbabwean government is illiteracy. Our leadership is largely economic illiterate including (President Robert) Mugabe himself. We need people who know what they are talking about.
Zanu PF says ZimAsset will reboot an economy battered by a decade-long recession and uncertainty arising from the July 31 elections which were condemned by the West in a development that meant damaging sanctions would not be lifted.
But Mandaza said Mugabe and his party could dream on.
“Zim Asset is just a political statement,” he said.
“From where can you get that 7,3 percent (projected economic) growth next year. It is just a Zanu PF manifesto; it is just a political statement which means totally nothing.
“It has no relation to reality. It is largely a reflection of Zanu PF’s election manifesto. I don’t take it serious.”
Only leadership renewal at the very top could, now, rescue the country, he added.
“Mugabe is old he is very old he should have retired long ago. He (Mugabe) will not be there forever so you must be thinking on the post-Mugabe era. Look beyond the current leadership most of them are old,” he said.
“We need a new leadership, generational change is necessary. For those of my age and older, we have failed even if we do not admit it; too often we cannot. There is no magic in our hands anymore. Every trick has been tried and failed, so we need change.”
Mugabe, who turns 90 in February, has run Zimbabwe since independence in 1989. He refuses to retire, insisting his work is not yet done.
The veteran leader claimed another fiver-year term in office in July after romping to a landslide victory against main rival and former premier Morgan Tsvangirai of the opposition MDC-T party.
However, Mandaza said the election was a farce.
“We need to change the nature and content of politics. Every election will have problems. The only way we can win elections now is by rigging. Did you vote? I never bothered,” he said.
COMMENTS
“… the July 31 elections which were condemned by the West in a development that meant damaging sanctions would not be lifted.”
Excuse me, but what damaging sanctions would those be? There are no sanctions on the people or the country of Zimbabwe. There are laws in other countries that speak about possible future actions against Zimbabwe, but none of those actions have ever occurred.
ZANU-PF’s insistance that all the misery in the country is the result of sanctions is just a big fat lie. They don’t exist! Mugabe might as well tell the people that things are bad because someone once put a spell on the entire country, that caused the entire country to abandon free market capitalism, individual freedom, democracy, and respect for human rights! That’s essentially his argument, because there’s no empirical evidence that anyone else is responsible except ZANU-PF.
With the exception of this point, the rest of the article is very well written – or should I say that Mandaza gives an intelligent, well reasoned argument!
There are no danm sanctions in zimbabwe.the truth is zpf has impossed devastating sanctions on the people of zimbabwe.no freedom of speech after speech, no full participation, assembly and association, discrimination on political grounds,decaay of social services aand its delivery, among a hosts of other punitive measures put by zpf to make live unbearable for the people,
Our learned and ordinary should present a case to UN to force the regime to remove these sanctions.
Yes sir. His only specialty is gangsterism. That ZimAsset document was written by semi-literate reptiles whose major interest was to ingratiate themselves with their boss’s vacuous, sel-serving mantras that invariably place blame elsewhere except where is belongs.
All the assumptions in the document lean on capital availability which, apart from the usual intended sources, hinges on removal of corruption, impunity, patronage and restoration of property rights. There is no mention of empowering Zimbabweans to be investors in other countries. This would be one way of reclaiming our investment in human capital that we lost to the Diaspora.
References to the security establishment is only meant to assure that sector of continued relevance when Zimbabwe faces no security threat at all. Convenience, opportunism, expediency and obsfuscation of the real causes of our country’s malaise dominate the sordid document. What VALUES does the government espouse to inspire the proposal? I did not see any.
There is talk of “political commitment from the highest level” when the track record is hardly inspiring in that regard. Robust institutions can never be built on patronage and corruption under the leadership of a man who insists on being the institution the only institution in the land.
To enable, as the ZimAsset claims to intend, presupposes the liberation of free enterprise and the supremacy of the collective individual in directing the course of history. What we have here is a Communist Manifesto.
Capital is not stupid. It knows very well where it must go to earn a reasonably assured return. That place is not in this pitiful land where the government breaks its own laws but expects foreigners to comply with them.
Thanks for stating the obvious!
I hope the zanupf leadership and their bootlickers read Ibbo’s speech. It is a very very sad reality that zanupf has failed totally and dismally. Good Lord help Zimbabwe!
ZimAsset is a propaganda document not economical one written by the known professor to mislead the illiterate voters.Unfortunately,many civil servants bought the propaganda and voted otherwise.The MDC failed to educate the electorates against this propaganda before the elections,because they were misguidedly over confident
At 40 years,when I look at my 13 year old daughter, I see a very young and booming girl. My uncle at 65 years, sees me as a very young man, Mugabe at 90 sees Dydmas at 78years as a very young energetic fellow. No wonder why the average age in our cabinet is 70 year. In the eyes of Bob, they are all young chaps bubbling with energy. Lord have mercy!
They are not only economically illeterate Ibbo, these are gangsters in charge of our national resources to which they continuously help themselves at will. Its time to wake up Zimbabwe and ask ourselves a lot of questions of how to get us out of this mess before we become another Somalia. We have been fooled for long enough.
Ibbo and Simba Makoni are part of this gangster,they must tell the people of Zimbabwe how much they have looted ??
Sanctions; what sanctions? The Gukurawundi government still imports oil from wherever they choose with no hindrance/impediments isn’t it?
The only sanctions they have in Zimbabwe are self impose and these are:
1. Corruption by the untouchables;
2. The DRC war which Mandela advised them not to get involved on one side but allow negotiations to proceed;
3. The land grab exercise that destroyed agriculture,its infrastracture and its forward linkages; the downstreem industries such as seed producing companies which had been the mainstay of the national economy;
4. Imagined enemies and conspiracies everywhere that led to high military budgets; the police and the intelligence arms of government thus starving the production/supply side of the economy of resources.
THESE ARE THE REAL SANCTIONS THAT WERE SELF IMPOSED BY THE GUKURAWUNDIES!!
If sanctions exist how build villas in Hong-Kong , Dubai South Africa etc. No fool would buy that bring diamond realisation to the Government COFFERS. Looters.