via Mugabe killed the Zimbabwean dream 19/11/2014
PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe and his Zanu PF party have collectively killed the “Zimbabwean Dream”, leaving citizens at cross-roads, opposition MDC-Renewal secretary general Tendai Biti said this week.
Biti told a provincial policy consultative workshop of his party in Chitungwiza that Zimbabwe was on the verge of a social and economic meltdown.
With Zanu PF’s top leadership engaged in a bitter war for succession ahead of an elective congress, Biti said the country has been left radarless.
“The current in-fighting in Zanu PF has resulted in Zimbabwe being on the verge of a political meltdown and it will destroy the people’s hope for a better Zimbabwe,” the former Finance Minister said.
“The country is burning and the people are looking for answers to the problems they are facing.
“As the people of Zimbabwe, we have a serious crisis as we are at a crossroad and we do not know whether we are going right, left, forward or backwards.
“We have reached an element of doubt”.
He accused Mugabe of wrecking the Zimbabwean dream.
“That dream has gone; it has been sucked away by Robert Mugabe and Zanu PF. The whole of Zimbabwe is now Zimbabwe ruins. We have no electricity, no money,” he said.
Biti cited the lack of service delivery, particularly on the housing and education front, as emblematic of what has gone wrong with the country since the dawn of majority rule.
“It is an indictment that 75 percent of the country’s population are lodgers and had no hope of owning houses because of Zanu PF’s failures since 1980 when the country attained its independence.
“In the Midlands province alone, 75 percent of primary school going age children were dropping out of school before reaching Grade 7 and opting to do illegal gold mining while in Gokwe, in the same province, one out of every three young girls is getting pregnant before reaching the age of 18 years and that is just a tip of the iceberg that the country has become and almost ready to explode,” Biti said.
He said his MDC Renewal political outfit which broke away from former Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s MDC-T early this year was ready to get Zimbabweans “believing again”.
“The MDC Renewal Team is the last beacon of hope; it is the Biblical Joshua Moment,” he said.
“We are creating a new narrative so that future elections are not stolen and we solve the current problems bedevilling the country. The politics of hatred is dominant in this country and it leads to violence.
“The MDC Renewal Team is building politics of tolerance and we will put the dream back on the people of Zimbabwe,” added Biti.
Since the turn of the century, Zimbabwe has been in an economic and political turmoil with Mugabe’s administration at its wits’ end as to what needs to be done to resolve the malaise.
The situation has been compounded by vicious internecine fights within the ruling party as leaders tussle to take over from ailing Mugabe who will turn 91 in the next three months.
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