President Mugabe now knows that people do not live on sovereignty aloneThe most encouraging signal coming from the coalition government is the fight between the MDC-T and Zanu PF for credit over the sourcing of funding for the country.
After years of plundering and pillaging the economy with impunity, the Zanu PF leadership is now competing with the MDC to charm the electorate with efforts to source funds for the country’s economic reconstruction.
Nothing demonstrates the commitment of both parties to emerge as the champions of the economic turnaround programme than events during and after the Premier’s month long tour of Western nations.
Realising the political momentum that would be gained by the party that managed to project itself as the champion of the economic turnaround, Zanu PF has resolved that it will not play second fiddle to the MDC in the economic stabilisation initiatives.
During the negotiations for equitable sharing of ministerial portfolios in the coalition government there was a strong belief within Zanu PF that the levers of power were entrenched in security and property management ministries as opposed to the social and economic management portfolios other than the justice, local governance and finance ministries.
As a consequence Zanu PF grabbed all the Security Ministries and traded off the party’s interest in the finance ministry with co-ministering of the home affairs ministry.
When the coalition government was consummated Zanu PF was caught unawares when the revival of the finance, education, health and industry ministries bonded the MDC with the electorate while the Home affairs and Justice Ministries that the party had thought would be pivotal in reviving its political fortunes continued to alienate it with the populace.
Elaborate plans to consolidate power by flexing the Zanu PF muscle within the coalition through sporadic farm invasions, unchecked lawlessness and judicial persecution of MDC and Civic Society activists to show that the party had lost none of its marbles by joining the coalition government flourished only to deceive.
Lack of paradigm shifts in the information and media management practices, upholding of the right to equality before the laws and general despondence towards full implementation of the GPA demoralised those that expected not just respite from Zanu PF impunity but also restitution for losses incurred.
But the gains in education, health and the dramatic revival of retail outlets coupled with the introduction of fiscal liberalisation through adoption of a multi-currency economic environment were too good to forgo and the nation remained solidly behind the MDC.
The more intransigent Zanu PF became towards implementation of GPA clauses which the MDC did a good job of highlighting to the nation the more people alienated themselves with the party and drifted towards the MDC.
When the Premier secured Cabinet approval to embark on the tour of Western nations to ground break the thawing of frosty relations between the country and the western countries that had severed relations with the country for over a decade, Zanu PF saw a window of opportunity to recover lost political space.
The Zanu PF policies have always been steeped in radical sovereignty and resource nationalisation under a one political party dispensation.
In 2002 the Zimbabwe Foreign affairs ministry defined the country’s foreign policy as being grounded in the need to counter British imperialism as hereunder defined.
“ Since coming to power in 1997, the UK Government under Anthony Blair has pursued the following policy objectives in its relations with Zimbabwe and the ZANU (PF) Government under President Robert Gabriel Mugabe:
• to destabilize and derail the Government’s land reform programme to give white farmers extended monopoly over Zimbabwe’s most fertile arable land;
• to perpetuate the marginalisation of the black African majority in rural areas to form a huge reserve for cheap agricultural labour;
• to remove ZANU (PF) and President Mugabe from power and replace them with the more pliant and directionless MDC and its president, Morgan Tsvangirai;
• to use coercive diplomacy in the EU, the Commonwealth, and the United States to conscript them to impose declared and undeclared sanctions on the Government and people of Zimbabwe;
• to manipulate the IMF, the World Bank and other financial institutions to withdraw loans and balance of payment support to Zimbabwe to cripple its economy and generate widespread domestic discontent and disillusionment against the ZANU (PF) Government and President Robert Gabriel Mugabe;
• to stunt the growth of genuine democracy, the rule of law and people–empowerment as a means to create a human rights and governance crisis in Zimbabwe and the isolation of the Zimbabwe Government internationally;
• to employ its immense print and electronic media out–reach to lie about and demonise Zimbabwe to incite international hostility against the Government;
and
• to fund non–governmental organisations to arouse and incite internal domestic upheavals to make Zimbabwe ungovernable.”
In essence our foreign policies under successive Zanu PF governments since 1990 has been crafted around land ownership sovereignty, protection of the continued tenure of office of President Mugabe and achievement of total control of media space used to ostracise the Zanu PF governments by foreign media.
The reactionary foreign policy was the manifestation of reactionary internal politics of a political party that presented itself as the vanguard of nationalism and torch bearer of Pan Africanism when all it was doing was to defend its position as the dominant political force derived from military supremacy in the Liberation struggle that elevated it to power.
The dramatic shift from economic plunder and pillaging policies to sourcing
financial support for the country’s economic development is not surprising given the party’s thrashing at the hands of the MDC that campaigned on bread and butter went on to deliver on the promise by ensuring well stocked retail outlets within 90 days of it joining the government superintending the economic ministries.
The retailing sector had gone underground following Zanu PF price wars that emptied shelves and located products in the black market.
Instead of the price controls bonding and endearing Zanu PF with the public they increased alienation of the party as products not only became difficult to source but they also became much more expensive due to artificial shortages induced when goods were ferreted into the black market to evade price controls.
Zanu PF inevitably paid the ultimate political price for its political brinkmanship of starving the majority in its quest for satisfaction of its elite’s higher political needs before satisfying basic needs of the ordinary citizenry when it lost the March 2008 harmonised elections to the MDC.
Only a vicious military campaign by its dependable security ministries commanders saved the party from being dumped to the political dungeon.
Worried SADC and AU members chipped in to help Zanu PF back on its feet by imposing the coalition government now in charge of the country but that has not in any way diminished the alienation between the majority citizens and Zanu PF.
If anything the coalition government has provided the MDC a platform to consolidate its political gains and expose Zanu PF as the sole cause of the economic malaise the people have endured over the past decades.
Zanu PF had used State media and its nationwide structures as well as the Civil service to mislead the populace that illegal Western sanctions imposed by the Western countries were responsible for the economic malaise.
But with the so called illegal sanctions still very much in place, the entry of the MDC into government has resulted in the instant and dramatic improvement of the supply side of basic and luxurious goods the country had last seen on retail shelves as far back as 1985 in some instances.
Not only that, the nominal stipend payment of US$100 per month per Civil servant proved more valuable than the quadrillions of ZW$’s they were being paid and they never bothered to visit their banks for salaries as the currency they were paid in was of no value to anyone after trading in multi-currencies was introduced.
Closed schools and health centres were re-opened to cater for the public and they not only were manned but also were delivering services for which they were intended notwithstanding that Zanu PF had not announced victory over sanctions but was rather crying more loudly about the scourge.
The generality of the populace could not and still is not sympathetic with the whingeing over sanctions coming from Zanu PF but are instead angry that Zanu PF is perpetuating their suffering by failing to adhere to the GPA clauses to allow more inflows of aid and foreign currencies from other countries over the sanctions proved to be of no consequence if Zanu PF and the Reserve Bank is not allowed a free reign on the fiscus.
That is why Zanu PF has been forced to enter the economic political turf with claims it is capable of sourcing more unconditional forex from the Eastern democracies than MDC is or will ever be capable of sourcing from the Western imperialists.
The entry point has been the Premier’s tour of the Western nations that has raised US$500 million in cash and pledges linked to further democratisation of the country.
Zanu PF has taken advantage of its hegemony on State media to misinform the nation that the Premier has failed to raise financial support for the country other than for NGO’s linked to the MDC whereas it has raised US$950 million from China alone.
But the propaganda is not working because even after Publicity Permanent Secretary George Charamba aka Nathaniel Manheru had come out strongly dismissing claims that the facility was not concluded by the current Finance minister from the MDC but rather was the result of friendly ties between Zanu PF and the Chinese government dating back to the Liberation struggle the ordinary people are still questioning why if that was the case China did not extent the facility to the Zanu PF regime.
The truth is that Zanu PF had approached China with a view to mortgage everything it considered of value but China was not convinced that Zanu PF would honour loans extended to its governments when it was raiding and stealing individual and corporate forex deposits and offering restitution in worthless Zimbabwe currency when caught out by account holders.
But the positive aspect of this scramble for credit is that both the MDC and Zanu PF are consciously or subconsciously sending the message that they now want to gain support of the people by delivering the value sought by the majority from its government and in so doing committing themselves to seeking the electorate’s mandate to preside over national affairs.
The populace wants better living standards and those cannot be delivered from valueless patriotic endeavours of the government without the resources to develop local talents to maturity and optimum productivity.
It is a lesson Zanu PF is slowly coming to grips with but it will take much more than claims of having secured Chinese financial support to the tune of US$5 billion before it can regain the lost confidence of the electorate.
A good starting point would be full implementation of the GPA and fostering of a culture of accountability in its ranks.
As long as it mixes cohesion with patronage Zanu Pf will continue to lose political ground to the MDC regardless of the culpability that the MDC may show in its early days in government.
If it was not because Zanu PF is such a soiled political party the premier’s praise singing of Mugabe of late would have wiped out his party’s advantage over Zanu PF by now.
Telling MDC supporters that Permanent secretaries like George Charamba, Dr Misheck Sibanda, David Mangota, Ret Colonel Christian Katsande, Clerk of Parliament Austin Zvoma and Public service commission chairman Mariyawanda Nzuwa and the Military commanders, to name but a few, are in office on merit and merit alone when the entire nation knows otherwise that they are there out of Zanu PF patronage would have cost the MDC Party most of its support if there was another viable alternative political formation with the national character of MDC-T and Zanu PF.
But if the MDC-T messes its reputation by being spoiled with lack of serious political competition currently obtaining it must not cry foul if political opportunists pounce on the laxity and mobilise against it.
It is not beyond possibility given numbers in the diaspora openly expressing disenchantment with the party direction at the moment.
No comments:
Post a Comment