Covid-19 won't be defeated by empty political rhetoric, says Biti

Zimbabwean former Finance minister Tendai Biti, also main opposition MDC Alliance deputy president, says the virulent Covid-19 pandemic, surging and killing more people, won't be defeated by empty political rhetoric without a coherent strategy, vaccine plan and a budget for it.

Biti says the fact that the country's key political leaders and their business cronies are under Covid-19 siege locally as they can't go out for urgent medical treatment should serve as a big lesson.

"President Emmerson Mnangagwa, his ministers and their cronies are marooned locally, they can't go to South Africa, Singapore and China, but they have destroyed hospitals; now facing the consequences. They should have invested in health, but they didn't, hence people are dying."

"Some of these fatalities would have been avoided if we had a functioning healthcare system, hospitals, doctors, nurses, drugs and equipment. We don't have all the basics; the system is a shell. That's why people are dying like this. We could have partly avoided this situation."

President Emmerson Mnangagwa yesterday addressed the nation in panic after recent heightened deaths, including high profile ones, rallying people to be united in the fight against the spreading Covid-19 pandemic, which he said will be defeated.