Zimbabwe Social Democrats call on Zimbabweans to stop looking for easy answers

By the time unemployment got up to the mid twenty percentage mark the Greeks inside Greece and outside were like hornet wasps after someone has knocked their nest; another five percentage increase in unemployment and the Greeks poured out into the streets of every city, town and hermitage all demanding to know what the hell was going on!

In the six year period 2002 to 2008 alone the Zimbabwe economy shrunk by a staggering 84%, world first for a nation not at war, sending unemployment soaring into the nauseating heights of 85% plus, basic services health, education and water supply all collapse. Other than a marked increase in migrating; Zimbabweans did not even twitch over the economic collapse, it was all water off a duck's back. They simply curled up like a millipede, the greater the disturbance the tighter the curl.

Two things fuelled the 84% economic shrinkage: first, the country's runaway inflation cause by the Mugabe's voodoo economic policy of making everyone a multibillionaire by printing more money of higher and higher face value. By the time the regime finally scrapped valueless Z$ in November 2008 inflation had reach another world record of 500 billion per cent.

Everyone was a multi-trillionaire and yet as poor as a church mouse! All those with savings, insurance policies, etc.; they lost everything.

The second thing that fuelled the traumatic 84% economic contraction was the equally traumatic collapse of the country's agricultural sector. Mugabe's violent seizure of white owned farms to give, mainly, Zanu PF loyalists resulted in a dramatic fall in agricultural production. Agriculture was the main pillar on which the Zimbabwe's economy rested so when agriculture collapsed it was no surprise that the rest of the economy followed suit.

Before Mugabe and his cronies took over the farms Zimbabwe had produced enough food to feed the nation and exported surplus. Since the farm seizure Zimbabwe has had to import food almost every year without failure or starve.

If Zimbabweans had been agitated and stirred into action by traumatic economic collapse of 2002 to 2008 then then they would not have been so easily bamboozled by MDC's exaggerated claims that the party saved the national economy. The scrapping of the Z$ alone went a long way into restoring economic sanity and stability into economy.

It was people's failure to be engaged and understand what the hell was causing the traumatic 2002 to 2008 economic collapse that allowed Mugabe's money printing machines to go into overdrive for years and the farm seizures to go on for years until there were no
white-owned farms left to seize. It is the people, felling the ill effects of these policies who should have been demanding for them to be reviewed but since no such demands were heard, the regime carried on!

After years of economic hardships the people, the uncurled millipedes, are now looking for economic recovery. But because they failed to engage throughout the years of the chaotic farm seizure, they do not realise that unless the seized farms are once again put into productive use meaningful economic recovery will remain a mirage.

Of course Mugabe and his cronies do not have even any qualms that it was their greed and looting that has caused the economic meltdown forcing millions of Zimbabweans into a life of abject poverty. They have no intention of ever giving up the farms or any of their looted wealth even if they are clearly failing to put these key resources into productive use. They have attached themselves to the looted farms like binnacles to a rock; it will take some doing to prise them off.

The people are, at best, vaguely aware that the decades of mismanagement and corruption by the Mugabe regime is the root cause of their suffering and misery. It is asking for too much to expect them to be even remotely aware that the tyrannical regime is holding the nation to ransom. Of course without popular outrage there is no hope of prising the binnacles off the looted resources!

By far the best (worst) example of Zimbabweans failing to engage and remaining blissfully ignorant is during the GNU years. The country's serious economic mess in 2008 plus that year's wanton violent elections were enough to wake the dead; every Zimbabwean out there would seat up and pay attention, one would have thought. Wrong; it was like firing a shotgun into the face of a sloth, the best most people did was open their eyes blink a few times and, like the sloth, went back to sleep. How else, otherwise can one explain why Zimbabweans did not have a clue how Mugabe rigged the 2013 elections!

The key to stopping Mugabe rigging elections was to implement the democratic reforms agreed in the Global Political Agreement (GPA) signed by Zimbabwe's main political parties Zanu PF and the two MDC factions and guaranteed by the regional body SADC. The reforms should have been implemented in the 18 months, the proposed life of the Government of National Unity (GNU). In the end the GNU lasted for five years and yet not even one reform was implemented. Not one!

This was Zimbabwe's best chance ever to end the Zanu PF dictatorship and it was wasted because no reforms were implemented.

Of course Morgan Tsvangirai, Tendai Biti and all the other MDC leaders are to blame for their breath-taking incompetence in failing to implement the reforms. But the people of Zimbabwe are to blame too for having slept throughout the GNU years and thus fail to notice the importance of the reforms and ensuring they were implemented!

"We failed to secure critical reforms before participating in the elections," admitted Samuel Sipepa Nkomo, the first MDC leader to ever admit the party's breath-taking incompetence. "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.

"If some of those people that advise you not to participate in elections are the same people who assist you, help you financially and then you ignore their advice, then they will simply refuse to assist you again."

The truth is the whole world deserted not just the MDC but Zimbabwe as a whole.

The worsening economic crisis has failed to force Zimbabweans to seat up bolt-right, pay attention and search for a way out of the mess. Many have found a ready escape in the many new churches that have strung up and are thriving in inverse proportion to the worsening economic crisis.

The "prophet" Makandiwa in his well-attended "Judgement Day" session prophesised that the Zimbabwe economy "will recover"; music to the ears of his naïve and gullible audience. He was careful not to say when this would happen and, of course, none of his easily mesmerised audience dared to ask that. He went on to sell the dazed multitude "blessed" apples $5 each and he sold millions of them.

The Bible says those who use their talents well; more shall be given to them and those who fail to use their talents "even what he does have shall be taken away"! Makandiwa was doing his best to rob the mesmerised but impoverished mob of the little they had!

Conclusion
The whole world would like to help Zimbabwe end the decades of mismanagement, corruption and brutal political repression but it is Zimbabweans ourselves who must first demonstrate that we are serious about ending this nightmare. Our failure to pay attention to Mugabe excesses and abuse of power, our blind following of incompetent leaders, our sacrilegious expectation of divan-intervention in even the most mundane daily problems, etc. shows that we are not serious about getting out of the hell-hole Mugabe has landed us into. No, not yet!

When Zimbabwe attained her independence in 1980, the people were clearly not mentally ready to assume the ominous responsibility of holding those in power to account. If there is anything to be learnt from the 34 years of wasted opportunities, human misery and hundreds of thousands of lives lost unnecessarily; then it has to be that Zimbabweans have finally learnt to take the ominous task of holding the country's rulers to account serious. If we have not learnt, then this nation has per se accepted decades of the same economic waste and brutal political repress, until we learn!

As long as there Zimbabweans who still willing to believe in sugar-candy mountain, there will be many crows who will continue to make a good living embellishing George Orwell's pie-in-the-sky creation. Zimbabweans should stop looking for easy and quick-fix answers to life's problems; there no such answers!

zimbabwesocialdemocrats@gmail.com