Opinion / Columnist
It is suffer continue for Zimbabweans
29 Apr 2017 at 15:29hrs | Views
An ancient African saying that "when elephants fight it is the grass that suffers" rings loud in the Zimbabwean context where our politicians are oblivious of the pain they are causing to over 14 million people in their blind pursuit for power.
Zanu-PF factions are expending energy, fighting over unresolved succession, but while they fight, the people are scratching the bottom of the barrel just to make ends meet and simply because there is no one in the ruling party who is willing to attend to the needs of the suffering lot.
The lack of concern being displayed by Zanu-PF is alarming, notwithstanding the red indicators that the country is on a tailspin and might crash anytime soon, thanks to their unsound policies and President Robert Mugabe's reluctance to admit that he has failed to take the country to the Promised Land.
Zimbabwe has no currency of its own and the surrogate currency introduced by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe last year, albeit through deceit, has failed to hold fort and is fast disappearing from the streets.
It doesn't matter the rulers never listen but they will nonetheless be reminded repeatedly that a cursory glance at history will show that the country's gross domestic product, in constant dollar, is where it was in 1960, and worryingly less than what it was in the 1970s.
While those who call the shots in Zanu-PF live in splendour and constitute the few who are living large and afford three meals a day, holiday in exotic lands and receiving medication from top medical facilities, the majority of Zimbabweans are stuck with the understaffed hospitals with no drugs, schools with no teachers, and a collapsing infrastructure that has taken the country back to the 1930s.
As Zanu-PF burns, so does the economy, but the consequences of it all are felt most by the people, who do not care much about who would succeed Mugabe even though there is a universal consensus that the nonagenarian has long passed his "best before" date.
More than 90 percent of Zimbabweans are unemployed and live on less than a dollar a day, life expectancy is getting lower and the country is still battling medieval diseases.
While other African countries with similar authoritarian systems - for instance Uganda - are progressing, inventing solar-powered buses, Zimbabwe is stuck with factionalism. People do not eat politics.
The country needs an overhaul of its policies if we are to go back to the period when Zimbabwe was one of the wealthiest countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Zanu-PF factions are expending energy, fighting over unresolved succession, but while they fight, the people are scratching the bottom of the barrel just to make ends meet and simply because there is no one in the ruling party who is willing to attend to the needs of the suffering lot.
The lack of concern being displayed by Zanu-PF is alarming, notwithstanding the red indicators that the country is on a tailspin and might crash anytime soon, thanks to their unsound policies and President Robert Mugabe's reluctance to admit that he has failed to take the country to the Promised Land.
Zimbabwe has no currency of its own and the surrogate currency introduced by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe last year, albeit through deceit, has failed to hold fort and is fast disappearing from the streets.
It doesn't matter the rulers never listen but they will nonetheless be reminded repeatedly that a cursory glance at history will show that the country's gross domestic product, in constant dollar, is where it was in 1960, and worryingly less than what it was in the 1970s.
As Zanu-PF burns, so does the economy, but the consequences of it all are felt most by the people, who do not care much about who would succeed Mugabe even though there is a universal consensus that the nonagenarian has long passed his "best before" date.
More than 90 percent of Zimbabweans are unemployed and live on less than a dollar a day, life expectancy is getting lower and the country is still battling medieval diseases.
While other African countries with similar authoritarian systems - for instance Uganda - are progressing, inventing solar-powered buses, Zimbabwe is stuck with factionalism. People do not eat politics.
The country needs an overhaul of its policies if we are to go back to the period when Zimbabwe was one of the wealthiest countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Source - dailynews
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