Economic meltdown, hard-core Mugabe loyalist feels the heat

You can convince a blind man there is no maize samp in his rice dish but not so with the hot chill in his relish. Zimbabwe's economic meltdown is now the extra hot chill in the national political dish that even those whose political sensitivity had been dulled by decades of corruption and looting now openly admit that something is serious amiss here.

"The consequences of failure to deliver on our mandate might lead to the unceremonious and untimely amputation of our political careers, or even worse still, trigger social convulsions that might endanger the general peace and stability we have enjoyed since independence as well as the period after the 2013 general elections," admitted the Speaker of Zimbabwe's parliament Jacob Mudenda.

For those readers who may have forgotten; this is the Jacob Mudenda who had his hand, arm and whole body in the mid-1980s Willowvale motor scandal where Zanu PF leaders used their position to get new cars at controlled prices only to resell them at a huge profit. The late Morris Nyagumbo was one other Zanu PF who was into the scandal up to his eyebrow; he had the guts to take rat-poison. Jacob Mudenda was too much of a rat to do so.

Mugabe's reaction to the Willowvale motor scandal was to punish the Chronicle Editor, Jeff Nyarota, for uncovering the corruption and making it public. That has been the Zanu PF's approach to corruption – cover it up and deny it is even there. Those found guilty of corruption were never punished; Mugabe put them out to pasture for a few years and then reward them with in some way. Mudenda is now Speaker of Parliament and Frederick Shava, another corrupt Zanu PF leader, is Zimbabwe's Ambassador to China!

By denying that corruption was a problem Mugabe has allowed this cancer to grow and spread and after 34 years this cancer is now the size of a tennis ball and it is the one of the primary causes of the economic meltdown that even corrupt official like Mudenda, used to looting without a care of the consequences, are finding it impossible to ignore.    

Mudenda was speaking at the launch of the inaugural capacity-building training programme for MPs on the government's ZimAsset programme. Well this is about as effective as a suggestion that one should use a spoon and not a fork to eat the extra hot curry dish. The MPs can attend a thousand of these training programmes but what difference will that make when the government has failed to get even one dollar for its $27 billion ZimAsset plan. ZimAsset is dead! Sadly that message has is yet to sink in on Mudenda and his fellow MPs!

ZimAsset plan was a lead balloon that was never meant to fly for the simple reason that plan, as with the rest of the Zanu PF manifesto, was pie in the sky no one else other than party hardliners believed would work. The Zimbabwean people did not believe Zanu PF would deliver the 2.2 million jobs and hence the reason why Mugabe rigged the elections. As for the ZimAsset plan itself none of the donors believed in the plan hence the reason why Mugabe has failed to get even a dollar in the ZimAsset begging bowl even after a year of frantic begging. Indeed by rigging the elections Mugabe showed his contempt for the rule of law and thus scared off would-be donors and foreign investors.

What Zimbabwe needs to stop the current economic meltdown is donors funding to pay for the repair of the basic economic infrastructure like road, water supply neglected by the regime these last 34 years and investors to start up new companies needed to create jobs and generate wealth. The only way the country is going to win back donor and investor confidence is for this Zanu PF regime to step down so the democratic reforms that should have been implemented during the GNU are finally implemented and free, fair and credible elections held.

We need to replace this illegitimate regime that rigged last year's elections with a legitimate one.

In their cold-hearts all the Zanu PF MPs know the July 2013 elections were rigged and none of them should be in parliament. So Jacob Mudenda is not right to talk of "unceremonious and untimely amputation of our political careers" since these careers were stolen and can therefore never be theirs. Still Mudenda is right that they longer these Zanu PF hang-on to power the worse the economic situation will get. This cannot go on much longer and since the only way out is for this regime to go; the grim choice is for it to step down or as Mudenda said be removed unceremoniously!