Opinion / National
'Zimbabwe needs international help' says Japan - above all, help to end cancerous bad governance
25 Aug 2019 at 22:35hrs | Views
It is now nearly two years since Mnangagwa launched his "Zimbabwe is open for business!" campaign. He was cocksure this was going to open the floodgates on new foreign and local investments. That has not happened, and many would say "Zimbabwe is open for business!" is dead in the water. The regime has not given up and is making a desperate attempt to revive the campaign.
President Mnangagwa is visiting Japan next week for the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD) "a major engagement set to unlock mutually beneficial opportunities between Harare and Tokyo," The Sunday Mail reported.
Zimbabwe needs "international help" during its reform process which Japan is willing to provide; Mr Kenichi Kasahara, Japanese embassy's counsellor to Zimbabwe, told The Sunday Mail.
"The topmost point is that the President himself, President Mnangagwa, is going to Japan and he will meet Prime Minister (Shinzo) Abe. We are actually arranging a bilateral meeting to be held on the sidelines of the summit," explained Kasahara.
Of all the countries, Japan knows that Zimbabwe is a pariah state ruled by incompetent, corrupt, vote rigging and murderous thugs. Japanese investors have shied away from doing business in the country because the know no honest businessman or woman would ever want to do business with thugs.
Mnangagwa is hoping that a floodgate of Japanese investors will follow his visit to Japan; everyone knows he is a drowning man clutching straws!
The people of Zimbabwe have known these last 39 years that Zimbabwe is a pariah state ruled by incompetent, corrupt, vote rigging and murderous thugs. Powerless to remove the regime from office, the nation has tried work with the dictatorship and get on with their lives as best as they could. This has allowed the Zanu-PF inspired mismanagement, corruption and lawlessness to grow and spread to the deadly cancers they are today!
In 2016 then President Robert Mugabe admitted that Zimbabwe was being "swindled" out of a staging US$15 billion in lost diamond revenue alone. We know the swindling had continued because his Minister of Finance, Patrick Chinamasa, told parliament in 2017 that government was getting 1/6 of the expected revenue from the diamond industry. By the time he was booted out of office in November 2017, he had not arrested even one diamond swindler nor recover one swindled dollar.
When Mnangagwa took over from Mugabe following the November 2017 military coup, he promised "zero tolerance on corruption". It was just one of the many promises he made but failed to keep. It is now nearly two years since the coup and Mnangagwa is yet to arrest his first diamond swindler and recover his first swindled dollar!
No nation on earth can survive much less thrive given the extend of the economic haemorrhaging in Zimbabwe. For a country with whose GDP is a mere US$10 billion, losing US$ 15 billion through corruption is the equivalent of bleeding from the jugular artery! No wonder the Zimbabwe economy is in a comatose state!
As much as Zimbabwe needs help to revive its comatose economy it is clear the country needs to deal with the criminal waste of human and material resources that landed the nation into the economic mess in the first place. After 39 years of pretending we could work with the dictatorship; it is insane to do so for one more day.
Zimbabwe must now bite the bullet and demand an end to corruption, mismanagement and lawlessness which are only possible if the people's democratic freedoms and rights are restored. We must bite the bullet and demand an end to bad governance and the Zanu-PF dictatorship.
Yes, Zimbabwe needs "international help" in the form of generous injection of foreign aid and investment to revive the economy but what good will that do if the criminal waste of resources through corruption is allowed to continue. Zimbabwe needs international help to end bad governance, the jugular artery haemorrhage; as long as Zimbabwe remains a pariah state nothing of substance can ever be accomplished!
As long as Zimbabwe remains a pariah state Mnangagwa's "Zimbabwe is open for business!" is dead his trip to Japan will do nothing to revive the mantra or the economy!
President Mnangagwa is visiting Japan next week for the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD) "a major engagement set to unlock mutually beneficial opportunities between Harare and Tokyo," The Sunday Mail reported.
Zimbabwe needs "international help" during its reform process which Japan is willing to provide; Mr Kenichi Kasahara, Japanese embassy's counsellor to Zimbabwe, told The Sunday Mail.
"The topmost point is that the President himself, President Mnangagwa, is going to Japan and he will meet Prime Minister (Shinzo) Abe. We are actually arranging a bilateral meeting to be held on the sidelines of the summit," explained Kasahara.
Of all the countries, Japan knows that Zimbabwe is a pariah state ruled by incompetent, corrupt, vote rigging and murderous thugs. Japanese investors have shied away from doing business in the country because the know no honest businessman or woman would ever want to do business with thugs.
Mnangagwa is hoping that a floodgate of Japanese investors will follow his visit to Japan; everyone knows he is a drowning man clutching straws!
The people of Zimbabwe have known these last 39 years that Zimbabwe is a pariah state ruled by incompetent, corrupt, vote rigging and murderous thugs. Powerless to remove the regime from office, the nation has tried work with the dictatorship and get on with their lives as best as they could. This has allowed the Zanu-PF inspired mismanagement, corruption and lawlessness to grow and spread to the deadly cancers they are today!
When Mnangagwa took over from Mugabe following the November 2017 military coup, he promised "zero tolerance on corruption". It was just one of the many promises he made but failed to keep. It is now nearly two years since the coup and Mnangagwa is yet to arrest his first diamond swindler and recover his first swindled dollar!
No nation on earth can survive much less thrive given the extend of the economic haemorrhaging in Zimbabwe. For a country with whose GDP is a mere US$10 billion, losing US$ 15 billion through corruption is the equivalent of bleeding from the jugular artery! No wonder the Zimbabwe economy is in a comatose state!
As much as Zimbabwe needs help to revive its comatose economy it is clear the country needs to deal with the criminal waste of human and material resources that landed the nation into the economic mess in the first place. After 39 years of pretending we could work with the dictatorship; it is insane to do so for one more day.
Zimbabwe must now bite the bullet and demand an end to corruption, mismanagement and lawlessness which are only possible if the people's democratic freedoms and rights are restored. We must bite the bullet and demand an end to bad governance and the Zanu-PF dictatorship.
Yes, Zimbabwe needs "international help" in the form of generous injection of foreign aid and investment to revive the economy but what good will that do if the criminal waste of resources through corruption is allowed to continue. Zimbabwe needs international help to end bad governance, the jugular artery haemorrhage; as long as Zimbabwe remains a pariah state nothing of substance can ever be accomplished!
As long as Zimbabwe remains a pariah state Mnangagwa's "Zimbabwe is open for business!" is dead his trip to Japan will do nothing to revive the mantra or the economy!
Source - zimbabwelight.blogspot.com
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