'Mugabe's economic vandalism unpardonable'

The myriad of challenges bedevilling Zimbabwe today are essentially man-made, a senior Transform Zimbabwe (TZ) official has said.

Addressing a press conference on the state of Zimbabwean economy in Harare yesterday, TZ president Jacob Ngarivhume said the cash crisis, vendors, unfriendly laws and policies, obsolete infrastructure and the rampant greed and looting are products of continued Zanu-PF misrule and could be easily done away with once President Robert Mugabe and his party are voted out of office in 2018.

"What  . . . Mugabe and his government have done and are doing to Zimbabwe is unpardonable.

"When elected officials deliberately take policy decisions that harm the people, when their actions in office cause indescribable suffering, when you have brought ruin and misery to so many for so long, you will be forever remembered," he said.

Ngarivhume, who is also the MDC Alliance spokesperson, added his voice on the persistent calls for Zimbabwe to join the Rand Monetary Union as a short-term measure "until we are ready to re-establish our Zim dollar through a robust and productive industry".

TZ led the anti-bond notes campaign that was ruthlessly crushed by police in 2016, warning that the pseudo currency was a fraudulent scheme by government to deprive citizens of their real money, replacing it with worthless paper.

The TZ leader said vending was a result of unemployment in the country which had reached record highs, adding that most of the vendors are "graduates and retrenchees who could have been used productively in the economy".

Ngarivhume said recently, Highfield West Zanu-PF MP Psychology Mazivisa boasted that Zanu-PF had created over two million informal jobs, "and yet his principal has embarked on a mission to destroy what his party claims to have created".

Drawing similarities in timing between the vendors' eviction blitz from towns and cities with the widely-condemned Operation Murambasvina that left some 700 000 people homeless in 2005, Ngarivhume said: "The timing of it, just before a watershed election, smells of the deliberate and evil schemes by  . . . Mugabe to disenfranchise the urban voters in the wake of the BVR voter registration currently going on."

He also singled out the Indigenisation Act as well as SI 64 of 2016 as policies and legislation that remained unfriendly to investors.

While encouraging Zimbabweans to register to vote in next year's polls, the TZ leader also said that 2018 was a defining moment for the country.

"It is time for a new culture of politics. It is time to reclaim our sovereignty from those who are bent on serving themselves as they systematically destroy our beloved country."

Turning to the ongoing BVR voter registration, Ngarivhume said TZ and other opposition parties had petitioned the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission - and the elections body agreed - to use its officials on site as commissioners of oath.