Zanu PF launches 'Zimbabwe is open for business: Mark 2' Someone is making a killing from these dunderheads!

The Zanu PF spirit to revive the Zimbabwe economy is willing but the intellect is weak!

When then Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa and his fellow conspirator staged the November 2017 military coup, "a military assisted transition" as they insisted in calling it, they all agreed on the need to revive the comatose Zimbabwe economy. How to do it was the million dollar question.

Mnangagwa promised that the post putsch government will have "zero tolerance on corruption", hold free, fair and credible elections, scrapped obnoxious laws such as the indigenous law and relaunched the country as a second republic - putting distance between his new administration and Mugabe's pariah state. With that he announced to the world that "Zimbabwe was open for business!"

No one was fooled, certainly not the savvy and shrewd foreign investors the slick marketing was hoping to attract. They knew Mnangagwa would never stamp out corruption since it is his political power base and as for holding free elections that was a bridge too far. Zanu PF went on to blatantly rig the 2018 elections and, to rub it in, Mnangagwa insists the elections were indeed free, fair and credible.

The November 2017 military coup had remove the dictator Mugabe and a few of his close allies but only to have another dictator in his place. Zimbabwe was still a pariah state ruled by corrupt, incompetent and vote rigging thugs; a failed and chaotic state that no one would want to do business with. No one!

It took a year or two for the reality that "Zimbabwe is open for business!" was dead in the water to sink in. But sink in it did. And the regime abandoned attempts to lure foreign investors and focus on getting Zimbabweans to rebuild the country's crumbling economy.

"Nyika inovakwa nevenevayo!" (Zimbabwe will be rebuilt by Zimbabweans!) was the new Zanu PF jingle for the last three years!

It was just another empty jingle completely at odds with the reality in the country. Millions of Zimbabweans have left the country in the last 20 years as economic and/or political refugees leaving the country with up to 80% skilled manpower shortage in key sectors such as engineering, health and education. The few skilled people left in the country are under utilised because the economy has all but collapsed.

So there is precious little rebuilding going on in Zimbabwe because there are few skilled Zimbabweans in the country to do the work and the economic meltdown is so bad even the few left are under employed!

And so the regime has flip flop back to attracting foreign investors!

"Zimbabwean government officials and corporate leaders are gearing for a major capital markets conference in London, United Kingdom, during the last week of next month to mobilise private capital to finance domestic development," reported Bulawayo24.

The event, set for April 20-21, will be addressed by Finance and Economic Development Minister Mthuli Ncube and key players in the primary capital markets, corporate leaders, financial institutions and investment bank executives, and public accounting firm heads, as well as secondary market players such as fund managers and stockbrokers from Zimbabwe and overseas.

So we are back to "Zimbabwe is open for business." And hoping the same foreign investors we failed to entice in 2017/2018 will not notice that Zimbabwe is still a pariah state governed by the same corrupt, incompetent and vote rigging thugs. It is nonsensical to ask if Zimbabwe is going to have yet another disputed 2023 elections. The election process is so flawed and illegal it is disputed already, long before the voting started.

The Zanu PF regime has denied 3 million Zimbabweans in the diaspora the vote, for example, in what is clearly a case of the regime cherry picking the electorate. Most of these people are in the diaspora as economic and/or political refugees and they blame Zanu PF for their plight. They are not likely to vote for the regime and hence the reason they are being denied the vote.

By failing to hold free and fair elections to stop regime change and thus consolidating Zanu PF's iron grip on power. But, more significantly, the party is, per se, yoking the nation to a corrupt and tyrannical regime. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Making Zimbabwe a pariah state, a failed state, and the economic mess and political paralysis are what one would expect in a pariah state.

President Mnangagwa and his Junta cronies think they can trick investors into believing Zimbabwe is a healthy and function democracy so they can hang on to the pariah state and still enjoy the economic success and political stability of a democratic system of government. How naive!

What President Mnangagwa and his Zanu PF cronies have clearly failed to understand is what every good mother instills in her children from a young age; you cannot have your cake and eat it too! Zimbabwe is pariah state and as long as it remains a pariah state, there will be meaningful economic recovery. None!

No doubt, President Mnangagwa has received repeated assurance that "Zimbabwe is open for business: mark 2!" will be a resounding success. Zanu PF is renowned for paying millions of dollars for PR and dubious services, some one is making a killing at Zimbabwean taxpayers' expense! The price we pay for having dunderheads in State House!