Biti playing dangerous regional politics to remain relevant

Tendai Biti is now playing a dangerous divisive game in his desperate effort to make MDC-Renewal relevant.

"Our people have become fourth class citizens in the country of their birth because the dictators have redefined the citizens as people from Zvimba alone," he said.

Biti said it was heart-breaking to note that at least 69 percent of the people in Matabeleland North still used bush toilets while only 10 percent have access to electricity despite the fact it is generated at Hwange thermal station in the same province.

I have driven down fifty kilometres Mugabe Highway to Zvimba and along the way the only thing I met was a Scotch-cart drawn by two donkeys. At one point there were a number of big houses, the type one would see in low density urban centres, no doubt Mugabe's home village. Other than the big house there was nothing else to suggest that this was anything else other than a rural home of subsistent peasants. These people would not afford to buy the replace light bulb in the house much less pay ZESA electricity bills.

I will bet you anything you want; go back to Zvimba now and those big houses have no electricity, no running water, broken windows and the houses are all in varying stages of decay and rot; hardly the homes of first class citizens, Biti is talking about!

The truth is the whole country is in a real economic mess. Key industries like Sable Chemical making fertilizer for the whole country are having power cuts and shops and banks in Bulawayo and other centres too are being switched off because there is a serious power shortage in the country.

Is Mr Biti going to have all the rural homes and growth points in Binga, Lupane, Tsholotsho, etc., in a radiating traveling wave whose centre is Hwange Power Station, electrified therefore he has restored power to Sable Chemicals, etc.? That is what he was telling the people in these areas and who would object to that.

"Nhamo yeumwe hairambirwe sadza!" so goes the Shona saying. (No one is touched by other people's trials and tribulations!) Of course the people in Matebeleland North are bound to see their economic plight as worse than any other region and so are those in Masvingo, etc.

We will be facing an up-hill battle to dig the nation out of this political and economic mess that Mugabe landed us in we should not make it any harder for ourselves by subdividing the nation into regions, tribes, village, me and you! We will either get out of this mess united as a nation or sink together; no one individual or region will prosper whilst others perish. Failed leaders like Biti are playing on the region differences for their own selfish political gain.

Ever since the debacle of the rigged July 2013 elections when MDC leaders had the rude awakening, Tendai Biti and others in the MDC Renewal have tried to blame Tsvangirai for the electoral defeat. The truth is, Mugabe was able to rig the elections because MDC did not implement the reforms. They had the majority in parliament and five years to do it but failed to get even one reform implemented. Of course it is nonsense to blame Tsvangirai alone for this; they were all corrupt and breathtakingly incompetent.

Those MDC supporters who have never understood what the reforms were about and therefore did not understand why MDC leaders are said to be incompetent have remained faithful to Tsvangirai. Those who did understand what the reforms were about also understood that Biti and the rest of the renewal were just as incompetent as Tsvangirai. Sadly for the renewal team this has left them in the no man's land! In desperation Biti is now playing cheap politics promising the people things he will never deliver.

It is by investing in those activities that will generate wealth, create jobs and get the nation working again that we can get out of this mess and guarantee a better life for our people. Wasting resources building stupid Highways starting nowhere and going nowhere else or building posh houses complete with running water and electricity for rural people whilst denying them the meanings to earn a living and maintain them, as Mugabe did, will get us nowhere too!

Tendai Biti is a hypocrite; his heart was not broken by the poverty in Matabeleland North or anywhere else in Zimbabwe. Here is the man, above everyone else since he was the MDC chief negotiator, who should have understood the importance of implementing the reforms necessary to end this Zanu PF dictatorship and thus end all the misery in the land. He would have implemented the reforms if he really cared about the people.

He forgot about the reform and the suffering masses when he was hobnobbing with Mugabe, he is now calling a dictator and yet when he was on gravy train he called the tyrant "unflappable" and "a father of the nation". The only thing that has ever broken Biti's heart was being kicked off the gravy train and no he is risking tiring this nation apart for another chance to be back on that gravy train!