Economic meltdown - Mugabe has lost every skirmish

The economic meltdown is the one adversary that has got the better of President Mugabe. Whilst he has managed to bribe and cheat the likes of Morgan Tsvangirai and all his learned MDC friends like lawyer Tendai Biti, Professor Ncube and Mutambara, etc with the greatest of ease. He has managed to divide and confuse the chasing pack within his own party, Zanu PF to stay in as the top dog for 35 years. With the economy, President Mugabe has lost every skirmish, every battle and now he is set to lose the war. 


President Mugabe's answer to economic prosperity was spend, spend and spend and he really believed he could solve all his economic problems like shortage of goods, rising prices, soaring unemployment and the criminal waste of resources due to the two biggies - mismanagement and corruption by spending even more. 


First he borrowed from IMF, WB, the Chinese and all other institutions to fuel his insatiable spending appetite until they all cut credit line to Zimbabwe because the country was not paying back it any of its debts. Clearly the big spender, President Mugabe did not understand why he was expected to repay any loans. 


From 2000 he decide to print his own money to fuel his spending spree resulting in the world beating record of the highest inflation rate peaking at 5 billion percent. There is a rolling internet business today selling Z$ with a face value of 1000s of trillion dollars but in reality was worth a few pennies when the bills were legal tender.



President Mugabe has tried blaming the sanctions imposed by the West on him and a select few of his inner Zanu PF circle for all the country's economic woes. It is nonsense of course because; for a start, the economy woes were already self-evident by the end of the second five year, 1995 to 2000, Economic Structural Adjustment Programme; the sanctions were imposed in 2002. 


Second, and more significantly, President Mugabe and his inner circle on the sanctions list have continued to grow filthy rich untouched by the sanctions. The EU has since lifted it sanction against all other Zanu PF members except President Mugabe and his wife and yet the economy has continue in its nose dive showing there is a lot more causing the economic meltdown than the feeble excuse of sanctions the regime is force feeding the nation. 


Throughout the years the economic meltdown has matched on like the Salvation Army and paid no attention to President Mugabe's antics and distractions. After 35 years of misrule the economic meltdown has taken its toll on the national economy, a heavy toll.

With each reckless spending President Mugabe was making the nation poorer and not richer; he was just digging the whole nation into a deeper and deeper economic hole, a trap that we are now finding hard to climb out of.  


Since the rigged 2013 elections the Zimbabwe economy has been in terminal decline that Zanu PF simple could no longer ignore although the regime has not stopped trying to do so. Unemployment has risen to 90%, millions now live in abject poverty including Zanu PF chefs, etc.

Zimbabwe's economic meltdown is not socially and politically sustainable. President Mugabe may considers himself, with his no regime change mantra, the unmovable political rock of Gibraltar but with an adversary like the economy, which he has failed to bribe, cheat or play any of the multitude of dirty tricks he has in his tool box, he is in fact as soft as the chalk cliffs of Dover.

Zanu PF is imploding because President Mugabe has no loot left to dish out to his ever demanding and wasteful party loyalists; they are now fighting each other for the crumbs. It is the economic meltdown that is behind the shrinking economic cake. Zanu PF is imploding because the centre has been hollowed out, the centre can no longer hold. 


Years of underfunding have left the country failing to provide something as basic like clean running water and, if it was not for donors, its health service would have completely collapsed by now. Even if the people soldier on in the face of the ever worsen economic hardships what cannot be denied is the certainty that if the country should have cholera or some such communicable disease, the problem will spread like a veld fire.

The one room one does not need to ask where it is in Zimbabwe, be it in the Western suburbs, low density suburbs or city centre office blocks, is the toilet. You nose will lead you there. The lack of clean running water has made flashing of toilets and washing hands after use a luxury few can now afford. Imagine how quickly cholera and other water born disease will spread under these primitive unhygienic conditions!

The on nightmare of Ebola that befallen other African nations was made a lot worse because, like Zimbabwe, they too had allowed their country to be run down its health services had all but collapsed, there was no running water and millions of their people had lived in squalor for generations wallowing in their own rubbish and s***t. Once Ebola entered these shanty towns where millions had a sewer-rat existence, it very difficult to contain.

President Mugabe has failed to rig economic recovery and that is a political fact which he must now accept and step down. Like it or not Zanu PF is imploding and this nation cannot afford to let President Mugabe drag the whole country into the abyss with Zanu PF!

No person or nation has ever spent his/her way into prosperity, instead reckless spending has seen many individuals and nations sink into poverty and despair. Only by generating wealth is one guaranteed of economic prosperity. For the last 35 years President Mugabe thought he could buck this simple economic rule and now it is clear he could not. He has dug this nation into a huge economic hell-hole; the very least he can do for this nation now is for him to go and alone the nation to sort out this mess. No more sanctions excuses, 2.2 million new jobs empty promises, etc.; just go!