With an unstable currency, shortage of fuel and energy in the once Great Zimbabwe, President Emmerson Mnangagwa is setting himself for the greatest fall, warns opposition party leader Nelson Chamisa.
According to NewsDay, Chamisa said the country will be having a long winter faced with debts to the relentless socio-economic and political crisis.
“Winter is coming; you look at how the hard-working people have lost dignity. The teachers, police, military and civilians have lost dignity and they can’t take in that much,” he said.
The purchasing local currency’s power has eroded over the past week after government removed a fuel subsidy that somehow stabilized prices of most basic commodities.
The Zimbabwean currency has been the fastest losing value currency against other hard currencies. It’s currently trading at 1:8 to the US dollar on the black market as of yesterday, earning most workers’ salaries to less than US$100 per month.
Chamisa said that once his party is in office, it would work on restoring the dignity of hard work by curing economic problems in the country.
“We can deliver and restore dignity to the working majority of Zimbabwe. We have a smart plan, but for us to do that, there is need to restore legitimacy in this country,” he said.
“We need to go to the table and ensure that we ring in reforms that ensure we never have contested elections,” he added.
Chamisa warned that if there was no immediate channel of communication between his party and Mnangagwa’s Zanu PF, the economic meltdown would detonate.
Government has blamed western sanctions for hurting the economy. Chamisa responded and said the sanction song was “an excuse by failures whose sole purpose of being in government was entrenching power for purposes of corruption”.
“The country is facing these problems because we have people who have no idea how to run the country, looting and lining their pockets through corruption,” he continued.
“During the (2009-13) inclusive government, we had these measures, but we delivered. We changed people’s lives. These measures that the US has against Zimbabwe were here during that time.”
The warning of Chamisa came in as while cabinet discussed the price increase of basic goods and services and it was alleged that this decision was driven by the parallel USS market which allegedly, authorities was being influenced by movement on the stock market.