Talk Of Economic Revival Is Mere Rhetoric -Biti
26 November 2020
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Tinashe Sambiri|MDC Alliance deputy President, Hon Tendai Biti, has said Mr Emmerson Mnangagwa’s administration cannot resolve the economic crisis before addressing the legitimacy crisis.

Hon Biti also described talk of economic revival as cheap grandstanding and empty bravado.

Below is part of Hon Biti’s State of the Economy Address:

The State of the Economy Address (SEA) and the MDC Alliance’s post
COVID-19 pandemic recovery plan: Restoring and Returning
Zimbabwe back to prosperity

Zimbabwe’s economy remains mired in a deep structural crises, that
includes humungous macroeconomic imbalances, huge fiscal
deficits, massive corruption, low output, an extractive monetary
policy and exchange rate structure, massive unemployment and a
collapse of the public sector particularly health and education.

Save for a few periodic moments of respite, the Zimbabwean
economy has remained permanently embedded in this dark vortex
of underperformance, disequilibrium and devaluation in its four
decades of independence.
Despite this, the regime has embarked on a self-serving agenda of
distortion and deceit, promoting the hollow sound bite of stability
and recovery that is not backed by economic data or reality.

Zealous claims have been made about stabilizing exchange rate,
positive current account, contained money supply, declining month
on month inflation and budget surpluses.
The truth however is that Zimbabwe is sinking deeper in
unimaginable depths.

No amount of propaganda nor spin can wash away the hard reality
on the ground.

As we have constantly argued one can rig an election but not the
economy.

The truth is unless there is political change and a new leadership,
Zimbabwe under ZANU PF, will implode as economic and social
decay transforms into social disorder and social chaos oiled by the
triplets of illegitimacy, corruption and inequality.

A situation that is compounded by a rising population level. By 2045,
Zimbabwe’s population would have doubled and in the next 40
years the population in Zimbabwe’s cities Bulawayo and Harare will
double up, yet there is no growth in the economy.

On the contrary, thanks to Emmerson Mnangagwa’s economics of
destruction and distortion, the economy is in fact in comatose,
leaving the citizen exposed to poverty and social collapse.

Proving
once more that you can rig an election but not the economy.
In this this State of the Economy Review, we posit the position that
the economic situation is dire and requires urgent redress, it cannot
be business as usual.

We make the point that the people of Zimbabwe must be given a
chance through a political settlement giving birth to an economic
program addressing structural challenges.

The Political Crisis
At the epicentre of Zimbabwe’s multiple crises remains a political
gridlock anchored by a crisis of legitimacy emanating from the
November 2017 military coup and the flawed 2018 harmonized
election.

The four decades of destructive predatory and exclusive
politics have created a society captured by lack of trust, alienation,
indifference, intolerance and polarization.

In January 2020, the South
African Foreign Relations Minister Naled Pandor addressing a
symposium on the Zimbabwe crisis said,
“The political formations in Zimbabwe remain at loggerheads and
have apparent deep antipathy towards each other which makes
joint decision-making and planning extremely difficult.

“It seems clear that even as we support the call for an end to
economic sanctions, the political dynamics that we observe are
inextricably linked to the economic solutions and thus the politics
and the economic as well as the social need to be confronted
simultaneously.

“We are not going to achieve the economic resolution without
resolving the political, intractable hostility and lack of amity or social
conjoining on finding a national solution.”

Zimbabwe therefore urgently requires a new disruptive consensus.

One that recognises the urgency of the matter. One that places the
citizen at the centre.

A transformative Consensus that will vindicate
and salvage hitherto stretched and exhausted narratives, namely
the liberation consensus and the democratisation consensus.

One
that will create an ethical, consultative and consensus state in which
everyone lives without fear, and uncertainty.

Restoring and returning back to prosperity
In short, we push, for the restoration and return of Zimbabwe to
prosperity.

Our people have suffered long enough.

This is why at the beginning of the year we launched our high five
campaigns all focused on returning Zimbabwe to prosperity.

These
were:
a) Fight for the People’s Government
b) Fight for better life and dignity
c) Fight Against Corruption
d) Fight for the People’s rights ,Freedoms and Security of Persons
e) Fight in Defence of the Constitution and Constitutionalism
In our document launched in March 2019, the Road to Economic
Recovery Legitimacy Openness and Democracy (RELOAD), we
make the case for dialogue, for deep structural reform, and
implementation mechanism (NTA), with elections to be held therein after. ..

Tendai Biti