By Nomusa Garikai- The soaring fuel and food prices caused, partly, by the 2019 corona virus and exasperated by the unprovoked invasion of Ukraine by Russia in February 2022; have triggered serious economic problems, everyone the world over is worried.
Inflation in UK is 9% and is projected to rise to 13% by the end of the year.
As feared, an impoverished nation like Zimbabwe is already coughing blood: the country’s hyperinflation has already hit 600%, the highest in the world!
No one would want to hazard a guess of what the country’s hyperinflation would be next week much less in six months, what is clear is that it is growing exponentially.
In 2008 it peaked at 500 billion percent!
There are many reasons why Zimbabwe is in such economic mess compared to its own neighbours such as South Africa, Zambia or Botswana.
The number one reason is because Zimbabwe has been stuck with a corrupt, incompetent and tyrannical Zanu PF dictatorship for 42 years and counting.
42 years of gross mismanagement, rampant corruption, riotous lawlessness and ruthless political oppression, earning the country the pariah state label; have left the country in total economic ruins and political paralysis.
The ruthless political oppression has created a suffocating political system in which no competent and quality leaders can survive; a sewage swamp no quality fish can survive.
In the 42 years the country has had many opportunities to end the Zanu PF dictatorship, notably during the 2008 to 2013 GNU, but has wasted all these chances.
The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), the country’s main opposition party of the last 22 years, including the GNU years, has failed to implement even one reform to stop Zanu PF rigging the elections.
Not even one! Hence the political paralysis.
Before independence, Zimbabwe was the breadbasket of the Southern Africa.
The Zanu PF regime seized the white owned farms to give to party loyalists, mainly, and the country’s agricultural sector collapsed taking down with it the economy.
Zimbabweans are starving in a land which is for all practical purposes the Biblical Garden of Eden; a damning testimonial of how we, Zimbabweans, have failed to govern the country.
The nation has paid dearly for our failure to govern ourselves as millions of our people have been forced into abject poverty and to suffer in dumb anguish denied their freedoms and basic human rights for 42 years and counting.
And whenever there is a worldwide economic disruption, as is the case now; whilst other nations catch flue, we because our economy is already weak and feeble cough blood or worse.
The root cause of Zimbabwe’s economic meltdown and political paralysis is the country’s failure to hold free, fair and credible elections- a man-made problem or to be more specific a Zanu PF and MDC/CCC made problem.
Like all human-made problems, there is a human solution. We must implement the democratic reforms, MDC failed to implement during the 2008 to 2013 GNU, to ensure free, fair and credible elections.
It is too late to implement any reforms before the 2023 elections, less than a year away.
Zanu PF wants the elections to go ahead with no reforms so it can blatantly rig and secure another five years in power.
CCC are hell bent on participating in the flawed elections for the same reasons they failed to implement even one reform during the GNU – greed and breathtakingly incompetent.
In the past Zanu PF has counted on Sadc, the regional body to fraudulently endorse the rigged elections and thus grant the regime legitimacy.
This time we, the people must leave no stone unturned in exposing these elections for what they are – farce. Sadc, IMF, USA and more recently EU have all called for reforms before elections because they all know without reforms the elections will never be anything else but a farce.
This time Sadc will have no excuse for giving Zanu PF legitimacy. None!
What Zimbabwe needs is another GNU opportunity to implement the reforms to ensure free elections and thus finally end the curse of rigged elections and bad governance.