By Patrick Guramatunhu: “The Chinese Government has pledged to refurbish and equip Wilkins Infectious Diseases Hospital to improve its capacity to handle suspected and confirmed cases.
To this end, China is set to dispatch a team of experts to visit Wilkins Hospital soon to assess the facility’s needs as part of the Eastern Asian county’s initiative to assist African countries to deal with the coronavirus.
Where local facilities fall short as in the case of test confirmation laboratories, the country leverages on its cordial relations with South Africa to ensure that nothing is left to chance,” advised Nobleman Runyanga in Bulawayo 24.
Zimbabweans have very good reasons to be alarmed at this. Why is it that the country does not have even one fully kitted facility to test and treat coronavirus victims nearly four months since the outbreak of the virus?
“Other people have even criticised these arrangements as though they do not know the enormity of the economic challenges which the country has had to contend with since 2001 when illegal sanctions were imposed on the country,” continued Runyanga.
I pray to God that there is no coronavirus outbreak in Zimbabwe because if there should be it is articles like this that make the people’s blood boil with anger!
There is no deny that the outbreak will cause untold human suffering and deaths in the country and all because the country’s economy has all but collapsed and so too has its health care service. The economic meltdown was caused by misrule and not sanctions!
40 years of gross mismanagement, rampant corruption and rank lawlessness that has earned the country the pariah state label have left the country in economic ruins. The country has failed to maintain the hospitals and other infrastructure it inherited from the white colonial regime in 1980, much less improve on them.
The Zanu PF ruling elite have creamed off the wealth generated by the nation to bankroll their prodigal and extravagant lifestyles. Billions of dollars were poured into building palatial mansions such as Mugabe’s Blue Roof, the epitome of the regime’s selfish greed, whilst even the referral hospitals like Parerenyatwa and Mpilo Hospital were starved of funds so much so they often run out something as basic as painkillers and even clean running water!
Two weeks ago, ZACC, government’s own appointed anti-corruption Tzar, reported that it had uncovered US$ 7 billion in cash and assets salted out of the country by corrupt individuals including government leaders. There are billions more in cash and assets inside the country whose owners have no tax returns to prove they earned the loot legally.
ZACC will never recover even a fraction of the looted billions because the Godfathers of corruption are President Mnangagwa and his fellow Zanu PF cronies themselves. He promise “zero tolerance on corruption” when he took over from Mugabe in November 2017 but has since failed to stamp it out. He has admitted that corruption is “deep rooted”.
To uproot corruption, one must first uproot the Zanu PF dictatorship itself. And that is the one thing Mnangagwa and his Zanu PF cronies will never do and risk losing power. They are addicted to power and the loot it has guaranteed.
Of course, it is an insult to be told the country’s economic meltdown is caused by sanctions when one can see all the evidence of ruling elite’s insatiable greed and the wholesale looting.
“Afirwa haatariswe kumeso!” (One must never look the aggrieved in the eye, especial those who played a part in the death!) So goes the Shona adage.
For Zanu PF to blame sanctions for any coronavirus deaths will be tantamount to spitting the aggrieved in the face. The nation has been cowed by brute force into submission but Zanu PF must not make the mistake of thinking we stupid not to see the blatant vote rigging, the looting, the insulting attempts to blame sanctions for all the country’s ills, etc. !