By Wilbert Mukori- The European Union (EU) will not reinstate direct budgetary support to Zimbabwe because of the country’s opaque public financial management systems.
This was revealed by EU in Zimbabwe Ambassador Timo Olkkonen, in an interview with TimesLIVE.
“We can’t risk abuse of EU taxpayers’ money,” he said
The people of Zimbabwe have known of Zimbabwe’s curse of bad governance for the last 40 years and counting and they have done absolutely nothing of consequence to end this curse. And so for the last 4 decades the country has sunk deeper and deeper into economic ruins as gross mismanagement and rampant corruption spread like cancer. The chicken have finally come home to roost and in their millions like red billed quelea!
The corona virus pandemic is the greatest health and economic challenge of this generation, no nation has been spared. Zimbabwe has been hit particularly hard given the country’s economy was in a serious mess and its health care service had all but completely collapsed before the pandemic.
Having a corrupt and incompetent government is a curse during normal times but a double curse at times like this when hundreds of thousands of lives are at risk because of the virus and so too are the livelihoods of millions for decade or more to come.
The EU’s decision to stop throwing good money into the blackhole because of the gross mismanagement and rampant corruption is understandable, especially in these corona virus times when everyone is counting the pennies. The decision will only drag Zimbabwe even deeper into economic meltdown, poverty and corona virus health crisis.
The need for the people of Zimbabwe to finally bite the bullet and deal with the curse of rigged elections and bad governance is now the only issue on the national agenda, it is impossible to ignore.
The price of continuing to bury our collective head in the sand and hope the corrupt and oppressive Zanu PF dictatorship will transform itself into a competent and democratic regime has gone up. Before now it was lost treasure and human suffering; now it all that plus lost human lives!