SW Radio Africa news - The Independent Voice of Zimbabwe
Contemporary depiction of the Battle of Waterloo where the forces of Napoleon Bonaparte came to a sticky end
By Nomalanga Moyo SW Radio Africa 07 August 2014
As Zimbabwe’s economy continues to falter, some observers have said this could be what finally unravels the ruling ZANU PF regime.
The country is experiencing record company closures, record unemployment levels, a serious shortage of cash and no foreign investment, yet the ruling party continues to do nothing.
Economists and all Zimbabweans with any commonsense have pleaded for economic reforms and an overhaul of the country’s harmful empowerment laws.
The indigenisation and empowerment law gives the ruling party power to expropriate 51% of all foreign investment in the country and the same policy has been used to invade and wreak havoc on white-owned commercial farms.
Many Zimbabweans want the invasions to stop and say they have reduced them to a nation of beggars who now have to rely on donations of food from wellwishers.
Last year the opposition MDC-T warned the ZANU PF government that the economy will not be as easy to rig as the July 31st election.
In a recent interview with SW Radio Africa, ex Finance Minister Tendai Biti said unless ZANU PF changes and starts taking the needs of Zimbabweans seriously, there will be an uprising that will overthrow the regime.
Biti cited the power struggles and infighting, the cash crisis, massive de-industrialisation, a huge budget deficit as well as a restive Zim population, as some of the key ingredients that will lead to the regime’s collapse.
“In the next two months I can tell you that the government will fail to pay civil servants because it has no money and the banks will also run dry and those affected may not continue to take that lying down,” Biti said.
This week a bankers association warned that the country will run out of money soon, spelling even more disaster for the dead economy.
A global market analyst, the Econometer Global Capital, has said Zimbabwe’s economy is set to shrink even further in the second half of the year.
“An average of two medium-sized corporates, five small enterprises and 0.5 large corporates close shop every month in Zimbabwe with smaller towns the most affected by de-industrialisation.
“This calls for the nation to urgently revise policies which directly and significantly impact negatively on the job creation prospects which includes the blanketing indigenisation policy,” says the report.
The ruling party, which promised at least 2.4 million jobs once back in full control, has failed to deliver but its leader President Robert Mugabe insists the economy is on the mend.
Speaking on the Big Picture Programme, Dzimbabwe Chimbga, a campaigner with the Zim Lawyers for Human Rights said while they do not wish for any political party to collapse, ZANU PF’s arrogance and failure to respect citizens will be its undoing.
“As long as ZANU PF adheres to the current political culture that promotes the butchering of people, fails to attend to their economic and cultural needs, and does not respect their human rights, they are on their way out.
“They have failed to address the challenges facing Zimbabweans and Mugabe, who has been the glue holding them together,r does not have long to live, that will bring them down,” Chimbga added.