Johannesburg — IT IS way too early to give Zimbabwe any money. Aid, yes. Zimbabweans are sick and hungry and they need help. If that country's thuggish president and his party could be persuaded to allow foreign aid agencies in to help feed and treat his citizens that would be wonderful.

In all probability though, he would try to use his people's plight to blackmail the rest of the world into financing him out of the jam he has created for himself.

A Southern African Development Community (SADC) committee heard at the weekend that Zimbabwe needs $2bn now to stabilise its economy. Details are thin on the ground and "stabilisation" may simply mean paying the salaries of restive soldiers or public servants. It would not be money well spent.

An SADC extraordinary summit is now likely to be held to discuss financing the reconstruction of Zimbabwe ahead of the April 2 G-20 summit in the UK. That's the meeting SA would hope to use to make a pitch for Zimbabwe but it's likely any appeal will fall on deaf ears.

And who would be surprised? Robert Mugabe and his cronies are thieves and they would steal as much as they could of any funding that finds its way into the country. Just this weekend Mugabe and friends were celebrating his 85th birthday with a lavish bash that cost more than R1m by reliable estimates. At that party the mad old man repeatedly warned that farm invasions would continue and that Zimbabwe would continue to take majority stakes for locals in all companies operating in the country.

And he wants the world to fund this nonsense? Well, perhaps not. He has grown rich on Zimbabwe's misery and now, apparently, owns a house in Hong Kong! A real open economy with a central bank he could not control is the last thing he wants. No, the begging bowl is being held out by the South African Foreign Minister, Nkosa zana Dlamini-Zuma, who says she is certain that any money raised would really be spent on what it was intended for. We wish it were so ma'am, but you know and we know there's no guarantee of that.

And guarantees are the very least funders should ask for now, however patronising that may sound. Zimbabwe is not ruled by a trustworthy person.

This may all sound rather harsh on Morgan Tsvangirai, the opposition leader who is now prime minister, thanks to the Zimbabwe unity deal brokered by Thabo Mbeki on behalf of the SADC. We have real sympathy for Tsvangirai. Having been made PM he is being hung out to dry by the SADC. SA doesn't rate him and has not much time for him.

But while he has no option but to make an effort to right the ship he has inherited, that doesn't mean we all shower him with money. First, it isn't clear he'd get to control it. Second, we'd like to see his plan. What's it say? Hell, it's going to be our money Pretoria hands over.

It is very important in all of this that SA's government keeps taxpayers informed about what it is doing with our money in Zimbabwe. The more we understand, the easier spending there will become.

We need, whatever the G-20 and others might do, to appreciate that SA cannot sit by now that the government it created is in place in Harare. But we cannot simply "give" the government there a billion or two rands. It would be a good thing, for instance, to inject hard currency into that country by encouraging, by way of a modest cash inducement, the many migrants and refugees in this country to go home. The government may also consider exacting some form of ownership of the Zimbabwean assets our rands repair or rebuild.

It is obvious Mugabe should go. He just has to go. Listening to him speak it is hard not to conclude that he is already senile. His fear is that if he stops protecting the senior security officers who surround him, they will kill him. SA's job should be to reassure him that if he does do the right thing and steps away from active politics, we will protect him.

Something on a large scale will have to be done to loosen the purse strings of the west. They are already battered by their own economic storms. Perhaps a currency reform modelled on the German one after the last world war would do the trick. It would certainly inconvenience the ruling elite. Five-trillion current Zim dollars for one New Dollar would hurt some of the thieves nicely and there's nothing like real money to get a broken nation fired up and working hard again. Ask the Germans.

It's crunch time. After all the negotiating, delays and accusations, Zimbabwe now has a government of national unity and just wants the world to cough up a bit and help. But it can't happen, because the one thing that should have been done was never done, particularly by Mbeki. He didn't, or couldn't, get rid of Mugabe. So the stench remains.