Lagos — For some years now, Zimbabwe has caused many upsets in the world in terms of originating tidings and the poor personality rating of its President Robert Mugabe.
It started like a child's play in 2000 when his government started redistributing lands claiming that whites which made up less than one per cent of the population held 70 per cent of the country's commercially viable arable land.
He commenced the redistribution of lands to the blacks amidst condemnation from Western countries especially the United Kingdom.
The disordered implementation of the land reform led to a razor-sharp decline in agricultural exports, conventionally the country's leading export producing sector.
As a result, Zimbabwe started experiencing a severe hard-currency shortage, which has led to hyperinflation and chronic shortages in imported fuel and consumer goods.
In 2002, Zimbabwe was suspended from the Commonwealth of Nations on charges of human rights abuse during the land redistribution and of election tampering.
The story continued to be worse in subsequent years and then came, Morgan Tsvangirai, a Labour leader who challenged Mugabe and vied for the presidency of the country.
Among the elections he participated was the 2002 presidential election, which he lost to Mugabe.
He later contested the first round of the 2008 presidential election taking 47.8 per cent of the vote according to official results, placing him ahead of Mugabe, who got 43.2 per cent. Tsvangirai claimed to have won a majority and said that the results could have been altered in the month between the election and the reporting of official results.
He initially planned to run in the second round against Mugabe, but withdrew shortly before it was held, arguing that the election would not be free and fair due to widespread violence and intimidation by government supporters.
Mugabe held the election and won but after swearing himself in, he faced an unprecedented international pressure to quit. However, he and Tsvangirai were able to broker an agreement that led to the forming of a unity government where the latter became prime minister.
After that, there was skepticism from abroad on whether to offer aid to a government where Mugabe is at the helms.
Last week, the country held its first official meeting with Britain in nine years, a development which analysts described as the end of an era of isolation.
Tendai Biti, the Zimbabwean finance minister and a senior figure in the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), visited London and met David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary.
Biti spoke in London and confirmed that the country has gotten $400 million in credit lines from African states to revive its ailing industries, the first major financial package since a unity government was formed.
Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) has provided the line of credit and so have Botswana and South Africa.
Then the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has also formed a trust fund to coordinate donor funds for Zimbabwe. The IMF estimated that returning Zimbabwe to the economic level where it stood in the mid-1990s could take as much as $45 billion.
At present, potential donors are waiting for the removal of the reserve bank governor, Gideon Gono, whose misappropriation of funds from private and non-governmental accounts at the central bank to fund the last government led by Mugabe damaged his reputation in the eyes of many observers - in particular the diversion of $7.3 million from the Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS.
Even before that is done, economists have started scoring the country some good marks in terms of economic recovery and this is highly commendable. If stories like these are sustained for the next few years, the country would be on its way to becoming the food basket of Africa once again and the coalition could take the credit.
Comments 1 to 5 of 12 Post a comment
Give them nothing until you can make sure that the money goes to the people, and not the thieving pigs, like george charamba and mujuru.
Have they (imperialists) ever given anything? when you give 1 to take 5 then you can,t be viewed as giving at all and Africa is used to situations like that. Don,t get excited, we,ve been through this road before,who do you think you,re kidding? .Africa,s resources must meet the developmental goals of African countries and not a situation whereby a party is singing with the pittance that they pretend to give which, automatically is encouraged to be stolen and returned back to sender,this are your (imperialist) games and we are wiser for it.The article was okay,but did not address the issues at stake clearly enough,Africans are sick and tired of pock nosing, thieving people come from across the Atlantic to terrorise us and steal our properties,that,s what,s going to change .And by the way, seems nobody,s even remembering reparations for the multitudes of crimes and instability their (imperialists) actions (land grabbing,slave trading,resource stealing e.t.c.) created in Africa and on Africans.We refuse to turn the other cheek.
We said it almost on a regular basis that the economic sanctions the tsvangi and his mdc-t cohorts were calling for were going to boomrang straight towards them in future and they would start feeling their ruinous effects on the economy soon.....Now, finance minister Biti& his mdc delegation were in U.S. and britain admitting for the first time that 13million zimbabweans are reeling under illegal economic sanctions&pleading for their lifting..The same people who foolishly thought that the economic sanctions were a good weapon against our party zanu pf...we're getting there...I guess Biti and company eventually realised that if the inclusive gvt fails, it will be an mdc failure...Our revolutionary party Zanu pf has nothing to lose, we've seen it all .
Now the battle royale begins: supporters members of ZANU-PF who have kept their rhetorical fire power so the bootlickers of rhodism can have their say---by wrapping themselves in the incoherent philosophical dogmas of MDC---are now out in full force; now, we say, when the juvenile 'politicians' of MDC have finally recognized that the equivocal West is a snake, now, we say, the real battle for the soul of Zimbabwe begins.
Reality rocks, and when she rocks, it's either fight or flee.
ZANU-PF made a strategic blunder by 'partnering' with MDC. Mutually dissolve the fake partnership,for crying out loud, hold elections seasonably, and invite the Pope and his Vatican team or the Chief Imam at the Prophet's Mosque in Mecca as poll watchers, and let the chips fall where they may.
To the ballot box then! NOW.
Is that the royal "we," that you are using? Are you implying that you are of royal, and therefore superior breeding to other contributors on this site? You seem to be trying to imply a superiority that's totally lacking from your sometimes incoherent postings.
See All Comments