Recent pronouncements by the International Monetary Fund on Zimbabwe and Ukraine brought to the fore an instructive matrix that should lead the Southern African nation to reassess its engagements with the Bretton Woods institution. Like Zimbabwe, Ukraine had since 1994 intermittently engaged the IMF and received its support.
The support was always on condition that it undertook some austerity measures that included the removal of subsidies, the privatisation of social services and the severe slashing of the public service bill, the latter being a euphemism for a drastic retrenchment of civil servants.
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