HARARE - As the Zanu PF women’s congress roars into life today in the capital amidst a fierce and vicious struggle between warring factions with accusations and counter accusations of kidnapping, vote buying and intimidation, the economy continues to suffer unabated.
What is sad is that it is not the losing candidates at this chaos-filled congress who will agonise the most but ordinary Zimbabweans — who have been at the receiving end of Zanu PF’s inept leadership in solving the economic crisis rocking the country.
Since last year’s controversial harmonised election outcome, millions of Zimbabweans have had to grapple with worsening power cuts, massive water shortages, deteriorating health, social and educational infrastructure and service delivery systems, yet our leaders continue to fight for votes.
Industrial sites in the country’s cities and towns now resemble ghost towns following the massive closure of companies due to high production and labour costs, water and electricity shortages and absence of an investor friendly environment.
Hundreds of people continue to succumb to medieval diseases such as malaria, dysentery, cholera, influenza and tuberculosis as a result of lack of medicine in our hospitals, while nearly a million children dropped out of school this year after failing to secure school fees.
What’s even more worrying is the undeniable fact that this trend of gloominess is likely to be with us into the foreseeable future as our leaders in the Zanu PF-led government have, time and again, proved that they are incompetent, clueless and at worst useless.
Zanu PF leaders need to be consistently reminded that running an economy is very different from running a tuck-shop.
Fixing the economy requires competent people with adequate skills — not career politicians — to craft policies that are investor friendly and promote inclusive economic growth.
If truth be told, the economy has been on a free fall since July 2013, and probably won’t be getting better anytime soon.
Surely, we have improved since 2008, but it is becoming evident that our lowered Gross Domestic Product is now the norm.
The unemployment rate is now above 80 percent and is not falling. There will be no quick fixes to our economic woes but rather a long grinding road to recovery, hence calls for new ideas from the current crop of leadership.
Mr President and distinguished members of your Cabinet, you have a tremendous opportunity to effect real change in the economy, to be the heroes we hope you will be, to get us back to work.
If the Executive fails to stimulate recovery in the economy, with all due respect, do Zimbabwe a favour and step aside so a real hero can lead us back to prosperity.