HARARE - Speaker of Parliament, Jacob Mudenda made a bold statement on Tuesday when he nullified Finance minister Patrick Chinamasa’s supplementary budget which the latter had tried to smuggle in as part of the Mid-Term Fiscal Policy Review.
The move by Chinamasa is an indication of how President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu PF government has been disregarding the Constitution, rule of law and abusing basic human rights as evidenced by their constant policy bungling.
This week, Zimbabweans woke up to the news that $45 million diamond money was seized in Belgium by platinum miner Amari Holdings after the company, which had its licence unilaterally cancelled by government in controversial circumstances, sought recourse at the International Court of Arbitration.
In a full-fledged democracy, the government must be transparent in all its dealings, respect the rule of law and have respect for property rights.
But it’s only in Zimbabwe where you have a whole minister who willy-nilly breaks the Constitution he pledged to uphold.
How then should we expect this government to help uplift our human rights situation and provide comfortable living standards to the people when they cannot — even for a day — agree on constant policy formulation?
For instance, the furore on the implementation of the indigenisation policy where some companies are absolved from the 51 percent share ownership regulations clearly shows that the Zanu PF-led government is anaemic on transparency.
Since coming to power in 1980, Zanu PF has pursued self-enrichment policies that have diminished productivity, encouraged corruption, disenfranchised citizens and reduced the majority to paupers.
Instead of working hard to ensure that citizens have food on their table and a roof over their head, the government — by increasing import duty on basic food stuffs, fuel and airtime and demolition of houses — has made sure that the poor remain poor and subservient to the rich.
Chinamasa, and Zanu PF by extension, wants to be seen as a saviour by providing farming inputs to poor farmers when it is government that has put these people in the situation they are in by squeezing every cent out of them through a cocktail of taxes.
That way, the liberation movement would ensure the poor remained loyal to its scorched earth national management policies and should they decide to demand self-reliance, Zanu PF would simply threaten them with withdrawal of government hand-outs to coerce compliance.
It boggles the mind, how Zanu PF fails to see that its food and input hand-outs over decades to citizens well capable of producing their own food requirements have diminished their productive capacity.