Grace Mugabe admits economy in bad shape

By Bridget Mananavire

HARARE – First Lady Grace Mugabe unwittingly admitted that the economy was in bad shape leading to thousands of educated youths finding themselves on the streets.

During a tour of the Zimbabwe International Trade Fair (ZITF) stands on Thursday, Grace said Zimbabwean companies need to do more to satisfy the local market with the surplus being exported.

“This is the way forward, this is the key to the development, the key to employment generation because we are talking about the youths who after having been educated are finding themselves on the streets,” the Zanu PF’s women’s secretary said.

Her statements also coincided with government spin-doctor Jonathan Moyo’s sentiments that government lacked a strategy to create wealth, adding that Zimbabwe was celebrating Workers Day in a nation with no work.

“This May Day our triple challenge is we’ve workers without work, we’ve lost the sense of labour value & we lack a strategy to create wealth!” Jonathan Moyo wrote on his Twitter page on Friday, which was Workers’ Day.

Grace and Moyo’s admission that all is not well in government resonates well with MDC President Morgan Tsvangirai  who is on record saying although Zanu PF had “rigged the July 31, 2013 election, it will not be able to rig the economy”.

“Despite the fact that the economy is not performing well, I can see enthusiasm amongst our people, that they would want to showcase what they are producing, you know and what they are manufacturing, I can say I am very much impressed with what I am seeing this year,” said Grace.

“I know times are hard, but we are a resilient people and that’s why we are here and showcasing what we are producing so that people from other countries can see that Zimbabwe is a hard working nation,” she said.

While Zanu PF promised to create two million jobs in its election manifesto, company closures have become an everyday occurence, with the unemployment rate growing every day. And Grace admits that while people are being trained, there are no industries to absorb them.

“And what I have always said is that we have so many institutions, educational institutions and these other facilities where people are getting skills training, you are giving them the fishing rod but haven’t got the lake where they are going to do the fishing but with all that is happening here we are saying now there is the lake where you can go and fish,” she said.

The two admissions by senior Zanu PF officials also come in the wake of  xenophobic attacks in South Africa where locals brutally attacked  foreigners for “stealing their jobs”, with the country’s president Jacob Zuma blaming his fellow African leaders of failing to fix their economic problems.

Renowned economist John Robertson earlier told our sister publication, the Daily News that government remained “incompetent” to revive the moribund economy as the majority of the country’s leadership was more interested in political expediency rather than pragmatic bread and butter issues.

“Unless government implements austerity measures and addresses policy discord, uncertainty will continue to haunt the economy.

“To restore Zimbabwe’s position on a positive economic growth path, investment is needed and this calls first for investor confidence and security,” Robertson said.

In a move that was meant to lessen government’s wage bill, minister of Finance Patrick Chinamasa had suspended bonuses for civil servants for two years to create fiscal space, but President Robert Mugabe, reversed that decision.

Chinamasa’s reasons had been that government no longer had the capacity to support the wage bill, which gobbles 82 percent of the fiscus monthly, as the economy had transitioned from the formal sector to informal.

Economic experts who spoke to the Daily News earlier this week said it was becoming increasingly evident that the country’s Zanu PF-led government was clueless about turning around the fortunes of the economy, projected by the International Monetary Fund to decline further this year due to declining metal prices and poor policies. Daily News