By Obert Gutu
The MDC is deeply appalled by the decision of Robert Mugabe to embark on another costly and completely unnecessary jamboree to New York in the United States to attend some low key conference on Ebola.
While the country’s economy is virtually grinding to a halt, Mugabe has seen it fit to take along his wife and a whole litany of other Zanu PF hangers – on to attend a conference that is hardly topical to the key interests of Zimbabwe as a nation.
Zimbabwe is now being run aboard an Air Zimbabwe Boeing 767 jet! In Harare and other cities and towns, desperate vendors are being ruthlessly and heartlessly chased away from their vending sites by Robert Mugabe’s police force and other security operatives of his dictatorial regime.
Zimbabwe is definitely at the crossroads. Instead of creating 2,2 million jobs as loudly proclaimed in its thoroughly discredited Zim – Asset economic policy blueprint, the Zanu PF regime is fast managing to create 2,2 million desperate and poor vendors who have no other option but to occupy the streets in order to sell their merchandise.
The national economy is in deep deflation mode as Robert Mugabe and his moribund regime remain clueless as to what to do in order to rescue the situation. For how shall the peace – loving and downtrodden people of Zimbabwe bear this untold political subjugation and socio – economic bondage at the hands of the insensitive and corrupt Zanu PF regime?
The MDC calls upon Robert Mugabe to spend more time at his Munhumutapa Building offices; crafting and implementing workable and viable economic policies, rather than spending more time aboard an aircraft; globetrotting and leading life on the fast lane at the expense of a virtually bankrupt national treasury.
Time has now come for the toiling masses of Zimbabwe to draw a line in the sand. Enough is enough. The renegade Zanu PF regime cannot and indeed, should not be allowed to reduce the majority of Zimbabweans into paupers and scavengers in the land of their ancestors.
Robert Mugabe should be brought to order. He should be told, in no uncertain terms, that he has hopelessly failed to run the country and that the only honourable thing that he can do is to proceed to resign immediately.
After stealing the harmonised elections on July 31, 2013, Robert Mugabe has proceeded to conduct himself like a bull in a china shop; smashing and destroying everything in its way.
His regime is failing to raise the sum of around US$265 million that is required every month in order to pay the salaries and wages of the bloated civil service that has more than 550 000 workers on its payroll; the majority of whom are ghost workers.
Zimbabwe is being run by a kleptocracy that is spending at least 92% of all government revenue on salaries and allowances every month. This is an unsustainable state of affairs that should not be allowed to subsist a day longer.
The MDC would like to implore all the patriotic and peace – loving people of Zimbabwe to do whatever is within their democratic and lawful power, to tell the Zanu PF regime to immediately stop harassing the thousands of vendors who have been created as a direct result of the regime’s ruinous, corrupt and irresponsible financial and economic policies.
Zimbabwe should return to political legitimacy to enable an accountable and transparent government to take over the running of matters of the State. Zimbabweans should not just look aside and watch as their country is being run down by a tyrannical and corrupt regime that doesn’t care one iota about the suffering of the people. This is the time for action.
Obert Gutu is the national spokesman for the MDC led by Morgan Tsvangirai
