By Willias Madzimure
In recent weeks, the media has been awash with details of dodgy deals entered into by the Zimbabwean government through its arms, the Zimbabwe Mineral Development Corporation (ZMDC) and Minerals Marketing Corporation of Zimbabwe (MMCZ), and various Chinese firms.
These reports also come at the backdrop of a collapsing economy which has suffered extensively due to externalization of funds by dubious business people mainly from China.
By its own admission, the failed ZANU PF regime confirmed what the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) President and Former Finance Minister Tendai Biti consistently said during his tenure, that the Chinese were looting diamond money.
Mugabe, in a bizarre admission, informed the suffering masses that under his watch Zimbabwe lost a whopping US$15 billion worth of diamond revenue.
In addition to this loss Zimbabwe is faced with a biting liquidity crunch which the clueless regime is seeking to address by reintroducing the moribund Zimbabwean dollar within the next 2 months.
The government worked with a coterie of shadowy Chinese companies such as Anjin, Jinan among others which were fronted by criminals such as the now jailed Sam Pa.
The major import of all this is that the ordinary Zimbabweans have suffered greatly as the economy has all but decayed. Unemployment is at a high of 90% with 83% of Zimbabweans living on less than US$1.25, 4.5 million citizens are in need of food aid and government hospitals have collapsed amid shortages of basic drugs and equipment.
In all this, the Chinese have literary invaded the national economy and are milking all the profits back to Shanghai, Beijing and Hong Kong. In return for having been given unfettered access to the national economy by the desperate Mugabe regime, the Chinese have offered political protection at international level.
In 2008, at the height of Zimbabwe’s political crisis, the Chinese vetoed a UN Security Council resolution to militarily remove the Mugabe regime after state sponsored violence had claimed the lives of 300 opposition supporters and internally displaced hundreds.
The Chinese population living and working in Zimbabwe has increased by over 100% over the last decade. These have investments in even the most basic of sectors such as low cost restaurant.
One of the striking features of the Chinese operations is that they do not pay their taxes and smuggle goods into the country by undervaluing their goods and not declaring most of their imports. They also bribe ZIMRA officials at the borders and offer handouts to ZANU PF politicians as ways to evade paying taxes and thus prejudice the nation billions in revenue.
More dangerously, the Chinese have some of the most deplorable labour relations. They over work their employees, under pay them and often assault them at work places
Thus the Chinese are at the centre of Zimbabwe’s challenges.
By on one hand aiding and abetting the criminal Mugabe regime and on the other salting away billions of dollars from the country, the Chinese are killing the country twice.
They are sustaining and perpetuating oppression of the worst kind while ensuring that the present and future generations of the country are permanently economically disempowered and disinherited forever. This is the worst kind of imperialism and as Zimbabweans we must rise and resist it.
It is thus against this background that the PDP calls on all Zimbabweans and other international stakeholders to come together and call for the Chinese to exit our country immediately. They have contributed nothing of value except to aid a corrupt and repressive political system while looting away our national resources.
Any investment must be mutually beneficial to both parties but in our case it is the Chinese criminals and their local puppets that are eating the national cake.
All which is there to show for ordinary citizens is deep seated poverty, squalor, hunger and a scared environment, a permanent mark of the historical looting of our minerals by Chinese thieves.
Willias Madzimure, PDP Secretary for International Relations
