Five years of nothing, a manifesto of hot air promises

By Jacob Mafume

The Zimbabwean people have been dragged into a bottomless pit, many rue the 2013 election, the election has turned out to be a late July fool’s day dummy. Many false promises were made by ZANU PF in their deceitful manifesto; none have been delivered throughout the five years of shame.

Infinite promises were made in a deliberate attempt to wood wink the electorate into feeding the ZANUPF’s selfish power retention agenda, these promises include the following:

• 2,2 Million jobs in five years, an average of 440 00 jobs a year
• Economic growth rates of about 9 percent per annum
• 250 000 Low cost houses
• 310 new clinics and 300 new schools in five years
• A new Parliament Complex
• 1250 Public buildings and houses refurbished
• A shift from an extractive economy to value addition
• Dealing with corruption

With the shadows of yet another election, these lies have been exposed, ZANUPF is set to come back and ask for yet another five year term based on the same promises.

The reality is that the economy is in turmoil arrested by stagnation, massive deindustrialization, informalisation and a crippling cash liquidity crisis.

All these are products of fiscal indiscipline and inability to manage the hygiene of the economy.

As a result negative growth rates have been recorded for the past four years, more than 8 000 companies have closed and over 100 000 individuals have lost their jobs.

Our people have lost value their hard earned cash converted to the bond note or some Ponzi RTGS scheme which is not backed by any value.

No low cost house has been built to date by the state; neither does the 2018 budget have such an agenda.

In fact ZANUPF has stopped talking about ZIMASSET adopting a worse off approach of machine gun slogan kind of policies like ‘Zimbabwe is open for business “a mantra not backed by any proper plan.

The idea of refurbishing public infrastructure was neither pursued nor fulfilled, the Chief Justice recently condemned one of the most important state owned premises, the building housing the Civil Court in Harare.

Parliament still seats at the same place it sat during the colonial era with many members of parliament now seating in the gallery, the only genuine plan we know is the MDC Alliance’s intention to move the Administrative Capital to Gweru in the Midlands Province.

ZANUPF has failed to build even 1 percent of the schools it promised to build neither did they manage to build the same percentage of clinics.

The already existing health facilities are desolate with no basic drugs including painkillers, basic medical supplies are now a burden of the patient including gloves and linen .Patience are dying of avoidable challenges.

A crippling strike has been arresting the public health system, the authorities havefailed
to resolve the impasse. The state is now using threats instead of addressing the concerns of the Doctors who are earning a paltry $329 a month.

A doctor gets $72 on call allowances every month. They do 13 or calls per month which are 24 hours long so that’s $5 per 24 hours of service which is 30 cents per hour. This behavior is typical of government which lacks care for the health of its people.

Zimbabwe has 62 specialist physicians. Only 6 are in Matabeleland. The rest are in Harare and Gweru. The average is a ratio of one physician to 250000.

There are 3000 Zimbabwean doctors in the UK, more than what the Zimbabwean government is currently employing. That is how bad the brain drain has been this is due to myopic and self-centered policies.

Contrary the promise of building the new facilities, the past five years have created a death trap in our health institutions in fact Europe in 1890 had a better health system than what ZANUPF has created for the modern day Zimbabwean.

The same situation is in the education sector, teachers are threatening a crippling strike if they do not get a 100 percent salary increase. ZANUPF’s failure to dismantle its rigging machinery in the form of ghost workers is placing a premium on the public service budget.

Beyond just slogans the Anti-Corruption Commission is still invisible, the diamonds thieves are still roaming around free, the patronage infrastructure is still intact and state capture is now a Zimbabwean issue.

We restate that ZANUPF will never reform, there are no reformers in that party it is run by the same minds and the old ideas have been exposed in the past five years.

We have a duty to liquidate the vampire institution which has turned our homeland into a coconut republic.

Jacob Mafume is the PDP Spokesperson and a member of the MDC Alliance Information Committee