Nothing demonstrates the increasingly delinquent behavior of the unity government than its decision last week to hold yet another conference to discuss a national task that requires urgent action and real solutions not more slogans and cheap talk. The government, with support from the World Bank, held last Wednesday and Thursday the so-called National Agriculture Conference to review the status of the agricultural sector and map out a strategy for agricultural recovery in the short to medium term. What rank madness?
What agricultural recovery is there to talk about when hired thugs masquerading as war veterans are allowed to roam the countryside looting commercial farms and evicting some of the countrys most capable food growers under the pretext of land reform?
Does it not follow that recovery of agriculture and food production can only happen in conditions of peace, law and order. The urgent task of the day is for the government to arrest and jail the paid hoodlums disrupting planting operations across the country so that farmers can grow food in peace.
Sitting all day in air-conditioned conference rooms, drinking endless cups of tea and pontificating about agriculture while Zanu (PF) thugs are busy invading farms is gross incompetence bordering on the criminal.
Elsewhere in the world, no government would last another day in office with this sort of dereliction of duty that we are seeing from the administration of Messrs Robert Mugabe, Morgan Tsvangirai and Arthur Mutambara.
And when you consider the fact that national army soldiers have been deployed on farms as is the case at Charles Locks Karori Farm in Headlands with the sole order to stop farming operations, then it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the unity government is headed for dismal failure on all the important fronts.
The government cannot resuscitate agriculture under prevailing conditions and therefore it cannot revive the economy.
Forget all talk about the government having been able to stabilise the economy or last weeks projections by the International Monetary Fund that Zimbabwe’s economy would grow by 3.7 percent this year. It is unsustainable when anarchy reigns supreme in the agricultural sector, the bedrock of Zimbabwes economy.
As with agriculture and the economy the government also looks destined to fail on constitutional reforms that are probably the most important of all the tasks that this administration must fulfill.
It is clear from all the dithering and quarrelling among the parties that the reforms are either going to flop completely or produce a compromise document authored by the three main political parties that will have little to do with furthering the rights of Zimbabweans or improving the way the country is governed. Both are undesirable outcomes.
Yet this government the first in many years to enjoy the support of nearly all Zimbabweans could achieve so much if only they could get out of the conference rooms and begin to do some work like all of us are trying to do.
Post published in: Editor: Wilf Mbanga