Sadly, this has been given a political spin as the Zanu (PF) factions have been busy trying to tarnish each other over their interaction with development agencies – accusing each other of being spies.
This has tended to divert the real discourse and derail salient issues relating to life and death matters for poor communities throughout the country. Many rural communities are only surviving through the goodwill of international donors. Hundreds of thousands of people have been empowered through income generating projects and access to knowledge that can improve their economic and financial well-being.
Our MPs, who are failing to get support from government through their basic allowances and are being forced to use their own resources to initiate projects, cannot win the war on their own. The people need government support – but they cannot get it because it is broke. It is no secret that most of the major public programmes are at a standstill because the government does not have the money to fund them. It is struggling to pay civil servants and continues to plunge the national budget further into the red.
This is where non-state actors come in. They are willing to help and have mobilised the resources. They are capable of joining hands with MPs and senators to help develop constituencies. Remember, since the current government that took over from the GNU after the 2013 elections, the Community Development Fund has been stopped due to the liquidity crunch mentioned above. Communities do not care where the money is coming from, for as long as it can help them feed their children and send them to school.
It is a big lie when some people try to politicise the aid and want us to believe that those who bring funding are doing so for purposes of regime change. That propaganda belongs to the Dark Ages! What these self-anointed spindoctors do not tell us is that, contrary to what they would want us to believe, donor money has always been coming to Zimbabwe, and MPs have always been used as conduits to relay the money to the targeted beneficiaries.
Please let’s avoid cheap political talk and concentrate on issues that better the lives of those in need.
Post published in: Editor: Wilf Mbanga
The greatest force driving regime change in Zimbabwe is the worsening economic meltdown; after decades of denying corruption was a problem and allowing its to grow and spread this cancer is now killing the economy. As long as Mugabe and Zanu PF remain in power the cancerous tumour, now the size of tennis ball will remain. Only when we have regime change will the surgery to remove the tumours finally take place. So it is now regime change or totally economic collapse!
2 million Zimbabweans are already living in abject poverty how many more is the regime going to force into abject poverty before it finally accept the inevitable and step down!
I am with a Christian group that sends money to help the poor. The only political agenda we have is that people should be self governing.
Other than that we want to spread the Good News and help people.