‘If aid has come and has been channelled otherwise than through government and we don’t know, it would be very difficult to say thank you to those who have provided the assistance,’ said Chinamasa.
But the donors are wise to Zanu (PF)’s corruption. Remember the District Development Fund looting? Money intended for rural boreholes would soon find its way to the Swiss bank accounts of fat cats. Publicly, Mugabe puts on a show of arrogance but in the background, his underlings have their begging faces on. We now have a Cabinet Committee on Aid Coordination; whatever for, if not to improve our begging skills. If we do not need these dastardly imperialists, should we not establish a Cabinet Committee on Business Revival?
Chinamasa’s begging habit knows no bounds. The latest sector of the economy to see the minister on his knees is the pension funds.
‘For Tokwe Mukosi we need $30 million to finish the project before the next rains, but I am failing to raise that money… I want the money, it’s very little money but I am failing to get it,’ he recently told the Zimbabwe Association of Pension Funds.
That right there is the problem. The people in government do not quite grasp the gravity of our predicament. They do not even understand the value of a dollar. As impoverished as we are, we somehow managed to buy each of the MPs a $30 000 luxury vehicle, as if they did not already have cars. Mugabe is flying every week, as if he has a tree in his back yard, whose branches shed wads of American dollars in autumn.
When Chinamasa recently announced the suspension of civil servants’ bonuses, Mugabe, attempting to win a popularity contest, overturned that decision. But there is no chance that government will manage to fulfil such a promise. The nurses are on strike, the doctors at government hospitals at one point downed their scalpels and stethoscopes, to press for a pay rise. The impoverished majority do not get to fly to Singapore for treatment and a nurses’ strike, for many citizens, means death.
Post published in: News