Maravi

(TALKZIMBABWE) Biti is asking for sympathy from the devil

Biti is asking for sympathy from the devil
Prof Jonathan Moyo, MP - Opinion
Sun, 20 Sep 2009 11:33:00 +0000

IS the MDC-T in the Coalition Government under the cover of a false paradigm for political, media and constitutional reforms to ameliorate the continuing suffering of Zimbabweans or is it actually pursuing a double-strategy to worsen and prolong that suffering by purporting to support the GPA while at the same subverting it as part of its new internal regime change plot of illegally grabbing political power from within the belly of the Government?

There are three alarming developments in our body politic that warrant this important and urgent question.

The first and most alarming development is that the Minister of Finance Tendai Biti has since the formation of the Coalition Government some seven months ago been surreptitiously working with Western donors that have imposed illegal economic sanctions against Zimbabwe to use the African Development Bank (AfDB) to fund a sell-out process through which the Coalition Government would be tricked into permanently humiliating Zimbabwe by having it declare itself to be a "Heavily Indebted Poor Country" (HIPC) in order to enable the US and Britain to takeover the running of the country using the IMF as their control-instrument of choice.

Minister Biti has authored an outrageous document to this effect dated August 30, 2009 which some American and British diplomats have been widely circulating in Harare over the past two weeks to promote what they cynically say is a HIPC Initiative for Zimbabwe designed to get the country to plead for debt-forgiveness from the donor community by declaring itself to be a collapsed economy that is sick, poor, hopeless and incapable of paying its debts whose arrears are now about US$3,1 billion.

Minister Biti's document has 32 pages with 81 paragraphs that are poorly argued and contradict each other. The circulation of that underhanded document increased this weekend with the arrival last Friday of a curious team of so-called Debt Consultants funded by Western donors through the AfDB.

The second alarming development related to the first is that the very same donors that have imposed sanctions and are surreptitiously working with Minister Biti to impel Zimbabwe into declaring itself a HIPC patient are also clandestinely conniving with Ministers Biti, Elton Mangoma (Economic Planning and Investment Promotion) and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai through the World Bank and two American sponsored NGOs based in Cape Town in South Africa-one of them coordinated by Isaac Maphosa who has a close working relationship with Minister Biti-to setup an illegal parallel government whose sinister regime change activities include creating conditions that would push Zimbabwe into declaring itself an incurable HIPC patient that cannot survive without Western mercy and charity.

The third alarming development which is an integral part of the first two is that in addition to setting up an illegal parallel government to fast-track the creation of ominous conditions for a collapsed economy to pave the way for Zimbabwe to declare itself a hopeless HIPC patient begging for debt-forgiveness, the very same countries that have imposed illegal economic sanctions against the country and which are using Minister Biti to push Zimbabwe into an HIPC trap have also setup and funded a host of NGOs numbering over 2,300 which are threatening to form a colony whose aim is to turn development-starved and vulnerable ordinary Zimbabweans in urban and rural areas into hopeless dependents of donor handouts and emergency kits.

An examination of each of these three alarming developments is in order starting with the strategy of turning Zimbabweans into donor subjects that are dependent for their livelihoods on donor trinkets. Over the last decade since its formation and particularly over the last seven months since becoming one of the three ruling parties in the Coalition Government, the MDC-T has demonstrated beyond doubt that it is ever willing and ready to conspire with Western donors who seek regime change in Zimbabwe to shun capital development projects in favour of consumable donor trinkets in the name of humanitarian assistance.

Indeed, it is as striking as it is disappointing that, over the last 10 years including the last seven months, the MDC-T and its Western backers have not supported any capital or infrastructural development in Zimbabwe such as the construction of roads, dams, schools, hospitals or clinics to give but a few examples. Instead, the MDC-T and its donors have sought “humanitarian-plus” consumable aid where the “plus” has been entirely about funding regime change initiatives such as supporting the Prime Minister’s partisan and inflammatory Newsletter or setting up of a parallel government in Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s Office in which bureaucratic incumbents exclusively drawn from the MDC-T are paid non taxable double salaries between US$700 and US$7 000.

On this score, there is now a very sharp and clear difference between the MDC-T and Zanu PF. Whereas Zanu PF has continued to push for “Empowerment First” as a nationalistic expression of the politics of development even under crippling economic sanctions, the MDC-T has been content to run around with the rhetoric of political, constitutional and media reforms to cover up its donor-driven pursuit of the politics of handouts designed to ensure that Zimbabweans live from hand to mouth so as to browbeat them into supporting illegal regime change. This is why the vast majority of the over 2,300 NGOs, whose handouts are cynically linked to the next general election, have nothing to do with development.

Soon after being sworn-in last February, Prime Minister Tsvangirai toured Harare Hospital and was shown a non-functioning boiler which needed to be replaced at a cost of US$40,000 an amount which the Prime Minister described as paltry yet none of the over 2,300 NGOs and their donors immediately came forward to assist despite having coffers into which millions of Obama dollars have been poured.

Then there is the second alarming development related to the parallel government that is being setup in the Office of the Prime Minister. Over the last two weeks, nervous officials at the World Bank including its donors, MDC-T elements in the NGO community and the media along with beleaguered mandarins in the Prime Minister’s Office have been running around with their pants down trying in vain to institute a cover up following stunning revelations that the MDC-T is using the GPA to setup a parallel government with World Bank funding.

Claims by World Bank officials in Harare that the Bank has only supported technical experts and that the support is available to all political parties are as absurd as they are insulting. The individuals affected are not technical experts by any stretch of the imagination but well known MDC-T activists.

The claim that even Zanu PF can access the funding is insulting because even fools know that Zanu PF is under illegal sanctions and that the creation of the so-called World Bank Multi-Donor Trust Fund is precisely to deny funding to anyone and anything associated with Zanu-PF. Encouraged by what it sees as the success of the funding of the parallel government, the Australian government declared last week that it will start interacting with ministers in the Coalition Government on “a selective case by case basis” in announcement which did not require the interpretation of a rocket scientist to understand that Australia will only deal with ministers in the illegal parallel government.

In the meantime, while they might succeed to confuse things down the line, which is unlikely given their breathtaking incompetence, the MDC-T's architects of the parallel government in the Prime Minister’s Office most certainly cannot cover up the trail of their tracks over the last seven months because that has been photographed beyond rational disputation. The evidence of the parallel government is overwhelming, incontrovertible and cannot be erased. More is on the way.

This is partly because the Prime Minister's Office is too bloated, with a hierarchy that is full of loquacious cronies and incompetent relatives all together numbering some 16 officers who are either principal directors or directors assisted by a host of part-time sidekicks most of whom receive scandalous top up salaries ranging from US$700 to US$7,000.

The civil service hierarchy behind the parallel government in the Prime Minister’s Office includes the following principal directors who are playing double roles: Lazarus Muriritirwa (Policy Implementation); Andrew Chadwick (Communications); Denis Murira (Public Affairs); Valentine Cinemane (Special Projects-whatever that means); Martin Rupiya (Security) and Norman Sachikonye who left a high paying job at First Mutual to join Ian Makone as principal director for Finance and Administration at a time when civil servants were earning a mere US$100.00 a month in food vouchers!

Below these principal directors are directors who are in charge of ministerial clusters and who therefore shadow the entire GPA Government and these include Moses Chundu (Economic Affairs); Rose Zigomo (Rights and Interests); Abisha Nyanguwo (Social Affairs); Ghandi Mudzingwa (Infrastructure) and Emmanuel Chimwanda (Security). Also in the hierarchy are James Maridadi (Spokesperson of the Prime Minister); Sabelo Gatsheni Ndlovu (Personal Assistant to Minister of State Godern Moyo in the Prime Minister's Office); Dumiso Matshazi who is a director manning the Bulawayo offices of the Prime Minister and Jacob Mafume who was recently moved from the United States Embassy to coordinate and link the Prime Minister’s Office, Usaid and the parallel government with the activities of over 2 300 NGOs in close liaison with Xolani Zitha, who used to work with Mafume at Zimbabwe Crisis Coalition (created and funded by Usaid) and who has now been deployed as a Personal Assistant in the Office of Lovemore Moyo in Parliament. Zitha and Mafume are specifically supposed to represent the interests of Usaid and other donors in the now controversial constitution-making process at risk of derailment.

The funding of the top up salaries and the activities of the parallel government is coming from donors such as USAID through the World Bank and also through two NGOs based in Cape Town that are funded by the same donors and one of which is coordinated by Isaac Maphosa who is working closely with Finance Minister Biti. Also of note is that these bureaucrats are operating from shadow offices scattered around Harare and Bulawayo including one in Avondale and another along Kwame Nkrumah Avenue near Ambassador Hotel in Harare.

Although the foregoing specifically deals with double-dealing civil servants in the Prime Minister's Office, available information indicates that some Cabinet Ministers received wardrobe allowances in February upon their ministerial appointments while others who have been working with the above named civil servants are also receiving very high top up salaries well above the US$7,000 a month that some of the directors are getting.

Because the funding of the parallel government is neither transparent nor accountable, and because the top up salaries being paid are ridiculously high compared to what other really hardworking civil servants are getting, and further because there is no code of conduct binding its bureaucrats, the parallel government is already embroiled in all sorts of corruption and scandals involving shocking debauchery whose disclosure will expose the moral decadence of the MDC-T and its self-righteous donors and outrage the nation beyond belief.

Finally and within the same vein as the first two alarming developments just narrated, there is the recent shocking development in which Minister Biti has written a widely circulating document he calls a "Debt and Arrears Clearance Strategy" proposing that Zimbabwe should seek the sympathy of Western donors that have imposed illegal economic sanctions to get their debt forgiveness by declaring itself to be a “Heavily Indebted Poor Country” (HIPC).

To become a HIPC, a country must voluntarily and publicly pronounce itself to be heavily indebted and poor; the IMF and World Bank must then test this self-pronouncement and if they like it, they then design a HIPC programme for the country to be run by the IMF which will assume sovereignty over that country's economic and political decisions including control of funding of key institutions such as the army ; after this, the HIPC country gets partial debt forgiveness and criteria to be met for total debt relief upon rigorous implementation of an IMF managed programme; if the country meets al the preconditions after receiving partial debt-forgiveness, then it reaches what the IMF calls “a decision point” at which the Fund and the World Bank with the agreement of the contributing bilateral donors can forgive the debt of that country.

The process is protracted with no guarantees and thus can fail at any stage before the “decision point” and the consequences of that failure can be disastrous.

What is worse about HIPC is that, even though its logic is to achieve debt and arrears clearance, its successful adoption does not bring additional funding because HIPC countries continue to borrow and contract new debt to meet development needs after receiving total debt relief.

As such, the import of this so-called debt and arrears clearance strategy sought by Minister Biti is to get Zimbabwe to humiliate itself by announcing that, since 2000 when it embarked on the historic land reform programme following which the governments of the United States and Britain along with their European, Canadian, New Zealand and Australian allies imposed illegal economic sanctions, it has become so irretrievably poor, so hopelessly inept and so heavily indebted to the same Western donors which have imposed illegal sanctions that it cannot recover and develop without their mercy and forgiveness.

In essence, Minister Biti’s strategy for Zimbabwe's debt and arrears clearance is equivalent to seeking sympathy from the devil. It never works, ask any Christian. Given that the countries that have illegally imposed economic sanctions on Zimbabwe are the same that would have to approve any HIPC status for the country, it is foolhardy for anyone, including the visiting AfDB Debt Consultants, to even contemplate the approach unless they have a sinister agenda to use the HIPC route to further collapse the Zimbabwean economy as a final chapter of the sanctions saga.

It is notable that of the over 40 countries that have gotten debt and arrears relief under HIPC, none of them was under illegal Western economic sanctions prior to attaining a HIPC status.

First things must come first and that means the illegal sanctions must first go before any consideration of going the HIPC way. In any event, Minister Biti and his other Cabinet colleagues who are well known architects and drafters of the illegal economic sanctions, especially ZIDERA, must be honourable and audacious enough to undo their terrible damage to their homeland by openly and continuously calling for the removal of the sanctions.

Without the illegal sanctions, the Zimbabwean economy would recover within a relatively short time. This is because while the country is indeed considerably indebted given its size, it is certainly not poor in natural and human resources and that’s where the solution must be found not in further economic sabotage through Minister Biti’s HIPC treachery authored in Washington and London.

Labels: COLOUR REVOLUTIONS, HIPC, MDC, TENDAI BITI

posted by MrK @ 5:25 PM