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(STICKY) (TALKZIMBABWE) Bitinomics: the art of hoodwinking the public

Bitinomics: the art of hoodwinking the public
By: Nancy Lovedale
Posted: Tuesday, October 26, 2010 3:19 am

THE recent revelation by Finance Minister Tendai Biti that "donors have let us down" makes for grim reading because he proposed a cash budget for Zimbabwe, which he described as “What We Gather Is What We Eat”. Although this phrase has almost become a cliché, Biti has not put it into practice.

Why did he budget for a Vote of Credit of US$800 million when his budget was a cash budget, or a “hunter-gatherer Budget”? Government received “very little” of the US$800 million it had hoped to get come from donors in the 2009/10 fiscal year, said Biti, in self-contradiction.

He made a Vote of Credit provision of US$800 million in the 2009-10 Budget, about a third of his overall budget for the year 2010; although he told the country that he would adopt a ‘Cash Budget’. A Vote of Credit doesn’t sound like cash budgeting.

Biti conceded during a budget preparation meeting in Gweru that the provision had been “wishful thinking” – (read as wishful thinking on his part).

He is the one who came up with the US$800 million figure – just under a third of the total budget of US$2,25 billion he proposed for 2010; while hoodwinking the public that we "were going to eat what we gather".

Regardless of how one feels about the actions of the donor community, the MDC-T led by Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, cannot bemoan the lack of support for Zimbabwe. It is responsible for killing brand Zimbabwe and should not cry foul when the international donor community fails to support Zimbabwe.

Ironically Biti also made an interesting revelation that it will take a long time to go to the pre-1996 production levels in the country. In a sense, he is agreeing that the Zimbabwean government had made major strides between 1980-1996 to uplift millions of black Zimbabweans who had lived under the vicious and evil Apartheid system of Ian Douglas Smith.

The year 1996 was a watershed for Zimbabwe. It was the last year in which the country enjoyed cordial relations with its former colony, Britain. The Labour Government of Tony Blair came into power in 1997 and started a vicious international campaign against Zimbabwe, after it reneged on its obligations under the Lancaster House agreement.

The MDC became a proxy of that Labour government three years later; and an unwitting puppet. Today that party is a conjoined twin of the MDC-T.

If there's anyone who has let Zimbabwe down, it is not the donors. The donors have simply responded to the call by the MDC-T to leave Zimbabwe to "crash and burn". The donor community, for ten years, was strangled and threatened by Britain and US over Zimbabwe. The MDC-T took part in that process as well.

Prime Minister Tsvangirai indicated recently that he would draw from his "international resources" to ensure that the MDC-T won the next election. Biti should, therefore, ask Tsvangirai to mobilise these resources for the good of the country.

The revelation by Biti is as lame as his statement that "We are alone!" in the fight against poverty in Zimbabwe. We have been alone for the better part of the last decade. This is not some new revelation. Thanks to ten years of MDC-T disinformation and vilification campaign against Zimbabwe.

The snub by NGOs does not come as any great surprise to those with direct experience of the untrammelled cruelties of the MDC-T campaign.

Some of the most painful episodes in the history of our country were championed by the MDC-T and today it cannot stand as a champion of reconstruction; without taking ownership of its role in the destruction of Zimbabwe.

The party fought against our sovereignty, our self-determination and our right to our ancestral lands calling the land redistribution programme a farce.

Some of us are glad that Biti’s intellectual arrogance has been deconstructed and he has realised that his economics is flawed. Those who thought he had some lofty ideas about running a battered economy like Zimbabwe should think again. The minister has simply made a mess of himself by saying one thing and doing the other.

Those who pronounced him “The Best Finance Minister in Africa” are probably burying their heads in shame somewhere in Europe.

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Nancy Lovedale writes from Beijing, China. She is an avid supporter of Dynamos FC and Arsenal FC and can be reached via: nancy_lovedale *** yahoo.com

Labels: 2011 BUDGET (ZIMBABWE), DONORS, SANCTIONS, TENDAI BITI, ZDERA

posted by MrK @ 4:44 PM