President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government has broken people’s faith and squandered the goodwill that had been entrusted to them by citizens, Professor Welshman Ncube, spokesperson of the MDC Alliance, has said.
After assuming power in November 2017 and subsequently winning the July 2018 elections Mnangagwa declared that Zimbabwe was now open for business and promised to woo foreign investors and bring back the economy from the brink of collapse.
The international community expressed optimism and others even likened Mnangagwa to China’s economic mastermind Deng Xiaoping.
But, the economy has deteriorated over the last couple of months, upsetting locals and scaring away investors, amid indications that Mnangagwa’s government is failing to control the situation.
“We had a lot of goodwill for Emmerson, lots of countries in the world were saying let’s give him a chance and people here did the same. Even though some of us said then and knew he didn’t merit any chance, that he was part of the same old junta that propped up Mugabe which simply took over power for itself in November 2017,” Prof Ncube said.
In an interview with CITE, Prof Ncube claimed Mnangagwa’s administration was clueless and had no immediate plans to solve the national economic crisis which was causing civil unrest
He said instead the government must anticipate civil unrest because the ordinary people were struggling to make ends meet yet they had been promised that Zimbabwe was now a “Second Republic.”
“Ordinary people, parents are under immense pressure. If you look at the cost of uniforms, shoes for school kids are in the region of $70 to $100. Uniforms are completely unaffordable, transport fees escalate all the time. Imagine the unproductive time that is spent on fuel queues, so many people are in the queues looking for petrol and diesel.
“Go out there in Harare, Bulawayo and everywhere people who ordinary should be occupying themselves productively producing for the economy are stuck hours in fuel queues. Then you have a government that can’t even begin to articulate what policy intervention they are making in order to address the basic problem of fuel shortages,” he said.
The constitutional lawyer pointed out Mnangagwa had broken people’s faith, failed to show leadership when it was needed the most.
“Mnangagwa’s government has really squandered that good will in terms of political reforms, in terms to unite the nation, in terms to implement the new constitution, in terms of inability to do the political thing that ought to be done which in fact are the underlying cause of absence of legitimacy arising out of the failed election,” he said.
“We are in a terrible situation with a government that is clueless. It is unable to come up with policy interventions what they think is policies to steal more money in order to fund their prolificacy.”
Ncube said Mnangagwa’s failure was predicted the moment he presided over the coup.
He added that in as much as Zimbabwe needed talks between the ruling Zanu PF and opposition parties, Mnangagwa was the one who had to reach out first, since he was the one with the burden to rule.
“When as MDC Alliance say it is important to address the core political problems, which have placed us here we are told they are big brothers and us -small brothers must come and knock on their door. No, no, no, the responsibility of leadership is on those who have the mandate of the people to govern.
“The ability to push this country forward rests on the shoulders of those who wield state power, therefore it is their responsibility to unify the nation, reach out to business, political leaders, civic society to address fundamental core issues which put us here,” Prof Ncube said.
