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2008: Economy, economy, economy
Stanley Kwenda, Financial Gazette
January 24, 2008

http://www.fingaz.co.zw/story.aspx?stid=2050

Unprecedented decline overshadows all other election issues We unveil a new series this week under the banner Zimbabwe Decides, taking an in-depth look at events leading up to the March elections while providing a platform for no-holds-bared debates and analysis on various other issues related to the harmonised elections.

With elections expected in March this year, the main political parties, the governing ZANU-PF and the feuding factions of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), have begun taking their campaigns to the people. Amid all the usual sloganeering synonymous with the elections, what are the critical issues in these polls?

One thing is certain. ZANU-PF, which has dominated the country's political scene for the past 28 years, will repeat its tired mantra of attributing all the country's misfortunes to sanctions it claims have been "illegally" imposed by Western countries at the insistence of the MDC. The main opposition, ZANU-PF will once again charge, is a creation of former colonial master - Britain, to drive home the point that only the ruling party stands for "the people".

In the disputed 2000 general elections, land was ZANU-PF's campaign platform. But how many more campaigns can the party base on this issue? The MDC, which has been weakened by the October 2005 split, is on the other hand focussing on the need for a new government to right ZANU-PF's wrongs as its campaign cry.

It says a new government is needed to restore good governance and rebuild the economy, which it says has been ruined over the last 28 years of ZANU-PF rule.

Last week, the MDC launched a website explaining what the party intends to do once it gets into power. It also gives its perspective on the emotive land issue that precipitated the collapse of the country's economy, and refutes ZANU-PF accusations that it intends to return land on which the majority blacks have been resettled to its former white holders. Less than a month away from the polls, neither party has yet published a manifesto - a public declaration of intentions.

But ZANU-PF, which will be represented by President Robert Mugabe in the presidential race, is already on the trail, promising the people it will soon solve all their problems.

But it is the economy that will obviously be a major election issue, especially after the events of the past few days.

This article was written on a computer using power from a stuttering generator. The entire country has faced some of the worst power blackouts so far, piling more misery on a population already enduring water cuts and cash shortages.

Obviously, many voters remember they had a cashless Christmas and New Year holidays, and that they have had to learn to go for days without meals. When they cast their votes, the chronic water and electricity shortages that most visibly represent the failures of the ZANU-PF government will be uppermost in their minds.

Inflation as estimated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has scaled past 150,000 percent, the highest in the world and quite unusual for a country not at war.

"It will be a miracle if ZANU-PF wins this election, and such a miracle can only be understood in the context of an electoral fraud. There is a lot of despondency over how the economy is being run; prices are skyrocketing, there is no food in the shops, people are dying because there are no drugs in the hospitals," said Hopewell Gumbo, a political analyst.

The ruling party insists the crisis is a direct result of the MDC's Western sponsored campaign to topple it from power through an economic implosion. For the past nine years the government has failed to access foreign credit after the IMF and other backers of its economic reforms pulled the plug on Zimbabwe.

Following the haphazard land reforms of 2000 the United States and the European Union introduced a raft of travel bans and targeted sanctions on President Mugabe and his close lieutenants, effectively incinerating the country's finance and credit facilities.

Government apologists argue the foreign currency shortages, rapid devaluation of the local unit and hyperinflation are a result of declared and undeclared sanctions.

But government critics scoff at its attempts to absolve itself from any wrongdoing.

They cite controversial land policies, endemic corruption, unbudgeted war veterans payments and the country's involvement in the costly Democratic Republic of the Congo war as some of the major contributors to the economic malaise.

It is however, among urban voters that the steep decline in the state of the economy will be a more acutely felt grievance.

Across the country's towns, people are being forced to make demeaning changes to their lifestyles.

Bathtubs are now routinely turned into water storage facilities. Families take the initiative to catch rainwater in all types of containers. Electric stoves are obsolete, with urban families now using firewood to prepare meals they can afford, or for which they can find ingredients.

Urban life has reverted to the Stone Age.

Weeks after schools re-opened, a real issue is the plummeting standards in an education sector that was once the pride of the country.

Since 1997, when government began withdrawing support to the sector, the number of dropouts from primary to tertiary education level has soared. The Zimbabwe National Students' Union (ZINASU) conducted research last year to establish the extent of the crisis.

It reported: "To date, government only funds about three percent of the students in tertiary institutions. Due to lack of funding, students have resorted to immoral and abominable sources of funding, for example prostitution and peddling illicit drugs."

Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe (PTUZ) president Raymond Majongwe said teachers would continue to leave the country this year because of the economic meltdown, which has made it impossible for many of them to survive economically on their meagre salaries.

"We are being taken off the post. The ZANU-PF government is simply fighting for political power at the expense of the economy. It will be important for the people of Zimbabwe to think hard about the situation that we find ourselves in and then decide how they want to be governed," said Majongwe. Infrastructure at state-owned schools continues to deteriorate. At one Harare school, this reporter found four pupils sharing a single desk and one textbook.

Boarding schools are asking students to bring their own food - ranging from rice to cooking oil - because they can no longer afford to feed them. This only affects the children of the poor. Ironically, top government officials send their own offspring to institutions of learning in booming economies, particularly in the West.

Although there are growing signs that the appetite to vote is being whetted with every new crisis, there is little indication that the elections will be free and fair.

On Monday, the Zimbabwean police gave the clearest evidence yet that regionally brokered talks have failed when they barred the MDC from going ahead with a march in Harare to protest against misrule and economic mismanagement.

The police said the MDC march would cause "mayhem". There were no such concerns or bans when ZANU-PF supporters undertook the million-man march last month.

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