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The Zanu-PF 15th Annual National People’s Conference officially began on Monday, with a Politburo meeting being held in Harare. Today, the Central Committee meets, also in Harare before delegates travel to Victoria Falls on Thursday, in time for the official opening of the conference by President Mugabe on Friday.
The event, being held under the theme “Consolidating people’s power through Zim-Asset,” will end on Saturday. The theme makes it clear that discussions at the six-day conference will focus on efforts to revive the economy, not futile agenda setting private media reports that it will also discuss and approve substantial positional changes in the party.
Indeed, with the poor state of the economy, there is no reason why the party will focus on anything else other than strategies for economic revival. Any other discussions at this stage will scatter the party’s concentration and energies too widely. People have endured economic hardship for many years and they expect the ruling party to come up with measures to ameliorate their difficult circumstances.
The conference comes against the backdrop of the loss of about 25,000 jobs on three months’ notice between July and October. The job cuts came after a Supreme Court ruling on July 17 allowed employers to dismiss workers on three months’ notice and without benefits. The cuts take their place in history as the most rapid, wide-ranging job losses to ever happen in the country.
The government later came up with a revised law that enhances worker security as well as forced employers who dismissed their workers between July and October to pay more benefits to their ex-workers retrospectively.
The conference also comes against the backdrop of some of the worst electricity load-shedding in the country. Owing to aged power plants and low water levels at Kariba where the country has its biggest power plant, Zesa has effected a load-shedding schedule of up to 18 hours a day.
It also comes against a backdrop of a forecast that the country is likely to receive normal to below normal rainfall this summer agricultural season. In ordinary terms, we are likely to experience another drought in the 2015/2016 farming season, and possible food shortage. Overall, the economy is still facing difficulties which might worsen if the lifeline agriculture sector is hit by another bad season.
But amid the challenges and on a positive note, the conference started six days after Zimbabwe welcomed Chinese President, Xi Jinping. That visit not only cemented the relations between Zimbabwe and China but also served as a shot in the arm in the implementation of the mega deals signed during President Mugabe’s visit to Beijing in August last year. During his visit to Zimbabwe, President Xi and President Mugabe witnessed the signing of 12 more big deals worth $4 billion.
Going forward, we expect many of the challenges the country is facing to be addressed as the Chinese deals seek to correct the most fundamental infrastructural bottlenecks that are contributing to the prevailing economic challenges.
We are therefore pleased that the ruling party conference will preoccupy itself with the economy. Speaking after the Politburo meeting in Harare on Monday, Zanu-PF Secretary for Information and Publicity Cde Simon Khaya Moyo said:
“We shall be assessing and exchanging views on how best we can implement the Zim-Asset clusters so that we really concentrate on improving the quality of lives of our people.
“Zim-Asset shall be our cornerstone at the conference and it is important that delegates come with an appreciation of what Zim-Asset is all about. It’s our key economic blueprint arising from our manifesto in the last election and we are hopeful that everybody by the end of the conference would be very clear about its implementation.”
He dismissed speculation that the conference will discuss positional changes.
“I want to emphasise that this is not an elective conference,” said Cde Khaya Moyo. “It’s only the congress which is elective. We must not be spreading rumours about a lot of things. The President is the only one, after the amendment of the constitution last December, who is elected and we did elect him.
“All of us are appointees and he appoints at his pleasure. We must not mix a lot of things and I appeal to the media to report on facts and avoid creating sensationalism and a lot of other ‘isms’ which do not help build the country.” Zimbabweans are looking forward to an improvement in their social and economic conditions. These will not improve if politics continues to dominate discussions in the ruling party.
Happily, the party and the government have demonstrated commitment to get the economy on even keel, with intensifying efforts to attract foreign direct investment, engagement of multilateral financial institutions, work to improve the legal framework inhibiting investment and so on.
Online Reporter