West has own problems, it won’t help Zim

THE campaigns for next Wednesday’s crucial elections have been intensifying with desperation characterising the MDC-T campaign while Zanu-PF has hit top gear. The MDC-T’s campaign received a major dent at the weekend following reports that some of the countries the party’s leader Mr Morgan Tsvangirai has been boasting that they would give him money to revive the economy are in a dire financial crisis.

At most of his rallies, Mr Tsvangirai has been bragging that he has the keys to unlock aid from the Western world in the form of financial assistance.
The MDC-T leader claims that money will flood Zimbabwe if he is elected into office and people will be plunged into poverty if they voted Zanu-PF, which is running on a campaign to economically empower Zimbabweans if elected.

At his rallies at the weekend in Bulawayo and Gweru, Mr Tsvangirai continued to boast that he had rich friends in Europe and the United States who will pour money into Zimbabwe if his party gets into power.

But the reality on the ground is different because some of those countries’ important economic sectors are filing for bankruptcy.

It shows that the MDC-T promises are   hollow  and   there   is   no   aid   that   will   come   to   Zimbabwe   in   the manner Mr Tsvangirai is promising.
In the United States, Detroit, the city   at   the    heart    of    that   country’s auto industry, has filed for bankruptcy.

The Michigan state capital has become the biggest city to file for bankruptcy in the history of the US with debts estimated at $18,5 billion.
If the bankruptcy is approved by a federal judge, it would force Detroit’s thousands of creditors into negotiations with the city’s emergency manager. This means the livelihoods, pensions and health benefits of thousands of the city’s workers face a bleak future.

We wonder if Mr Tsvangirai and his MDC-T party are aware of this latest development.
There is no way America will pour billions into Zimbabwe’s economy when it is faced with its own problems. The problems are not affecting an ordinary sector of the US but a strategic city where the crucial automobile industry is based.

Zimbabweans should not be hoodwinked by Mr Tsvangirai and the MDC-T about the prospects of their economic plan — Jobs, Upliftment, Investment and Environment (Juice). The plan will suffer a stillbirth because there will be no money from the Western capitals to oil Juice.

The Western powers have done it before. They destroyed infrastructure in Iraq pledging to the Iraqi people that once they had dealt with Saddam Hussein, they would give them aid to rebuild the country.

Up to now no meaningful aid has found its way into Iraq and long after the dethroning of Saddam Hussein, the country is still struggling to reconstruct its infrastructure. In the meantime the United States and its Western allies are exploiting Iraq’s oil.

There are numerous other examples where the Western powers have not honoured their promises.

In Zimbabwe, the Western powers will obviously demand to exploit the country’s resources in return for aid. Once the MDC-T government gives them the go ahead to exploit the resources, they will turn around and say the investment we brought you is the assistance you should be grateful for.
They will then exploit the resources for   as   long   as   they   are   still available but the huge profits from the operations will all be repatriated to the Western capitals to fund their economies while Zimbabwe gets nothing except a few thousand poor paying jobs.

It does not require a rocket scientist to see that the MDC-T is promising a pie in the sky while Zanu-PF’s economic empowerment and indigenisation programme is a tangible policy that has a strong grounding.