Is Zimbabwe on the right path to recovery?

Mnangagwa has promised free and fair elections but the MDC-T, to which Cross belongings, says Mnangagwa is not sincere about holding free and fair elections because he has not implemented the necessary electoral reforms.

Cross on the other hand believes Mnangagwa is committed to free and fair elections.

“I remember in 2017, about the middle of the year, when I had a conversation with him and he said to me we have to have a free and fair election,” Cross told Parliament yesterday.

“I was shocked because I felt that he had little chance of winning a free and fair election because he is opposed by everybody; G40, Joyce Mujuru, now the Mugabes, MDC and despite that, he has stuck to his guns and I respect him for that enormously.”

A party activist said Mnangagwa had made a lot of progress but people were just focussing on one thing, the cash shortage.

“I don’t even think people should blame Mnangagwa for that. They should blame the banks because they are the ones that have the cash and are instead fuelling the black market. If it is true that they have been delivering such large sums of cash to the former President when ordinary people can only access $20, its means they have the cash but choose who should and who should not get it,” the activist said.

“But what people are not seeing is how Mnangagwa has started creating jobs through the re-opening of Shabani and Mashaba Mines, for example. Those are real jobs.

“ZISCO is opening soon and once ZISCO is back online, the economy is back online,” he said.

President Mnangagwa told chiefs in January that ZISCO would be reopened this month.

Opposition legislator Gabbuza Joel Gazbbusa has argued for years that if the government revives ZISCO it will have solved half of Zimbabwe’s problems because the revival of ZISCO will also mean the revival of Sable Chemicals, Hwange Colliery, the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority and the National Railways of Zimbabwe, all  strategic operations and major employers.

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