Full statement:
Wednesday, 15 June 2016
Zanu PF regime is all to blame
The MDC would like to express its extreme displeasure with the recent utterances by President Robert Mugabe in which he launched a totally reckless and blistering attack on Chinese nationals who live in Zimbabwe.
Essentially, Mugabe blamed the Chinese nationals for all manner of misdemeanour ranging from externalising cash as well as abusing and impregnating local Zimbabwean women. Whilst there could be some element of truth regarding the rather unsavoury and unconventional business practices of certain Chinese nationals who live in Zimbabwe, the real source of the problems that Zimbabwe is currently facing is the rogue and insipidly corrupt Zanu PF regime.
Mugabe has always played the blame game; particularly when his illegitimate and grossly unpopular Zanu PF regime is facing mounting pressure from the MDC and all other democratic forces in the country. In the year 2000, Mugabe blamed white people for orchestrating the rejection of the new Constitution in a referendum that was held during the month of February that year. He immediately ordered and authorised an orgy of violence disguised as a so-called land reform program.
Since then, Zimbabwe’s commercial agricultural has been decimated and virtually destroyed. Despite the fact that the Zanu PF regime has taken over 8 million hectares of prime land from the former white commercial farmers for re-distribution to landless blacks, Zimbabwe is now facing the horrifying spectre of starvation which is affecting no less than 4 million people throughout the country.
The MDC has always advocated for a holistic and broad-based land reform program that will ensure that the vital commercial agricultural sector is not destroyed. Zimbabwe’s economy has always been agro-based and so it is little wonder that the virtual collapse of the country’s commercial agricultural sector has brought with it a ripple effect on the whole economy.
Factories and industries have been closing since the year 2000 as more and more viable commercial farms were crudely expropriated by the Zanu PF regime. It is saddening to note that instead of parcelling out the acquired commercial farms to people who could productively and efficiently utilise them, most of these farms were allocated to senior Zanu PF politicians and their cronies who had very little or no capacity at all to undertake viable commercial agriculture.
To date, black people who have the necessary resources and technical capacity and know how to be viable commercial farmers are still struggling to be allocated agricultural land chiefly because most of the prime land has been taken over by greedy, lazy and corrupt Zanu PF Cabinet Ministers, senior civil servants and some other such regime apologists.
The time for playing the blame game is now over. The root cause of Zimbabwe’s socio-economic malaise is the Zanu PF regime itself. Mugabe and his politically decadent and incorrigibly corrupt regime have wrecked havoc on all facets of the people’s lives. This is a regime that has passed retrogressive laws such as the so-called indigenisation law which law has made sure that both domestic and foreign direct investment is stifled and severely curtailed.
The MDC has adopted policies that will ensure that the prevailing economic decline is promptly arrested by clamping down on massive corruption as well as immediately repealing the draconian indigenisation law.
An MDC government will promote the productive and sustainable use of agricultural land by all Zimbabweans regardless of race, colour or creed. We will undertake a holistic land audit that will be deliberately geared at identifying under-utilised land as well as taking land away from certain individuals who have corruptly allocated themselves several farms.
The MDC government will be people-centred and will adopt economic policies that are locally relevant and in tune with the prevailing global trends on both micro and macro-economic stabilisation. The MDC is a social democratic political party that will ensure that the vulnerable groups in society such as women, children and the elderly will be properly taken on board in any government planning program. More importantly an MDC government will strive to build mutually beneficial relationships with the West, the East, the North and the South.
MDC: Equal Opportunities for All
Obert Gutu
National Spokesperson
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