THE IMF AND WB ARE AT IT AGAIN: THEIR INSUFFERABLE AND DIRTY HABIT OF PROPPING UP MUGABE!
May 7, 2009 in Uncategorized
Last month, the World Bank (WB) paid for Zimbabwe’s Government of National Unity (GNU) team building exercise at Victoria Falls. The GNU was being berated for its bloated size, for issuing a new Mercedes Benz to each of the ministers, for its failure to implement democratic reforms and continued human rights violations. With such a pathetic and hopeless mob one would thing it wise to have the deadwood removed first before team-building! Today it is the WB’s sister organisation, IMF’s turn to pamper Mugabe.
When it comes to Africa the two Brentwood sisters either believe the continent can still achieve economic prosperity without the prerequisite economic prudence and the need for good governance and democratic accountability. Or else they believe such economic and political goals are too loft and totally unachievable for Africa. They have given up and therefore will work with whatever regime comes up even one as incompetent, corrupt and ruthlessly oppressive as Mugabe.
Zimbabwe was once a model African economy but has now fallen into bad times with a severe economic melt down and a political crisis. IMF and WB have played their part in Zimbabwe’s downfall. For twenty years, these two Brentwood Financial Institutions propped up Mugabe and bankroll his reckless spending at great cost to the Zimbabweans who ultimately will be expected to pay back the mountain of debt Mugabe accrued. The people paid an even bigger price as they were at the coal face of the human rights violations under the repressive regime – something the Brentwood sister institutions have yet to acknowledge ever happened in Zimbabwe.
It was IMF and WB who sponsored the first and second five-year Economic Structural Adjustment Reform Programme (ESARP) in 1990 and 1995 respectively. The programmes did not delivery the economic recovery it promised; all they did was to bankroll Mugabe’s wasteful ways and, more significantly, the confidence that he does not have to accept democratic reforms which are the true prerequisites for economic prosperity and political stability.
So what is this new IMF sponsored programme, Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility-Exogenous Shock Facility (PRGF-ESF)? Is this the beginning of a new ESARP at a time when Mugabe is stubbornly refusing to implement meaningful democratic reforms? Most of major financially players have stood firm in their demands for meaningful democratic reforms in Zimbabwe before they would restart any financial assistance to Zimbabwe. Is PRGF-ESF designed to undermine all these players’ efforts?
The ordinary Zimbabweans have paid a heavy price, many of them with their very lives, over the last three decades of this Mugabe dictatorship. The one thing the people want right now is a fresh start NOT yet another false start.
MDC made a stupid decision to join Mugabe in a power sharing deal in which Mugabe had all the dictatorial powers. The GNU has been in power for three months already and still there is no progress of many of the basic issues. And it is Mugabe who is the stumbling block. It seems IMF board is ignoring all these political realities or is it that these men and women simply do not care!
The IMF and WB have the money and Mugabe has all the political power; so the two define Zimbabwe’s destiny. The great majority of Zimbabweans have neither the money nor the political power, the dictatorship has supped them of both; they have no say. Zimbabwe’s poor and destitute will never hold the Brentwood sisters to account and of course neither can they hold Mugabe to account. So the poor are caught between the rock – a ruthless dictator with all the political power – and a hard place – WB and IMF with the deep pockets to bankroll the dictator sold on the idea that Africans have a tough skin and they actually “enjoy” all the suffering the dictator has brought upon them!
marikojones said on May 8, 2009
Wilbert
The WB and IMF are accountable to the Americans and all the other Western donors and nobody else. When it comes to Africa these two institutions have the full licence to do as they please and did just that with disastrous consequences for the poor. It is clear that the WB and IMF are set to resume full fledged financial aid to Zimbabwe regardless of what the move will do to all the concerted efforts so far to end Mugabe’s dictatorial rule.
Yes the WB and IMF are your quintessential rich but irresponsible uncle who use his money to spoil your, otherwise well behaved and responsible, son. When the harm is done the uncle with disappear and so too is his money; leaving you to deal suffer the consequences of having a spoilt brat for a son!
Wilbert, you are absolutely right; the WB and IMF are being totally irresponsible here. It is to be expected; they have no arse to be kicked and no soul to be damned!
ZimbabweLight said on May 8, 2009
Mariko my boy, you are right; the WB and IMF are the quintessential corporation with no arse to be kicked and no soul to be damned. These Brentwood Institutions’ only shareholders, the West, are not really bothered that Zimbabwe has defaulted on its US$120 million debt. It is a fortune to Zimbabwe but small change to the West.
Whilst I have no reason to believe that the IMF and WB sponsored economic reform programmes would have worked. The programmes were sound; the devil was in the implementation. The IMF and WB assumed the Mugabe regime will carry out the economic reforms required in the programme no questioned asked. The programme demanded deep cuts in the bloated and wasteful public sector, for example. The ruling elite is incompetent and corrupt but it is the very foundation of Mugabe’s dictatorship; how could he dismantle it. So the necessary economic reforms were not possible without the prerequisite political reforms.
IMF and WB have never ever called for good governance a position that suited people like Mugabe. So Zimbabwe lived in false hope of economic recovery whilst keeping the dictatorship in tact. Whilst everyone is demanding more meaningful political reforms the WB and IMF are once again playing down the political dimension and are offering to bankroll the Zimbabwe dictatorship. That is totally unacceptable and all freedom loving people must resist this abomination!
ZimbabweLight said on May 8, 2009
Zimbabwe’s economic nightmare is deeply rooted in its corrupt and repressive political system. Mugabe has made it abundantly clear that he is not willing to give an inch when it comes to good governance. I am really disappointed when someone like South African Nobel laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu, normally a level minded, does not see the cast iron link between Zimbabwe’s economic recovery and good governance.
“Now is not the time for donors to take a ‘wait and see’ approach. This is the best chance Zimbabweans have had for peace and prosperity in decades,” argued Archbishop Tutu. Nonsense!
Zimbabweans have suffered a great deal and paid a heavy price for the three decades appeasing the dictatorship. What we have now is the same dictatorship with an MDC affront. Now is the time to hold on fast to our demands for real and lasting political change and settle for nothing less!
If Zimbabwe does not get a sound political system now whilst Mugabe is under pressure, what chance do we have of doing so when he is not under pressure?
marikojones said on May 10, 2009
South Africa’s outgoing Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel is rightly credited with South Africa’s economic stability; he kept state expenditure within limits the country could afford. Something that has always been noticeably lacking in Zimbabwe ever since the country attained its independence. All hope that Finance Minister Tendai Biti would be a breath of fresh air, he will break the rotten tradition, are proving wrong.
Even if one was to accept that by the time Biti was sworn in as Finance Minister he was presented with a de facto bloated administration – the largest in the country’s history. Still as the man tasked raised the money – largely from begging – to pay all these President, Vice Presidents, PM, Deputy PMs, Ministers, Governors, etc., etc.; one had expected him to put up a fight to have the bloated regime cut to suit the country’s empty coffers. He did no such thing.
It is reported that the parties have agreed that the Zanu PF Governors who will lose their posts to create room for the MDC Governors will be paid the full Governor’s salary, allowances, etc. for the next five years! No doubt the same formula will be applies to all the other Zanu PF loyalists who will have to step down to make room for MDC ambassadors, secretaries, etc.
Zimbabwe’s public expenditure has bloomed beyond all proportion ever since the formation of this GNU and no one, no one seems to care; not even the Minister of Finance, Tendai Biti.