PRIME Minister Morgan Tsvangirai is today expected in Bulawayo to meet various stakeholders, including businesspersons, industry magnets, farmers and church leaders, but analysts say he should be clear on how his party intends to revive the economy of the second city should he win the pending polls.
Report by Njabulo Ncube
For more than a decade now, Bulawayo has been grappling with a myriad of problems, top among them a crippling water crisis and closure of companies that has seen thousands of residents thrown onto the streets. But it is the water woes that have contributed to the flight of industry and commerce from a city, which during the colonial era, was famously referred to as the “Manchester of Rhodesia”, due to its then thriving clothing and textile industry.
As the Premier arrives in Bulawayo, ostensibly to tackle the city’s problems, questions abound whether he and his MDC-T have the magic wand to revive the economic fortunes of this city of over one million inhabitants.
Critics are puzzled how the MDC-T, which is in the coalition government with Zanu PF and the MDC led by Welshman Ncube, has failed to fast-track the electrification of Mtshabezi Dam to enable authorities to pump more than 17 000 cubic litres of water daily to Bulawayo’s empty dams.
What baffles critics further regarding the Mtshabezi Dam electrification fiasco is that ministers in charge of water and electricity, Samuel Sipepa Nkomo and Elton Mangoma, are both from Tsvangirai’s party. Rashweat Mukundu, the chairperson of the Zimbabwe Democracy Institute, said the Premier, whose MDC-T dominates the Bulawayo City Council, needs to use his meeting with various stakeholders to highlight the party programme of action.
“The PM needs to give a message of hope amid concerns and fears on the coming election, but more importantly mobilise people to register and vote,” he said.
Effie Ncube, a political analyst with Matabeleland Constitution Reform Agenda, said Tsvangirai should consolidate what he has been saying — that he is an agent of change and will create jobs if elected as the next President.
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“He has previously said he will revive Bulawayo, he will assure democratic freedoms and human rights of the region and Zimbabwe in general,” he said. “But he needs to show and emphasise that he is different from (President Robert) Mugabe.
“If he portrays himself as a complete opposite of Mugabe then he is home and dry.”
But Psychology Maziwisa, the Zanu PF deputy director of information and publicity, said Tsvangirai was wasting time by his sojourn to Bulawayo at a time the city was suffocating from crippling water shortages and lack of jobs for thousands of its inhabitants.
“He is trying to take the people of Bulawayo for fools,” he charged. “What the people of that region will recall is that Tsvangirai promised at the start of the coalition government to improve lives through employment creation, industry resuscitation and food security. None of that has been achieved.”
Maziwisa accused Tsvangirai of lying to the people of Bulawayo adding he was not to be trusted.
“He basically lied to them and the problem is really that if he lied to them then what guarantee do the people of Bulawayo have that he can be trusted now especially given that we are faced with an imminent election? And so, instead of gaining sympathy, the likelihood is that Tsvangirai will leave Bulawayo a dejected and miserable politician,” he continued.
But the MDC-T points to its Jobs, Upliftment, Investment, Capital and the Environment as a salvation for the country.
