Mugabe Already Abusing China Loan To Buy Votes/Loyalty

Zimbabwe's Prime Minister, Morgan Tsvangirai, seen here a few days ago at a press conference at his Munhumutapa Building offices soon after his return from a begging trip to the US and Europe, is letting Mugabe and ZANU PF get away with buying loyalty and future votes using the aid from China. Rural farmers are already being registered to get fertiliser and other farming aid. The registration is being done through local ZANU PF structures and traditional leaders

ZANU PF has asked its structures in the rural areas to register people who will recieve fertiliser and other incentives, all of which will come out of the US$950 million finance facility that the government is getting from China.

Almost certainly, the condition for being registered to receive this aid will be that one be a member of ZANU PF.

This comes hot on the heels of the revival of ZANU PF "boot camps" for youths, who will continue to be indoctrinated and fed hate speech against the British, Americans and other "imperialists".

Regrettably, Prime Minister of Zimbabwe, Morgan Tsvangirai, has agreed to the continuation of the Border Gezi training camps. These camps gave birth to the notorious "Green Bombers" who were used as a paramilitary force by ZANU PF in the urban and rural areas, terrorising opposition activists and ordinary voters into "supporting" ZANU PF.

Tsvangirai agreed to the continuation of Border Gezi training earlier this year, telling news reporters that the youths would be trained in a "non-partisan" manner.

Quite how this will be enforced is anybodys guess. The MDC-T and the MDC-M do not even know what the curricula of the camps is. The Minister in charge of the training of these youths is from ZANU PF. Added to this, military personnel will also "assist" in the training.

The training had been halted because of lack of funds, as the ZANU PF regime was so broke that it was struggling to even pay attention, let alone run indoctrination camps.

With the arrival of Chinese loans and "bridging finance", the training will now resume and the resumption was announced by Saviour Kasukuwere, the ZANU PF minister of all things youth.

It is a tragedy all this.

A tragedy because, yet again, we see the Inclusive Government endorsing the practice of underhand vote and loyalty-buying.

Now, when we are supposed to diverting money to urgent life-saving issues, the Inclusive Government is instead using precious little aid from China to dish out fertiliser and other inputs to rural farmers who are already being told that the President (Robert "The Solution" Mugabe), has sourced money from China wth Gono to give them these goodies because Morgan Tsvangirai has failed to secure assistance for them from the West.

That the MDCs appear comfortable with this status quo is disturbing.