Harare (New Ziana) – President Emmerson Mnangagwa was on Saturday due to officially launch the election campaign for his ruling ZANU-PF party for the August 23 vote, brimming with confidence on the back of five years of impactful economic and social developmental change under its state stewardship.
The launch takes place in Chipinge, a far-flung district in the east of the country, typical of rural regions the party draws most of its electoral support from.
President Mnangagwa is seeking a second term, and will be battling it out with ten other presidential aspirants who successfully registered on Wednesday to contest in the election.
His main rival, as in the last election in 2018, is likely to be Citizens Coalition for Change party leader, Nelson Chamisa, who also successfully registered to run as a presidential candidate.
In the last election, President Mnangagwa sought the presidential mandate from the electorate promising to ‘engineer’ fundamental positive economic and social transformation for the country, sapped by 20 years of sanctions-induced decline.
At the time he took over in 2017, Western sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe, in an attempt to force it to relent on land reforms in which government compulsorily acquired excess farmland from white farmers to resettle landless peasants, had reduced the country to near economic collapse, and driven the majority of its citizens, to destitution.
Cumulatively, the sanctions cost the economy an estimated US$100 billion over 20 years, and forced millions of the country’s citizens to emigrate, mostly as economic refugees in neighbouring countries.
That is the challenging state of affairs, including dry coffers, that President Mnangagwa inherited, and promised a sceptical electorate in 2018 to turn around if entrusted with a presidential mandate.
The electorate obliged, and gave him his first presidential mandate, and awaited delivery with bated breath.
They did not have to wait long, nor anxiously, as time went by.
First, President Mnangagwa dispensed with the notion that a developing nation can only grow and develop if it accessed funding from the developed world, or through foreign investment.
Hence, his rallying call: ‘Nyika Inovakwa Nevene Vayo’ – a country’s citizens are the masters of its destiny, and in charge of its development, first and foremost.
What followed is short of a miracle for the country.
The government, through belt-tightening and good fiscal management, mobilised domestic funding for massive investment in economic and social sectors, particularly infrastructure.
The road network countrywide, long in a dillapidated state, received one of his earliest attentions, and the result is, five years down the line, some highways that are comparable to neighbouring countries.
Dams and lakes, such as the long mooted but neglected Gwayi-Shangani lake, have been built in many places around the country, with associated irrigated farming and fishing industries, also added.
In the health and education sectors, hundreds – perhaps thousands – of clinics and schools have been constructed countrywide, mostly in rural areas using Devolution Funds.
This is in addition to increased and timely funding for small-scale rural farmers, the net effect of which, this year, saw the biggest tobacco output in the country’s history.
But perhaps his reform-centred policy impact was greatest on the economic front. After dispensing of restrictive investment laws, domestic and foreign investors flooded in, pouring billions of dollars that are fast transforming the landscape of the country’s economy.
A Chinese investor is developing a greenfield iron and steel plant in near Chivhu at a cost of over US$1 billion, another Chinese investor has just completed upgrading Hwange Power Station for over US$1 billion, and billions more have poured into platinum and lithium mining.
This has seen exports surging threefold, from just around US$3 billion the time President Mnangagwa assumed office, to nearly US$9 billion now, the bulk of it accounted for by minerals.
And despite the current election-related economic headwinds, caused by speculative currency manipulation, the economy is widely seen as poised for strong, sustained growth.
This is a tangible performance record, or scorecard, that President Mnangagwa will now be presenting to the electorate in the upcoming election battle, and is an impressive one, achieved when the odds were heavily stark against him.
A scorecard which is convincing many analysts that it should comfortably carry him and the ruling party through, with the electorate now less sceptical than in 2018 when he had no presidential track record to assess him on.
Already, President Mnangagwa and ZANU-PF have received a huge electoral boost when, on Wednesday, 53 local government candidates of the party were elected unopposed after the opposition failed to field candidates.
As it kicks off its election campaign, the party will be promising more of what it has delivered in President Mnangagwa’s first presidential term, the difference being increased tempo given the foundation has been laid successfully across the board.
New Ziana
