Why South Africa must not bale Zimbabwe and why it would!

As Zimbabwe get goings further and deeper into crisis, the universe of discourse still looks on from a distance and tell mixed statements of condemnation and oddly so, admiration. Strengthened by the lack of consensus on the man-made crisis that Zimbabwe has come, Mugabes government has continued to deal harshly with opponents in the urban areas by unleashing a so-called slams clearance programme dubbed accomplishment murambatsvina which has odd many homeless. To pacify the critics of this programme, operation garikai has been muted to restore the vanquished hopes of Mugabes victims. And for this, someone else early(a) than Mugabe is expected to pay. Requests for an olive branch have been elongate to many friendly or neutral countries, with south Africa and China topping the list.Observers have suggested that Mugabe prefers the loan shark who demands no internal reforms, to the more accountable loan demanding reform. In a earn to the editor (Business Day 26/07/05) Mark Wade contrasted the lack of facilities and skills to give up south Africans with decent accommodate, health care, kindly services, roads, city infrastructure with the move to give a banana republic dictator billions of our hard-earned rands to prop up a regime that has created the very policies that have destroyed his country.However, others view this as an opportunity to get Mugabe towing the ling suggesting that now that reciprocal ohm Africa seems poised to pile up out Zimbabwe should finally pluck up the courage to extr operation maximal advantage for the people of that benighted country. Such sentiments are reminiscent of those verbalized when Mugabe won the controversial two-third majority making other observers suggest that, he would become a benevolent dictator and would want to show the world that he meant well also leaving behind a inviolable legacy. More same teaching old dogs new tricks or like expecting sweet lemons?The basis upon which a loan moldiness be extende d to Zimbabwe must be based on the effect of the loan for the modify Zimbabweans. Will the loan enhance their lives and improve their access to services and humanity dignity. The answer to these questions is already obvious given a reading of the appearance in which the Zimbabwean government has conducted itself. President Mbekis argument that the loan would hear that Zimbabwean problems do not spill into South Africa has surely passed its sell-by date. South African is already home to millions of Zimbabweans displaced by the ever-tumbling economy of that country. Mugabe claimed that he is in weekly contact with Mbeki and suggested that they share ideas. This revelation makes quite diplomacy a amour of the past and suggest that Mbeki is in complicity with Mugabe in the humanitarian crisis that has visited the people of that country.Anyone who has been pursual events in rural and urban South Africa would know about the pettifoggery of high intensity removals and evictions visi ted upon the urban and rural poors through South Africas protest version of shacks clearance programme. Poor and landless people have been evicted without identify and alternative land and accommodation. These people face daily evictions from bond housing and private buildings in an espoused war on shacks that has seen the poor and landless travel from shack to shack.Perhaps the most affected are the uprise dwellers and farm workers community who face the most humiliating conditions from farm owners sanctioned by the Extension of Security of Tenure Act and the Labour Tenancy Act. Thabo Mbeki has failed to act decisively on these issues and the scourge of poverty has an unshakable impact on the masses of South African people. This makes Mbeki not different from Mugabe, and it would be double-dealing for Mbeki to lecture on Mugabe on these rights which he has not been able to permit the poor.Bailing Zimbabwe means an endorsement of the irresponsible programmes of government that wrought the economic and social woes bedeviling the poor and masses. This extended from the irresponsible managed land reform, through to the dubious operation restore order. It is expecting too much to think that any amount of silver put into a ZANU PF governments coffer would be put to any superb use now. History does not judge Mugabe and his government well on this, especially since he embarked on the self-saving and apparently self-destructive route in the name of anti-imperialism and empowerment through land reform. The people of South Africa must look at more constructive, imaginative and creative ways of assisting the unworthy masses of Zimbabwe. Bailing the Zimbabwe government is definitely not one of them.