Own Correspondent

Deputy Chief Secretary to the President and Cabinet (in charge of communications) George Charamba has accused the opposition MDC Alliance of sabotaging the economy in order to force for regime change.

In a state media report, Charamba said there is a political dimension to the current challenges as the country is facing a multi-pronged assault from some elements determined to turn the public against President Mnangagwa and the Second Republic.

“There is a very strange coincidence that we have noticed over quite some months between the implosive politics within the opposition, self-implosive politics, and heightened illicit activity in the economy. You have that mayhem in the MDC whose sum effect is that of weakening the opposition in the country on the one and then you have increased below the law and out of the law activities in the economy.

“We have realised that there is a clear nexus between runaway market activities and runaway opposition politics, that more and more, the security threat to this country, the destabilisation to this country is finding expressing through the market, so there is heightened smuggling of gold, there is heightened transactions, there is release of precious foreign currency into the black market, all to create a generalised instability which have the effect of creating disenchantment on the part of the Government,” said Mr Charamba.

The MDC is presently consumed in serious power struggles due to the failure of its leaders to adhere to its own party rules and constitutionalism and with the opposition self-disemboweling, Mr Charamba said the country detractors and anti-Second Republic funders are now trying to use the market as a form of opposition against the Government.

“The politics are being shaped from the market, it is as if we are being told, if you won’t have MDC-Alliance for an opposition then we will create an opposition for you through illicit market activities, through illicit NGOs, through disgruntled unions and through embassies mostly so given to making anti-government statements, when you coalesce that you will realise that we are in a phase where destabilisation has assumed a market form. The calculation was a health sector led generalised public strike, we are aware of such plots,” said Mr Charamba.

Last week, the Government announced the suspension of phone-based mobile money transactions and trading on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange (ZSE) so as to allow for investigations into illegal dealings connected with the foreign currency black market and also to put in place reforms that restore mobile money platforms to their original purpose.