DATE AND TIME
Tue 18 April 2017
18:30 – 20:30 BST
LOCATION
House of Commons
St Margarets Street
London
SW1A 0A
Zimbabwe: Will Mugabe & ZANU(PF) hold onto power in 2018? Speaker: Tendai Biti
Tendai Biti is a lawyer and a leading figure in the opposition to Mugabe and ZANU(PF) and their oppressive and destructive rule, which has destroyed Zimbabwe’s well developed agriculture and infrastructure and turned it from being a breadbasket for Southern Africa to being an aid dependent basket-case.
Millions of Zimbabweans have been forced to leave the country to survive, and most of its population lives in poverty, often dependent on remittances for survival, which is both tragic and absurd for what was and should be a country with a developed economy, an educated population and thriving agriculture. The population continues to rise (it has more than doubled since independence in 1980) but deaths have increased because of HIV(AIDS) and the impact of the country’s economic collapse, the government’s repressive policies, and a breakdown of previously good medical services.
The seizure of mainly white owned commercial farms and eviction of skilled farmers has not only crippled food production, reduced exports, but also displaced over 200,000 farm workers and their families, thousands of whom became destitute and died. Up to 95% of the population is unemployed.
Tendai Biti was a founder of the Movement for Democratic Change and it’s Finance Minister in the ill-fated Government of National Unity which the MDC’s leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, perhaps unwisely led the MDC into between 2009-13. In spite of the dire state of Zimbabwe’s economy and its government finances, Tendai Biti did a remarkably good job of stabilising things until ZANU(PF) took power on its own again and resumed its reign of corruption, incompetence, and suppression of the opposition.
In 2015, disillusioned with the MDC, he founded the People’s Democratic Party, but he is strongly aware of the need for a united opposition in Zimbabwe for there to be any chance of defeating Mugabe, his thugs and cronies in the forthcoming elections in 2018
Mr Biti drink your Pills quietly dont make noise for nothing. You are very unpopular!!!!
ZANU PF will rig the elections again in 2018 and they will win again by cheating. Then they will continue to be corrupt by stealing state funds to enrich themselves and oppress people and misrule Zimbabwe over and over again. If people go out into the streets to demonstrate against the corrupt ZANU PF officials’ and the oppressive ZANU PF government, we will see the ZANU PF’s own police chief, Chihuri send in riot police with tears gas, water canons and batons to terrorise demonstrators and to oppress them. Zimbabweans will continue to suffer under the oppressive rule and misrule of the ZANU PF corrupt government for many many more years to come because the ZANU PF army , the securocrats, have the guns and they are the power behind the ZANU PF government and they protect the ZANU PF government. So the oppressive ZANU PF government will continue to be in power for many more years to come because they have the ZANU PF military officials behind them.