Reconstructing Zimbabwe may cost as much as US$5 billion, Zimbabwean Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai said on Friday as he opened his hands to neighboring countries.
Tsvangirai was speaking after meeting South African President Kgalema Motlanthe, who has convened the region’s finance ministers next week to devise a plan to assist their starving and desperate neighbor.
“What we are looking for is a short-term intervention to make sure we are jump-starting those institutions that affect people,” Tsvangirai told reporters in Cape Town.
PHOTO: AP
Tsvangirai, who joined a historic unity government last week with his bitter rival, Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, warned that long-term reconstruction could “run into billions of dollars, maybe as high as 5 billion.”
“Our situation is dire. The key priority areas are food, health and education,” Tsvangirai said.
Schools in Zimbabwe are shut, its economy lies shattered after 29 years of Mugabe rule, and its healthcare system is struggling to cope with a cholera epidemic that has claimed more than 3,750 lives.
Nearly 7 million people need food aid and up to 3 million have fled the country. Unemployment is at 94 percent and only 20 percent of children are going to school.
Public hospitals are closed, even though 1.3 million people have HIV. The cholera epidemic has ravaged the country, hitting more than 80,000 people since August.
Motlanthe said South Africa, chair of the Southern African Development Community bloc, had directed regional finance ministers to develop a plan to help Zimbabwe and again called for sanctions to be lifted.
“They have presented to us their preliminary plan to respond to these challenges which we have agreed to deal with. There are no figures to speak of, these are going to be crunched by technical people and finance ministers to be meeting on these issues,” Motlanthe said.
Tsvangirai said his government would first concentrate on short-term priorities. Zimbabwe is buckling under economic meltdown, characterized by the world’s highest inflation, which had officially soared to 231 million percent by last July.
Most essential civil servants, including teachers, nurses and doctors, have been on strike since last year over poor pay.
Tsvangirai promised to pay them in US dollars to counter the impact of hyperinflation and said Zimbabwe would use a multi-currency approach in the future, using the South African rand and the US dollar.
“As we proceed we will see if the Zimbabwe dollar can be re-used again,” he said.
Analysts have questioned how such bitter adversaries as Mugabe and Tsvangirai would be able to work together to curb the humanitarian crisis.
Mugabe, 84, has held for himself the powerful ministries of defense, justice and foreign affairs.
Tsvangirai has appointed his top aide Tendai Biti to the crucial post of finance minister.
To rebuild the country, they will need massive foreign investment, but western countries so far say they want to see real improvements from the government first.
Speaking in Harare on Friday, central bank governor Gideon Gono said regional and international financiers had offered Zimbabwe US$500 million in credit, but were wary of conflicting policy statements.
The swearing-in of the new government, supposed to usher in a new era of unity, was marred by the detention of Roy Bennett, a white Zimbabwean farmer who Tsvangirai had named his deputy agriculture minister.
His arrest last Friday came shortly before the swearing-in of the unity government’s Cabinet and cast immediate doubt on its credibility.
Seven people sustained mostly minor injuries in an airplane fire in South Korea, authorities said yesterday, with local media suggesting the blaze might have been caused by a portable battery stored in the overhead bin. The Air Busan plane, an Airbus A321, was set to fly to Hong Kong from Gimhae International Airport in southeastern Busan, but caught fire in the rear section on Tuesday night, the South Korean Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said. A total of 169 passengers and seven flight attendants and staff were evacuated down inflatable slides, it said. Authorities initially reported three injuries, but revised the number
One of Japan’s biggest pop stars and best-known TV hosts, Masahiro Nakai, yesterday announced his retirement over sexual misconduct allegations, reports said, in the latest scandal to rock Japan’s entertainment industry. Nakai’s announcement came after now-defunct boy band empire Johnny & Associates admitted in 2023 that its late founder, Johnny Kitagawa, for decades sexually assaulted teenage boys and young men. Nakai was a member of the now-disbanded SMAP — part of Johnny & Associates’s lucrative stable — that swept the charts in Japan and across Asia during the band’s nearly 30 years of fame. Reports emerged last month that Nakai, 52, who since
EYEING A SOLUTION: In unusually critical remarks about Russian President Vladimir Putin, US President Donald Trump said he was ‘destroying Russia by not making a deal’ US President Donald Trump on Wednesday stepped up the pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin to make a peace deal with Ukraine, threatening tougher economic measures if Moscow does not agree to end the war. Trump’s warning in a social media post came as the Republican seeks a quick solution to a grinding conflict that he had promised to end before even starting his second term. “If we don’t make a ‘deal,’ and soon, I have no other choice but to put high levels of Taxes, Tariffs, and Sanctions on anything being sold by Russia to the United States, and various other
‘BALD-FACED LIE’: The woman is accused of administering non-prescribed drugs to the one-year-old and filmed the toddler’s distress to solicit donations online A social media influencer accused of filming the torture of her baby to gain money allegedly manufactured symptoms causing the toddler to have brain surgery, a magistrate has heard. The 34-year-old Queensland woman is charged with torturing an infant and posting videos of the little girl online to build a social media following and solicit donations. A decision on her bail application in a Brisbane court was yesterday postponed after the magistrate opted to take more time before making a decision in an effort “not to be overwhelmed” by the nature of allegations “so offensive to right-thinking people.” The Sunshine Coast woman —
RSS