WHILE beleaguered MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai was last week gallivanting in the United States, desperately trying to reach out for a few dollars from a disinterested Uncle Sam, using the ‘abducted’ Itai Dzamara as bait, China, together with some Asian and European powers were sending the good news that Africa has waited for so long, launching the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). America was at the same time licking its wounds, lamenting the unprecedented loosening of their grip on global economic affairs. As expected, Tsvangirai could not read the mood pervading the world. He once again lost the message that the days of imperialism have lost steam. They are gone. Imperialism today looks admonished and ineffectual.
But such is the reality of both Tsvangirai and Uncle Sam’s warped political thinking that they still believe that they can cause change of status quo in Zimbabwe.
Tsvangirai, obviously feeling the strain of his increasingly waning political fortunes, wants to reincarnate himself through his old and tired tactic of galvanizing the public to rebel against the ruling ZANU PF Government.
The abduction of Dzamara was their entry point.
And his visit to America was the supposedly rallying point for raising the much needed funds.
We will not bother ourselves with Dzamara’s whereabouts, they are known and the abductees are known too according to The Saturday Herald columnist, Nathaniel Manheru.
On the other hand, America has just too much on its plate.
Its tussle over the launch of the AIIB was China’s triumph on many fronts especially for Africa, a victim of Bretton Woods institutions, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank’s debasing practices.
We welcome AIIB with open hands.
Here in Zimbabwe, America is no longer interested in any engagements with the person of Tsvangirai and his associates.
They want new faces to their project of ousting President Robert Mugabe from power.
And there are too many takers in the form of the anti-Mugabe grouping in ZANU PF for them to even give audience to Tsvangirai and to even listen about Dzamara; they too know the truth about this whole fiasco.
Their snubbing of Tsvangirai last week speaks volumes about the course and strategy they intend to take both on Zimbabwe and Tsvangirai over the next coming few months.
America is angry, very very angry with China over AIIB.
That is nothing new.
The AIIB is a threat to their hegemonic control of multilateral lending institutions.
It is a direct rival of IMF and World Bank.
It is a bane in their much prioritised control of African nations and her resources.
China, awash with the world’s biggest foreign-exchange reserves and anxious to convert them into a global power presents Zimbabwe with an opportunity to be where it rightfully should be-being unveiled and indeed becoming one of Africa’s success stories.
It has proposed not just the AIIB, but a New Development Bank with its ‘BRICS’ partners—Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa.
This again is the tonic that Zimbabwe has been looking for, partnering with countries and institutions that respect a thing called sovereignty.
Nobody questions Asia’s almost inexhaustible appetite for investment in infrastructure.
A study by the ADB in 2009 put a number on it: US$8 trillion between 2010 and 2020, of which 68 percent would be for new capacity.
As for how it is spent, 51 percent would be for electricity, 29 percent for roads and 13 percent for telecommunications.
Significantly, China has already made its mark in Zimbabwe through the signing of mega economic deals with Harare in August last year.
Its experts are already in the country, conducting feasibility studies on the major projects that will be implemented in the next coming few months.
This is where the AIIB, while an embarrassing slap in the faces of both America and Tsvangirai comes in handy for Zimbabwe’s prospects for economic recovery and development.
The AIIB needs to be treated well.
It needs our respect.
It needs our support.
It will bring real Benjamins to Zimbabwe and the rest of the developing world.
It equally needs to be explained in detail for Tsvangirai and his acolytes to understand the role and significance of China in Zimbabwe and Africa.
The AIIB is a regional international financial institution originally proposed by the Chinese government in 2013.
The objective of the bank is to finance road, rail, port, and other infrastructure construction projects.
More than twenty countries joined the AIIB at the start, but leading G7 economies, as well as South Korea and Australia, initially declined to join.
Over the past several months, more countries have signed on, and with the decision of the UK and three Eurozone economies to join, there are now about thirty members.
The bank was established with $50 billion in capital, making it roughly one-third the size of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), but that capital is expected to grow to $100 billion as more countries join.
The AIIB expects to make its first loan late this year.
This is about the time Chinese President Xi Jinping would be visiting Zimbabwe.
Tsvangirai would have been long forgotten then.
Zimbabwe would be rolling.
The Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation (Zim ASSET)- Government’s strategic economic turnaround programme would have been taken to another level.
AIIB’s real Benjamins would have cometh our way.
Let those with ears listen.