Covid-19 Resource Tracker
Zimbabwe continues to mobilise resources internally and externally to respond to the devastating socioeconomic effects of COVID-19. Among other efforts, the government in the 2021 national budget has set aside ZWL7 billion to recruit more health personnel, procure PPEs, testing kits and sundries required in fighting COVID-19. The government has also budgeted ZWL3.5billion to cushion 500 000 vulnerable households whose beneficiaries comprise the informal sector, returning residents and children living in the streets. On 18 February 2021, the Government through the Ministry of Health and Child Care launched the vaccination program. To date a total of 632 496 Zimbabweans have been inoculated.
Wicked Problems and Political Crisis: An impediment to National Development and Growth
The Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, Kuphukile Mlambo has urged the country to sort out its “political problems which he said played an important role in informing investment decisions”. The fact that a senior official from the Central Bank, clearly stated that political problems, which in other words points to political instability or political crisis shows how deep the Zimbabwean political question has gone. This verdict resonates with the view of a number of Civil Society Organisations and citizens. It is against this backdrop that the weekly review takes pride in interrogating the effects of political problems in hindering national development and growth under the prism of wicked problems. The term wicked problem was propounded by Rittle and Webber in 1973 in their article titled “Dilemma in a General Theory of Planning”. Rittle and Webber noted that wicked problems do not have an enumerable or an exhaustively describable set of potential solutions, nor is there a well-described set of permissible operations that may be incorporated into the plan.
The Government and the Politics of Food
A study conducted by the Zimbabwe Peace Project exposed scintillating revelations on how the government has continued to perambulate on the path of partisan politics and the politics of food. In the past the government has used food distributions as a way to pacify their supporters and attain electoral competitive advantage. It should be noted that, this sophisticated exclusionary system disregard the right to food enshrined in the constitution and it is boarders between governance miscarriage and misuse of public resources for political expediency. For the government,politics of the food knows no boundary even in times of national disaster and pandemics the government has continued to exclude people based on political affiliation. This has grave impact on the livelihoods of the poor and vulnerable citizens who are supposed to be benefiting from government food programs.
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Source: ZIMCODD
