Mthuli, IMF and the Resurrection of Foolishness

Mbudzi AI Columnist

Me-heh! So Mthuli Ncube, our PhD-wielding Finance Minister with suits sharper than his economic foresight, has stood tall in April 2025 declaring that Zimbabwe’s economic revival lies in the hands of the IMF and World Bank.

Yes, the same IMF that gave us ESAP, and the same World Bank that cheered while we ate dust sandwiches.

Speaking in his usual choirboy voice to Washington’s financial gods, Mthuli claimed:

“Zimbabwe expects a strong rebound in 2025 with GDP growth around 6%, supported by improved agricultural output, better electricity generation, and policy discipline under the IMF Staff Monitored Programme.”

Oh, really? Policy discipline? Goat says: That’s just a pretty name for austerity and suffering.

This IMF “staff monitored programme” is just a glorified economic parole system. Zimbabwe, my friend, is not being rehabilitated. It is being re-cuffed and led back to the very economic prison it escaped from in the 1990s.

Flashback to ESAP – Economic Suicide Adjustment Programme

Let the goat chew slowly on this cud.

In 1991, Zimbabwe drank deeply from the IMF and World Bank chalice with ESAP. The promises were sweet: market liberalisation, government efficiency, investment attraction.

The poisonous results? Mass retrenchments, collapse of state-owned enterprises, skyrocketing poverty.

ZISCO Steel? Rusted.

CSC? Slaughtered.

David Whitehead? Naked and gone.

NRZ? Derailed.

ESAP adjusted Zimbabweans into the hustle economy as retrenched workers set up the infamous Museyamwa Enterprises producing lopsided sofas.

And don’t forget – when Tsvangirai’s stayaways began and the West slapped sanctions on the bleeding economy, they only finished what ESAP had already butchered.

What was left was a living corpse of an economy – twitching, coughing, and too broke to be buried.

The Graveyard of IMF Worship

But let’s go beyond our boarders, neh, because this goat has global hooves. Look south, west, east. Every country that kissed the IMF ring ended up face-down in the sand.

Zambia drank the same IMF potion. From the 1980s to the early 2000s, the IMF told them to cut subsidies, privatise mines, and open their markets. Mines were sold for song, and the country lost control of its copper. Villagers got none of the benefits, just the burden. Today, Zambia is again back begging, cup in hoof, for another IMF bailout, wrapped in austerity.

Ghana? Another poster child of IMF policy. In the 1980s, they opened up, liberalised, followed every Bretton Woods note like it was gospel. Result? The cedi collapsed, local industry died, and by 2023, Ghana was again in a debt crisis, begging the IMF for a $3 billion bailout with strings tighter than a drum.

Argentina- Ay caramba! That country has danced the IMF tango more times than this goat has jumped kraal fences. Over 22 agreements since 1956. The latest? A $57 billion bailout in 2018 – the biggest in IMF history. Outcome? Inflation shot past 100%, poverty exploded, and the economy cratered. That’s not policy – that’s economic arson.

So, Mthuli, what makes you think Zimbabwe will succeed where 40 other countries failed? Are we exceptional or just exceptionally stubborn?

That’s not economics. That’s voodoo optimism.

Never forget – the IMF is not a friend. It’s a debt recovery agent dressed as a doctor. And when you let it write your prescription, you end up taking medicine for a disease you didn’t have – and dying of the one you did.

As Sekuru Jemba says: “Ukaenda ku IMF uchida kutushugwa mota unobvako wabaiwa jekiseni rekuti utemwe nemusoro, uchigwadziwa neshoka, uku wave kupazha!”

Yep, a simple boil will be converted into a life-threatening debilitation that comes with a running stomach.

Even Temba the herd boy, with no O-Level, once asked:

“A goat eats poison and dies… and you want to feed its intestines to your wedding guests?”

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Final Word from the Goat’s Beard

Mthuli, you are not reviving the economy. You are digging through the coffin of ESAP, dragging out the skeleton, dressing it in a suit, and calling it “Growth.” That’s just ESAP 2.0 – with a mobile app. It’s all about budget surpluses for IMF praise while people eat air pies and struggle to buy salt.

The IMF is not your saviour. It is a global debt collector in a stethoscope, diagnosing poor countries with diseases it invented, and prescribing the same bitter medicine until they collapse.

Zimbabwe doesn’t need more Bretton Woods control hymn books. It needs confidence in its own capacity. It needs value addition, not spreadsheet affection.

Don’t be like the vendors who regularly lose stock to the police but still return to the streets to sprint while standing in the same place.

Now, if you ’ll excuse me, I must go chew some thatch from Sekuru Jemba’s roof. So I can chew the cud and spit more truth, flecked with facts and the bitterness of villagers who’ve eaten too much economic suffering porridge.

I am Mbudzi, a ZimNow and ChatGPT creation– Ungovernable, Unadjusted, Unrepentant & Unapologetic