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Harare – Zimbabwe’s War Veterans Minister Chris Mutsvangwa, has reportedly hit out at a fellow cabinet minister, accusing him of working with the West to try and topple President Robert Mugabe.
This comes a few days after Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa urged Zimbabweans to desist from politicising the country’s economic problems by blaming outsiders.
According to News Day, Chinamasa said Zimbabwe owed a number of countries and needed to re-engage creditors if the country was to prosper.
Zimbabwe has been reeling under economic hardships for more than a decade. The sanctions were imposed in 2002 after rising political violence ahead of that year’s presidential elections.
"We should work out strategies to get those sanctions lifted, that means more engagement with those countries that say sanctions should continue. We should talk to them and we should consider it as a process," Chinamasa was quoted as saying.
'That's a wrong mentality'
Chinamasa said this last week while addressing delegates attending a round-table discussion entitled Economic Prospects for Zimbabwe and Re-engagement Process.
"If we ignore that reality, we will not go anywhere, we just go in a vicious circle. We must engage, we have to engage, if we don’t we are shutting all avenues for development," he said.
But, according to a New Zimbabwe.com report on Friday, the minister of war veterans criticised Chinamasa, saying there were some ministers in the cabinet who still held the mentality that "the white man is superior".
"They have the mentality that whatever comes from America is number one; whatever comes from British is first. That’s a wrong mentality..." Mutsvangwa was quoted as saying.
Mutsvangwa accused Chinamasa of trying to topple Mugabe by working with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
The report said Chinamasa has been working hard to get Zimbabwe back into the good graces of the IMF in a desperate bid to secure debt relief, new financial support and to improve the country’s battered image in the West.
