Carte Blanche with Perry

First published at  The Source Early in November 2014, as tensions rose in ZANU-PF, Emmerson Mnangagwa spoke with a small group of his supporters in his home town, Kwekwe. He described to them how, in those tense hours of transition into independence, he had stayed up with President Robert Mugabe to hold midnight negotiations with Ian Smith and his negotiator David Smith. “It was just President Mugabe and myself at one side and the two Smiths on the other side. I saw (the transition) happening with my own eyes, step by step, while I sat next to President Mugabe,” he said. Around the time Mnangagwa was speaking to his allies, his rival Joice Mujuru and her own backers were under siege from Grace Mugabe. It was a time in which loyalties were being questioned, and Mnangagwa was laying out his. When the economic crisis of 2008 threatened to sink the government, Mnangagwa told his people, it was to him that Mugabe turned for leadership. ...

That China has emerged as a global economic powerhouse especially in the aftermaths of the global financial crisis cannot be disputed. In fact, it is credited as having been the key driver of global economic growth, in a period where the western economic markets were largely subdued. Africa has benefitted immensely from the growth of the Chinese economy in the recent past. Statistics show that by the end of 2012, China`s Foreign Direct Investment in the continent approached the $20 billion mark. For all intents and purposes, this is a significant amount of investment which goes to show the prominence with which the so called ‘sleeping giant’ is rising. Zimbabwe has increasingly become more reliant on China, on the back of the ‘look east policy’ being pursued by the Zimbabwean government. Chinese owned Anjin investments invested $400 million to form a joint venture with the Zimbabwean government to mine diamonds in the Marange fields. Furthermore, various companies in the count...