Tendai Biti, Zimbabwe’s finance minister, must feel stuck between a rock and a hard place. A key facet of his job is to promote Zimbabwe and bring back investors who fled in 2000 following president Robert Mugabe’s land seizures, which caused the country's gross domestic product (GDP) to plummet by more than a third in the following eight years. For that, he needs to convince investors that the country’s political situation is improving and that the ruling coalition between his Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and Mr Mugabe’s Zanu-PF, in place since early 2009, is working.
Yet the outspoken Mr Biti struggles to hide his contempt for Zanu-PF. This is hardly surprising, given his run-ins with the party, which include being arrested in 2008 for treason and having a bomb explode outside his house. The latter incident, in June, happened days after Mr Biti defied populist calls by Mr Mugabe for civil servants’ salaries to be hiked.
