A break from nearly 4 decades of Robert Mugabes brutal authoritarian rule and economic mismanagement but hopes for a quick recovery have been dashed the country now faces the worst economic and humanitarian crisis in a decade and critics question the political will to stamp out rampant corruption and human rights abuses my guest this week is involve ways minister of Foreign Affairs and International Trade see both more you as a former army chief he was also the face of the military coup that propelled among god what to power was involved way ever be able to see genuine political and economic reform. Foreign minister cboe seen so much oil welcome to conflict zone thank you. You were the face of the military overthrow of Robert Mugabe back in 2017 as a commander you got on television in your uniform to assure the public of a stable transition back then you were the heroes of the hour now you have an economy close to collapse with fuel food electricity shortages where is the hope in zimbabwe right now world thank you very much cetera yes the change in 27. And the advent of the current government which is the 2nd dispensation was as a result of a lot of issues but among those was the issue of the economy and the disappeared the public took over an economy which had been in distress for many is for Different Reasons some of the business could be sanctions and then some of the reasons could be that management but this me say that there was hope and theres still hope. Because we have. Painful decisions to the 5 big quantum me from where it was these political decisions are the ones which appear as if theyre making people lose hope but in reality. Getting teams right and i want to talk about you mentioned sanctions you mentioned management those are certainly issues that were going to address but right now the i. M. F. Is saying that youre in an economic and humanitarian crisis the worst economic crisis in more than a decade against that backdrop id like to talk about the priorities of your government right now because you have recently made headlines for splurging millions to purchase top of the range vehicles for nearly 50 ambassadors across the globe while the state is failing to pay Civil Servants a living wage how can you justify such a spending spree when millions are facing hunger. No the whole issue. Is is is is best on the fundamentals this economy has got very strong fundamentals if that strong about sentiment those done what was that before and only the issues which we obviously forming at the moment in his fire as the economys concerned is the. Currency it has been the cottons which has caused inflation but as you are well with the auction system but mr foreign minister just to bring it back we see issue because ultimately you purchased these vehicles and just to give our viewers a bit of context they were between 40. 00 and 50000. 00 per view a call when were talking about the average Civil Servant this is the middle class in your economy they are making the equivalent of 1. 00 an 0. 80 a day and youre purchasing 40. 00 to 50000. 00 vehicles on you not out of tune with the priorities of the needs of your population with that money have been better spent elsewhere not our most sure said i would say it was talking about. The variables which the one thing for the your limits very primitive we have had to ensure that our own deployments. Are more well. And that was quite a serious issue when we took over because the conditions of our diplomats extend was. Because they were moving with as they were moving with. Something which is not. Appropriate for a deployment which is assigned for admission and therefore by variables for the deployments was quite one of those measures which would turkey to address the situation of our diplomats but foreign minister you had made it look good boy it doesnt look good in an economy where were 63 percent of the population live below the poverty line yeah but whatever the cost of those variables was not to necessarily the issue which is caused the economy to be way tease the quantum it has been like this we are changing we are forming again we are undertaking specific key decisions which are oriented to the economy and it among them is the double as they should of the extent of it but were also doing a lot of other Economic Reforms which ensures that even the Investment Development community is free to come in within the hour months of open for business lets talk a little bit more about that mantra and those reforms that you have been making in order to get the economy back on track because as you mentioned you promised that the economy would be open for business id like to begin on the economic front with your currency reforms because a really big source of tension right now has been the reintroduction of your local currency. Last year after a decade of official use of the u. S. Dollar very quickly that local currency rapidly lost value of 10 prices rocketing raising fears of renewed hyper inflation but you have been. Quoted as saying the following that the return of the zimbabwean dollar is basically stabilizing the economy from what it was. Is that really a message thats appropriate to send to the people of your country when the price of almost everything has ballooned a loaf of bread can essentially gobble up a few expansion settle the scenario which is happening on the ground is that this economy had norm wanted out of policy. Way of fixing it it only had to fiske of the fiscal side and therefore the to work on systems of success in the economy both the fiscal and the Monetary Policy had to be. Adjusted and thats why we head to introduce our own currency and our own currency is critical for our own people in terms of. Planning and in terms of expenditure yes we are facing challenges because of the changes we had to do in place and the did challenges have been that our currency was not stable and therefore we had to have been documented shows such measures which are to stubble as all but i mean this year with introduce the. Foreign minister i just want to follow up with you and ask you because to address some of this criticism though in the way that you rolled out this currency because we have a condom is saying that you rushed to reintroduce it without the backing of a foreign currency the i. M. F. Cites missteps in Foreign Exchange and monetary reforms that have failed to restore confidence Chatham House also saying that it has had limited results do you have any regrets not a whole in fact. It is appropriate and it was an appropriate decision that we introduce to our currency so that. You can side with Foreign Exchange operations and the that has been the desire of this government so we are not necessarily trying to eliminate remember we have been in this period for some time before all this. Did up when there was a shortage is when there were issues a lot of issues which would put outside the control independent of the. Authorities because of that it was important that we introduce our currency in our currency which is ok supposed to. Be a us dollar just briefly foreign minister id like to ask you because you mentioned in the beginning of our conversation that one of one of the ills that is affecting your economy is sanctions weve actually had your president saying that their impact on our daily lives is a measurable that the consequences are dire but are they really because. Or is there just your government just continuing to perpetuate a false narrative here as a convenient scapegoat the United States for example says they only have 141. 00 individuals or come come pany is singled out in your country right now in a country of 16000000. Not at all sara do all government of sanctions it to this country has caused this serious and intended consequences of all is called it a weapon of mass destruction because this is a dead out which exists now is. To study islam and to act on zimbabwe specifically that it shall not access in external support from either the i. M. F. World bank or other International Financial institutions and the because of that its means that the risk of. Perceived risk of this country whenever there is that hinging aspect of a sanction means it is higher it deters investors would lead to coming to this country despite the fed that is a mole was open for business which has been propagated by president muscle now governor and therefore we believe that these sanctions are now either live and it is fire is the situation isnt by with its content but there are causing untold sufferings not probably to the if you live but particularly to the. Must population of the people and thats not is refuted by the European Union and we are not in the United States however i would just like to ask you because youre continuing with that with this narrative and by blaming the west for your countrys problems arent you actually shooting yourself in the foot i mean you mentioned that you need foreign capital because the truth is you need very engaged in order to improve your economy which is saddled with billions of dollars in debt at the advent of the 7 the public prism the government clearly articulated us Foreign Policy objectives and that was reengagement engagement basically you are saying we must. Be a friend to everyone and that we must be and they need to know one and that zimbabwe was open for business and all objective of that process was to ensure that we are members of the family of nations who can and who can. Allow the companies but to get to from the west to come in and invest in zimbabwe and the west is encouraging and that has been the objectives and our drive to ensure that company is from the u. S. From the European Union from all of these countries from germany should come into the bubble so that they can be able to invest in the opportunities that i have the say that zimbabwe is probably presenting. The best vest with the but you need to promote investment which emerges for the movers in the International Community however now that is. That investment for Many International partners one of the precursors for that is the fact that many want you to tackle corruption in your country on july 11th president and he once again he declared war on corruption as he did in 2017 post his takeover speech and in his inaugural speech after the 28000 election so i would like to ask you why should zimbabweans and the International Community believe that these are more than just shallow phrases i mean theyre phrases that have been around for a while these are not just phrases. The president do when he. Particularly made used at the moment when the under crowd today was clear and in terms of direction in which were talking depth of corruption and theyre called up is something which we are at to more and more just. Something which is the radical and youre aware that already. 2 cabinet ministers have been trained and though it is not on the original call of the board how is it not their radical mr foreign minister when youve had when youve had more than 2 years in office and several of arrests have been made but there have been no convictions to date no convictions to date and even the president acknowledges that there is a socalled catch and release system in place. This is d w news live from berlin we are interrupting our normal programming to bring you this breaking news that joe biden has been elected president of the United States after days of watching and waiting to secure is an awesome votes in the crucial state of pennsylvania to secure victory and well get the latest from washington d. C. Im Claire Richardson a welcome to the program and our very special coverage of this breaking news democratic candidate joe biden has won the u. S. President ial election after sealing victory in the battleground state of pennsylvania major u. S. T. V. Networks and the Associated Press have called the race in his favor the 20 electoral votes of biden won in pennsylvania have allowed him to surpass the 270 votes needed to win at the election according to projections by the Associated Press he has received 284 electoral votes to republican president Donald Trumps 214. Well joining me in the studio is stacey begins from the d. W. U. S. Election team so you see now its official joe biden is president of the United States what can we expect to come next well lets just try to take it and for a moment this is very exciting and weve been waiting for several days to get a result but lets just make no mistake this has been historic run joe biden seemed like an unlikely candidate he was the oldest in the defeat of democrats the. Extremely white and old and people are like oh we dont want this we want something new progressive but here he is who is the man who fits the moment the man whos been talking about unity bringing the country together engaging in the International Community he is the man for the moment and weve seen an end to the to the negative rhetoric and the perth for all the vision of the country this is where were headed is that you say hes an unlikely candidate but in many ways he was also kind of seen as a democratic insider going into this race and it felt in some ways like we were almost seeing a repeat of 2016 where the polls had him really firmly ahead in the days coming up to this election as they had for Hillary Clinton back then were expecting to see perhaps a landslide repudiation of Donald Trumps presidency but we are now 4 days after the election it really came down to the wire didnt and yeah i mean it just goes to show a couple of things 1st of all the nation is very divided these 2 candidates donald trump and president elect joe biden could not be more diametrically opposed and you know donald trump got what 70000 some 70000000 votes donald. And joe biden 74000000. 00 so it was close and so now its up to joe biden as president to bring everyone together and now we get to see how he goes about doing that i mean yes people like to make comparisons to 2016 but lets be clear when trump was running against Hillary Clinton both of them had extremely low favor ability. People like joe biden and so hes going to have to use his character people voted for that and run take stay true to his platform to move the country forward so do you think that that likability as you call it is going to be something that will allow them allow him to reach across the aisle to republicans and to trump voters you know who are very badly wanted to see donald trump win this election and become president for a 2nd term we see well see i hope so i think that character matters and the fact that he made fun of joe biden this whole election talking about how hes been in congress for 40 years but you make connections with people and most people on either side of the aisle say the joe biden is a man who you he stands by his word hes a man of strong character and strong conviction and part of reaching out to other people and advancing agendas is being somebody that people can trust i dont think most people trusted donald trump he was able to bully his way to get and to threaten people in order to get his way but he didnt really connect with people on the other side of the aisle and this is something that joe biden has promised he will do and throughout his entire career if past is prologue this is something that is part of who he is so yeah and i think it is fair to say that the country is more divided than weve ever seen i want to get some reaction from the United States and bring in our correspondent sumi so much gonda who is standing by for us in washington d. C. Sumi what is the latest where you are in washington. Well as stacey said this really is an historic moment you know over the last few days this excruciating wait if you will for the outcome here a decisive outcome weve been kind of inching towards this moment of being able to officially called joe biden president elect the 46th president of the u. S. And also to call harris the Vice President elect lets not forget her in this she would be shes now the. First black woman to take this position and what got us here of the last day or 2 is that we have been watching these vote tallies in the state of pennsylvania and just before this this was called for joe biden we saw that that tally for his lead in the state of pennsylvania a wind up to around 30000 votes and what that tells us is that he has definitively won this election the President Trump essentially cannot catch up to that lead in the state and so the reactions you see here is on one hand already some relief if you look at some of the the comments on twitter so far and also anticipation because we dont know what were going to hear from President Trump he is not at the white house right now i should say he headed out earlier in the morning to virginia to his golf course where he is at the moment and so we are waiting to see his reaction but. The right wing media outlet here fox news has also from what ive seen call the selection for joe biden so itll be very interesting to see what the 1st reactions are from President Trump just this morning he was again casting doubt upon mail and voting so well have to see what we hear from him and see me say hes been casting doubt upon the mail in voting thats something hes been doing for the months leading up to the election and its something that became increasingly clear as those mail in votes were tallied and it appeared that increasingly favor joe biden in those crucial swing states on Election Night itself the situation appeared to heavily favor President Trump as the