Thursday 23 May 2019

ZNA use new loot-all-you-want concession as collateral for $500m loan - proof Zanu PF junta is here to stay W Mukori


Last week RBZ Governor, Dr John Mangudya, and Finance Minister, Professor Mthuli Ncube, were thrilled to announce that the country has secure a $500 million loan. The loan would end the shortages of fuel, wheat, medicine and foreign currency that had plagued the nation, they said.

For a nation who import bill has ballooned into hundreds of millions of dollars as its own local industry collapsed so we imported even more whilst earning less from exports; the loan will easy the shortages but only for a month or two at most. This is voodoo economics at its worst; we borrowing money to spend it on recurrent expenditure with no or little hope of generating wealth. How are we going to repay the debt? 

Worse still, tomorrow, when the present loan is spent, we will face an even tougher challenge of raising enough to pay for the recurrent expenditure and repay the loan. 

Governor Mangudya and Minister Ncube were thrilled with the $500 million loan but many Zimbabweans out there were not; Zanu PF is dragging the nation into a debt trap. When you are in a hole, stop digging! Many people wanted to know were the loan was coming from. Bloomberg has uncovered the source of the loan.  

“The Zimbabwe National Army (ZNA) stepped in to provide collateral for the African Export-Import Bank's $500 million loan advanced to Zimbabwe recently,” reported Bulawayo 24.

“Bloomberg has reported that the loan, which will be paid over four years when production starts, is backed by a mine that Great Dyke Investments, a venture between Russian investors and the Zimbabwean military, plans to build at a cost of $4 billion.

“Bloomberg reports that the structure of the deal was decided earlier this month at a meeting attended by officials from Zimbabwe's treasury, central bank, mines ministry, Afreximbank, and Great Dyke Investments chairwoman, Hespinah Rukato, the people said. The mine could produce about 800,000 ounces of platinum group metals a year if built.”

ZNA, s***t! It does not get worse than this!

It was Tendai Biti, when he was Minister of Finance during the GNU, who first flagged the existence of a shadowy informal body, the Joint Operation Command (JOC), a Mafia type junta, comprising the top brass in the Army, Police, CIO and Prison Services headed by Robert Mugabe, Emmerson Mnangagwa and a handful of other select Zanu PF officials operating along side the formal government. 

Central government bankrolled JOC activities and its members extravagant lifestyles notable Robert Mugabe and his family whose globetrotting have broken all world records. And yet JOC has secured even more funds from other clandestine sources such as blackmarket trade in foreign currency and looting. 

The top brass in ZNA, Police, CIO, Prison Services and other JOC members were all granted mining concessions in Marange and Chiadzwa diamond fields. The late Edward Chindori Chininga, himself a former Zanu PF Minister of Mines, revealed the true nature of these concession in a parliamentary report in 2012 of which he was chairman. The concessions allowed the mining to take place with no records of quality or quality of diamonds, where the diamonds were sold and for how much, etc., etc. And so it was impossible to know how much was earned, the tax payable and so the concession holders and their partners did not pay any taxes.

In 2016 Mugabe admitted the country had been “swindled” out of US$15 billion in diamond revenue. A Canadian NGO specialising in diamonds estimated that Mugabe earned US$2 billion from diamonds in 2012 alone. Mugabe never arrested even one diamond swindler or recover one dollar. How could he when he is one of the swindlers himself. 

When Emmerson Mnangagwa took over from Mugabe following the November 2017 military coup, he promised to end corruption. A year and half down the line, he too has failed to arrest even one diamond swindler or recover one dollar.  A few weeks ago he finally admitted his failure. “Corruption is deep rooted!” he confessed.

How can he uproot corruption when he and his fellow JOC Mafia junta who helped him stage the November 2017 coup are corrupt themselves and are godfathers corruption? 

The confirmation that the ZNA and the other JOC operatives are extending their wholesale looting mining concessions from diamonds to platinum, lithium and many other resources and activities is most disconcerting. 

Of course, the top brass in the ZNA, Police, CIO and the rest of the JOC junta members KNOW they have no business holding mining concession in Marange, Great Dykes or anywhere else in the country. If anyone of them want to be miners, they must first resign the position in the Army, Police, Government or whatever. They will then be issued a mining concession subject to the same rules conditions, taxes and scrutiny as everyone else. That is exactly what they do not want and hence the reason they have propped up this Zanu PF dictatorship and will continue to do so. 

ZNA deployed many soldiers, especially in rural areas, and supplied billions of dollars from its own looted funds to help Zanu PF rig last year’s elections. ZNA’s additional Great Dykes mining concession will only increase the army’s commitment to keeping Zanu PF in power at all cost. Those of us fighting for meaningful democratic change; for free, fair and credible elections; have to fight not only Mnangagwa and his regime but the ZNA and the rest of the all power JOC Mafia backing the regime to the hilt! 

4 comments:

Nomusa Garikai said...

“That's just a slogan, just travel bans on a few people. Zimbabwe trades with every country in the world. It has a huge trading account with the United States, so sanctions are a fiction. The real sanction in this economy is ZANU-PF, the real sanction in this economy is Emmerson Mnangagwa and that's why we are in this fix. Mnangagwa is a disaster. Mnangagwa is so bad he makes Mugabe look like an angel. And Mugabe was certainly not an angel by any standard,” said Biti.

Tendai Biti do you remember who said Robert Mugabe was “father of the nation, the unflappable fountain of wisdom”? It was you, Tendai Biti during the 2008 to 2013 GNU. You were the Minister of Finance and you and your fellow MDC leaders failed to implement even one democratic reform in five years. Not one!
You lot were warned against taking part in the elections without reforms but you would not listen. All you were after is the few gravy train seats Zanu PF was giving away, you got one of the seats at the price of landing the nation in this mess.

You are a sell-out and you should just shut up!

Nomusa Garikai said...

British Prime Minister Theresa May has just announced that she leave her job as Prime Minister and by the end of July the UK will have another PM. Whoever is going to be PM, he/she will be 7 th since 1980. In the same 40 years Zimbabwe has had two leaders. The first, Robert Mugabe, came into power by rigging elections and has retained his iron grip on power by rigging elections and, from time to time, supplementing the rigging with the use of wanton violence. He was finally forced out of office at gun point when his erstwhile vote rigging and wanton violence enforcer whom, it should be said, he was getting rid of in favour of his wife and her G40 faction, ousted him first.

Although Mnangagwa and the coup gangsters promised to hold free, fair and credible elections and thus get the democratic mandate of the people of Zimbabwe, they failed to follow through. After four decades of rigged elections and absolute power the temptation to carryon was too much. The awarding of the ZNA JOC Junta members the loot-all-you-want platinum mining concession over and above the same concessions in Marange and Chiadzwa will only make the junta more and more powerful.

Many people believe Zanu PF spent as much as US$4 billion in last year’s elections extension compared to US$2 million maximum spend by all the opposition parties. The party used the money bankroll its various vote rigging and vote buying schemes including schemes to buy off opposition leaders and thus keep the opposition weak and feeble. Most of the money came from the wholesale looting taking place is Marange and Chiadzwa diamond fields. With the ZNA expending its resource base into platinum mining, Zanu PF knows its vote rigging juggernaut will be well funded.

Countries like Britain, USA and all the democratic nations the world over have done well politically and economically not so much because they have never had bad leaders, they did. The secret of their success is that their democratic system of government has

Patrick said...

The Army, Police, CIO and Prison Service have always played a pivotal role in Zimbabwe politics after all the top brass in these arms of government have been very active members of Joint Operations Command, the shadowy Mafia junta that has been the real power in Zimbabwe. It is no secret that the Army has always deployed thousands of plain-clothes soldiers to campaign for Zanu PF during elections which the same way the party had deployed freedom fighters during the 1980 elections.


So the Army is expanding its mining portifolio from diamond to platinum mining. The Russians and Chinese and other ill-repute nations are all in on the act because they know these loot-all-want mining concession are the most profitable operation ever. The local partner does not want to pay any tax and so no records are kept and so the foreign partner will declare whatever they want and they too do not pay any tax, at least not in Zimbabwe.


Mnangagwa knows that it is in his and Zanu PF's interests that the Army and other arms of government are granted these wholesale looting concession, he knows that the Army will be deploying an even big contigent of soldiers to campaign for the regime and the top brass will remain committed to the regime's shoot to kill order. The Army top brass has as much to lose as Mnangagwa and the other Zanu PF thugs if Zanu PF was to lose the elections.

Patrick said...

The 15 November 2017 military coup openned a Pandora's box which, once opened, cannot be closed again. So reports of another coup cannot be dismissed lightly!


The idea of Chiwenga replacing Mnangagwa and expect the economy to improve is naive. Zimbabwe is a pariah state and removing one dictator for another will not change that reality.