After decades of denying that corruption was
rampant is Zimbabwe, Mugabe shocked the nation in his 2016 birthday interview
with ZBC TV when he admitted the country was “been swindled out of US$15
billion in diamond revenue alone!” He never arrested one swindler or recover
one swindled dollar.
When Mnangagwa took over from Mugabe following
the November 2017 military coup that topple the dictator, he promised “zero
tolerance on corruption”. It is now nearly three years since the takeover and he
too has yet to arrest one swindler and recover one swindled dollar.
Most of people Mnangagwa has arrested for
corruption are either the small fish accused of looting the small change or likewise
the big fish accused of looting small charge. Occasionally the regime has had
to arrest the big fish accused of looting large sums of money, former Minister
of Health Obadiah Moyo being one such example. The standard procedure is to arrest
the big fish, to placate the restless public, and then realise then as soon as
it is convenient to do so.
There only big fish accused of looting whom the
regime has pursued with keen interest are former Police Commissioner Augustine Chihuri,
former Zanu PF propagandist and strategist Professor Jonathan Moyo and a few
other G40 leaders. The pursuit is to settle Zanu PF factional scores than to
root out corruption.
“Corruption is deep rooted!” Mnangagwa has
since admitted.
What Mnangagwa meant is corruption is
institutionalised. Whereas Alphonse Gabriel Capone, one of history’s most
notorious Mafia gangster, contended with bribing the Police, Judges, ordinary
citizens and killed many along the way; Mugabe and his Zanu PF thugs went one
step further, they were the state and so legalised thuggery!
Corruption was institutionalised.
In a damning article Dr Alex Magaisa has revealed
how senior Zanu PF officials looted millions of US dollars in 2007 to 2008 from
the RBZ through murky Farm Mechanisation Programme. President Emmerson
Mnangagwa pocketed US$411 728 for his farm, Pricabe Enterprises. None of the
beneficiaries paid back the loans and the bank itself was allowed to write off
the debt as a national debt.
"Both rural and non-rural farmers
benefited from the takeover of the loans by the State but I shall elaborate.
There was no scandal here, no corruption and no beneficiary refused to pay. The
State did not demand payment and that was above board," the governor of
RBZ, Gideon Gono explain.
"The RBZ undertook this quasi-fiscal
activity at the behest of Government and in the national interest.
"This was done in accordance with the then
Section 8 of the RBZ Act Chapter (22:15) which authorised State to direct the
Central Bank to carry out transactions in such a manner as the State may
require and if so requested by the State, the Bank was to make the necessary
arrangements to this end."
The list of receptions included senior Zanu PF
officials, judges and their families and friends. Gideon Gono himself was the
proud owner of a chicken farm so well-funded, everything was computerized; a
totally an unnecessary investment in a country where human labour is so cheap
and abandon. He splashed the fortune into the high-tech because he had the
money to spend.
Indeed, most, if not all, the beneficiaries of
the murky Farm Mechanisation Programme and many, many other similar looting
schemes would have refused to take the money if they had known they would be expected
to pay it back because they knew their hare-brain projects would fail.
Institutionalised corruption is the root cause
of Zimbabwe’s total economic meltdown, how anyone can claim that to be in the “national
interest” beggars belief!
Why the MDC failed to implement the democratic
reforms which would have stopped Zanu PF rigging elections when they had the
golden opportunity to do so during the 2008 to 2013 GNU and, to make matters
worse, keep participating in flawed elections to give Zanu PF legitimacy; is a
measure of just how hopelessly lost we are!
It is foolish that those who participated in
flawed elections and thus gave the vote rigging Zanu PF regime legitimacy are
the ones leading the street protests; supposedly to end corruption! Of course,
this is just a political gimmick; you do not fight to legitimise a mafia regime
today and then hope to end corruption the next day.
Chamisa and the rest of the opposition
candidates will be participating in the 2023 elections with no reforms in place
just as they have done in the past. Mark my words!
As long as Zanu PF is able to rig elections and
remain the state and controlling all of the state institutions then corruption
will remain rampant because with Zanu PF in power corruption will always remain
institutionalised. So, if we are serious about ending corruption, we must first
stop Zanu PF rigging the elections and thus deprive the party the state power
and authority!
9 comments:
Of course, these were state approved looting schemes! As a bank Gono would have known that one does not give a loan to anyone with not hope of it being pay back. If this was the State being generous, these why were the same individuals getting the free cash whilst the overwhelming majority got nothing! Only a corrupt person like Gono could ever stand up and claim that was in the national interest!
We have a dysfunctional government and to expect a meaningful resolution of this matter is therefore unrealistic. The people of Zimbabwe will have to bite the bullet, admit the country is a Banana Republic and the only way the can be any meaningful end to the economic and political crisis in the country is by resolving to curse of rigged elections and bad governance.
Zimbabweans should have demanded the holding of free, fair and credible elections and rejected the result of rigged July 2018 elections. Zimbabwe is a pariah state and most countries have even stopped giving the country humanitarian aid because of the country's reputation as corrupt nation. It is our responsibility to restore good governance or pay dearly for it!
Even if the nurses were to get the Z$203 332 they are asking for; will they have the confidence to work in our hospitals and clinics without even something as basic as clean running water let alone the PPE knowing fully well how many people have corona virus out there? This is just a futile exercise that will accomplish nothing of substance! Nothing!
President Mnangagwa issued a presidential pardon to convicts back in March to decongest prisons as a way to stop the spread of the coronavirus.
The virus has however since breached prison walls and the trend is likely to get worse as new people are being imprisoned for various crimes.
Given the unhygienic conditions in our prison, there is no doubt prisons will be covid-19 hotspots!
Chikurubi Maximum Complex has recorded 9 positive cases of covid 19 but no isolation yet in place. These patients are still coming to work and physically interacting with others.
This is a nightmare that we all know was coming and now that it is here we are dumbfounded!
ZIMBABWE senior hospital doctors have given the government 14 days to address their grievances or they will withdraw their services.
The doctors said after the expiry of the ultimatum, they will no longer be able to continue to report for work.
In a notice of intent by the Zimbabwe Senior Hospitals Doctors Association (ZSHDA) said the government must make Covid-19 testing readily available in all hospitals so that they can be able to offer seamless services.
It is of course shocking that most of our hospitals have no covid 19 testing facilities but given this is Zimbabwe, the country whose blundering incompetence knows no bounds, it is to be expected.
The real surprise here is that the political reality that Zimbabwe is a pariah state has not yet sunk in. As long as Zimbabwe remains a pariah state then nothing much will change!
If the truth be told, and it must be told, the 2007 to 2008 RBZ administered Farm Mechanisation Programme was just one of the many similar schemes designed to help the ordinary Zimbabwean in theory but in practice to benefit the ruling elite. Such schemes were common even during the 2008 to 2013 GNU and Alex Magaisa knows about them but said nothing because of his highly selective memory.
Magaisa must know that the US$4 million spent on his former boss Morgan Tsvangirai's Highlands mansion was given as a loan whose repayments terms were deliberately left vague, for example. The message was clear as a bell, if Mugabe was pleased with Tsvangirai, he would get to keep the mansion and never have to repay a single dollar for it.
Of course, Tsvangirai knew that the one thing Mugabe dreaded the most was having his Zanu PF dictatorship dismantle by the implementation of the SADC sponsored democratic reforms. Tsvangirai was glad to oblige the dictator, he did not implement even one democratic reforms in five years of the GNU. Tsvangirai kept the mansion!
“Those who are saying Farm Mechanisation was for Free, are telling blatant lies. I paid 10bn for mine, which was worked out as the usd equivalent then. Everyone has to pay. CORRUPTION has to be exposed. THANK YOU ALEX MAGAISA,BSR,” said Bhasikiti.
In response, Jonathan Moyo responded saying;
“You know @KbhasikitiGmai1 this claim you keep making that you paid back is precisely what is bogus & corrupt. You say you paid back “a USD loan” in 10 BILLION useless Zim dollars. Don’t you see that this Zim dollar payment of yours, using a false USD exchange rate, was corrupt?”
This notion that the Farm Mechanisation was limited to 2007 to 2008 is rubbish. Zanu has had a similar scheme in one form or another for donkey years, in recent years it was called Command Agriculture administered by the President and not the Bank. US$ 3.2 billion were allocated to the scheme and no one could account for the money!
@ Gideon Gono
I recall in October/November 2009 when the former President, R G Mugabe, former Prime Minister Dr M R Tsvangirai had to use a quasi-fiscal intervention to acquire the PM's Highlands home for $1,5m just to settle a dispute over the residence status of Dr Tsvangirai which had become one of the sticky issues and had led to an MDC-T disengagement from Government of National Unity (GNU 16 October,2009). Approval to pay for the house was given to me on 13 November 2009 and the State acquired this "debt" and eventually wrote it off.
As stated already, Brother Magaisa, and company talk of transparency and good governance that comes with publication of information; this is positive debate but then people should not be selective in their dissemination of information as seems to have been the case in the BSR. Why were prominent figures in the MDC-A and MDC-T not mentioned?
Hon. T Khupe, Acting President of MDC-A Hon. Welshman Ncube, the late Hon. Gasela (MHDSRIEP), late Hon Dumiso Dabengwa (MHDSRIEP) and many others from MDC-T and MDC-A as well as other political and social formations who were not published in the said BSR were beneficiaries of this noble programme. Several Hon Members of Parliament and Senators, across the divide, also benefited from other State Programmes for which they were not required to pay back. The issue of cost and benefit must not however be a one legged accounting entry. We must account for the benefit the State got from the individual concerned.
These benefits relate to employment creation and keeping people of the streets of hunger, social delinquency and crime, tax paid to the State by the employees who would otherwise remain unemployed, exports generated in some cases and import substitutions, among others. I bring this out so that we are not parochial or blinded by emotions.
It is only after reading this that it becomes clear why Morgan Tsvangirai and his fellow MDC leaders have failed to implement even one democratic reform in five years of the GNU. Not one!
"I have got a record of everything that I have worked for, 36 years working formally, 10 of which I was central bank governor, 26 of which I was in the private sector, then of course another seven years after I retired," said the once CBZ chief executive.
"So, I have got an account of virtually everything.
"Coming specially to the farming issue, in 2001 and at the height of the land reform programme, I went to His Excellency, the former President (Robert Mugabe) and in-fact, the current President (Mnangagwa) as well and indicated to them that every province has given Gono an allocation of a farm.
"But sadly, I am able to pay for my own farm.
"So, I am a proud owner of a titled farm which is paid for through a loan which is not even from CBZ but from Barclays Bank. It had to go through London for approval."
Gono added, "When it comes to mechanisation, everything that I have from my farm is something that I paid for," he said.
There was so much money being printed, moved from one account to another, the exchange rate was changing on a daily basis, so many people being granted loans, etc., etc. Can he account for what was going on in the bank for even one day, any day? How then is able to account for what went on 36 years when he cannot account for what went on in a day?
The total collapse of the Z$ during Gono’s time, completely destroyed the country’s economy and forced millions into abject poverty from which many have never recovered. It is just shocking how indifferent Gono is to it all just like the rest in Zanu PF are!
If there is justice this side of the grave then the likes of Gideon Gono must be held to account for all the suffering and deaths they have brought into this world!
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