"There is a relationship between sanctions and corruption, whereupon due to incapacitation of Government or the private sector to provide competitive salaries in the region, workers end up engaging in acts of corruption to supplement what they get which is, however, unfortunate,” said Zanu PF acting spokesperson and former Minister of Finance, Patrick Chinamasa.
"The illegal sanctions have affected our economy and continuously affect the value of our currency and consequently our returns. Again, due to sanctions our institutions mandated to fight corruption have been incapacitated to investigate swiftly both local and external cases.”
Rubbish! Former Health Minister Obadiah Moyo and his associates including relatives of high ranking Zanu PF were involved in the US$60 million Drax Scandal are not poor by any stretch of the imagination.
When we talk of corruption, we are talking of the wholesale looting taking place in Marange and Chiadzwa and those benefiting are the Godfathers of corruption. The looting has been going on for decades and former Police Commissioner Augustine Chihuri is the only one who has been named. He is being asked to explain the source of his US$32 million fortune. Again, he is not poor!
Corruption was rampant before the sanctions were imposed. The EU has lifted all the sanctions imposed on Zanu PF leaders and corruption has not reduced but has, instead, continued to soar like a hunting eagle.
As long as Zanu PF remains in power, there is no hope of stamping out corruption because the party’s ruling elite are the Godfathers of corruption.
The only way out of the political and economic mess Zimbabwe finds itself in, is for the country to completely overhaul its rotten political system that has allowed the gross mismanagement, rampant corruption, rank lawlessness and 40 years of repeated rigged elections.
The country needs a new GNU that will be tasked to implemented the democratic reforms which the 2008 to 2013 GNU was supposed to implement but failed to implement even one token reform.
The new GNU will be identical to the 2008 to 2013 GNU except for one thing - both Zanu PF and MDC leaders will play no party in this new GNU. The two parties are an integral part of the rot, they cannot be trusted to reform themselves out of office as the events of the last GNU have shown.
After 40 years of blundering from pillar to post, what Zimbabwe needs is men and women with common sense and courage to admit our past mistakes and with the vision to boldly seek a better tomorrow! It will be insane and unforgivable to settle for yet another Zanu PF led GNU just to appease the country’s thieving ruling elite!
2 comments:
The most important point to come out of this discussion is the acknowledgement of the fact that the root cause of the crisis in Zimbabwe is our failed political system and the political players. Professor Moyo's suggestion that we should let the politicians sort this out in their own good time is absurd. His suggestion that there was no crisis in Zimbabwe until the November 2017 military coup is, again, nonsense.
The root cause of Zimbabwe's political and economic crisis is the country's failure to hold free, fair and credible elections and that dates back to 1980. The 2009 to 2013 GNU was an attempt by SADC to end the crisis by proposing the implementation of a raft of reforms designed to end the curse of rigged elections. Sadly, not even one reform was implemented because both Zanu PF and MDC were more interested in securing their own political position than end the crisis.
The solution to end the Zimbabwe crisis is still to implement the democratic reforms. Since Zanu Pf and MDC failed to implement any reform we must appoint other individuals who will.
"Zimbabwe is more than an individual, a group of individuals or a political party!" It is all of us!" said Blessing Vava in closing the discussion.
He is 100% right there!
Zanu PF and the ruling elite landing the country in this mess precisely because they have denied us a meaningful say in the governance of the country. The suggestion that we must continue to accept our subservient role and let the politicians decide as they see fit what happens is absurd and foolish and must be dismissed with the contempt it rightly deserve.
The solution to Zimbabwe's crisis is in restoring the people's freedoms and rights including the right to a meaningful say in the governance of the country. That, Professor Moyo, is not negotiable!
What has made corruption so rampant and impossible to uproot, as far as Zanu PF is concerned, is because it has been institutionalised.
In his Book, The Struggle Continues 50 years of Tyranny in Zimbabwe, David Coltart, tells of how he was always fighting hard to get government to allocate enough resources for education, he was the Minister of Education in the GNU. Mnangagwa, who was then Minister of Defence bragged of how Education will not be short of funds if it too had its own mining concession as did Defence and others.
“We eat what we kill!” Tendai Biti, then Minister of Finance, reminded Coltart and the nation at large. He too knew that Defence, Police, CIO and a select number of other individuals and entities were not relying on what he allocated to them but were doing their own additional killing!
Edward Chindori Chininga was Zanu MP for Guruve South and chairman of the parliamentary committee on Mines and Mining Development revealed in a parliamentary report how the Defence and others’ mining concessions worked. There were no records of the diamonds mined, quantity and quality, to whom they were sold and for how much and most important of all who were the beneficiaries. The mining concession holders and the company mining for them paid no company tax or individual tax. The cabinet was well aware of all this and approved it! That is what institutionalised looting means!
Chindori-Chininga knew his parliamentary report was going to get him into serious trouble. He died in a serious car accident a few months after presenting his report.
Patrick Chinamasa succeeded Tendai Biti as Minister of Finance and he too complained that government was only receive 1/6 of the revenue it should be getting from the diamond mining. He knows that the wholesale looting of the nation’s resources is the root cause of the country’s economic meltdown and that blaming sanctions is but a feeble excuse.
VP Chiwenga, as one of the top brass in the army, has used his share of the looted wealth from the Defence Forces’s diamond mining concession to built he C&M mansion; buy a fleet of cars; to indulge his passion for watches he has 45 gold watches; etc. Only an idiot like Chinamasa would say Chiwenga was ever “incapacitated”!
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