ZESA Holdings executive board chairperson Sydney Gata yesterday struggled for answers after he was cornered by the Tendai Biti led Public Accounts Committee to explain how the parastatal secured a US$35 million loan from the Afreximbank without parliamentary approval.
Besides the opaque US$35m loan deal, the committee also questioned
the awarding of the Gwanda solar project to Wicknell Chivayo, PME transformer
deal as well as Sakunda Holdings' Dema Power project.
This is just a bit of theatrical drama and no one enjoys it more
than the opposition MPs like Tendai Biti, Themba Mliswa, Priscilla
Misihairabwi-Mushonga, etc.; they consider is as proof they are doing a splendid
job as oppositions MPs. They are positioning themselves ahead of the opposition
park hunting for the few gravy train seats Zanu PF has been giving away since
the 2013 elections.
Zanu PF got itself into trouble with SADC and AU for blatantly cheating
and using wanton violence in the 2008 elections. The party was forced to go
into the 2008 to 2013 GNU whose primary purpose was to implement a raft of
democratic reforms to restore the individual freedoms and rights including
reforms to ensure future elections were free, fair and credible.
The task of implementing the reforms fall to Morgan Tsvangirai and
his MDC friends. Mugabe and his Zanu PF cronies hated having to share power
with the MDC but what they dreaded the most was having the reforms implemented
and strip away the party’s carte blanche dictatorial powers that had kept the
party in power ever since the country’s independence in 1980.
As President in the GNU, Mugabe saw to it that MDC leaders were pampered
and denied nothing the gravy train had to offer. They were given ministerial
limos, very generous salaries and allowances, a US$4 million mansion for
Tsvangirai, etc., etc. With their snouts in the feeding trough, the MDC leaders
forgot about the reforms and deaf to anyone reminding them of the need to implement
reforms.
Indeed, the odd occasion the MDC leaders said anything during the
GNU, it was to take turns in singing the praises of Robert Mugabe. Tendai Biti described
Mugabe as “unflappable father of the nation and fountain of all wisdom”! Priscilla
Misihairabwi-Mushonga was in such awe she was “speechless”.
MDC leaders failed to implement even one democratic reform in five
years of the GNU. Not one! And hence the reason the nation is still stuck with
this corrupt, incompetent and tyrannical Zanu PF dictatorship.
Mugabe and his Zanu PF cronies realised during the GNU that they
can keep their dictatorial powers and rig elections and will avoid the GNU
sin-bin as long as the party got the opposition to participate in elections. And
so, ever since the 2013 elections, the party has offered a few gravy train
seats plus a share of the annual Political Party Finance Act pay out as bait.
Bait the likes of Tendai Biti, Nelson Chamisa and everyone in the MDC plus many,
many others in the opposition camp have found irresistible.
Of course, everyone in the opposition camp participating in these
flawed and illegal elections, ZEC has even failed to produce something as basic
as a verified voters’ roll, KNEW Zanu PF was rigging the elections and that by
participating they are giving legitimacy to the regime.
Zanu PF’s vote rigging powers are limitless, having no verified
voters’ roll alone offers an infinite ways one can rig the vote; and so the
party is guaranteed to win 2/3 or so majority plus the presidency. With it
clear majority Zanu PF is enjoying absolute power and riding roughshod over the
people, denying them their freedoms and rights, much as the party had done
before the 2008 GNU.
Tendai Biti and others in the opposition leaders, lucky enough to
have won the few gravy train seats would want the nation to believe their
presence in parliament is making a world of difference to the way Zimbabwe is
governed. They are justifying why they participated in the July 2018 elections
and why they must participate in the 2023 elections even though Zanu PF will
rig those elections too!
"I'm disappointed with the management of Zesa for failing to
appear before this committee on a matter which they knew they had to answer on
specific matters, especially the matter of the 2019 forensic audit report,”
said Tendai Biti.
"We express disappointment that Zesa did not come armed with the relevant
personnel that was present at that time to help answer the committee's specific
questions.”
Dr Sydney Gata was appointed the first GM of ZESA soon after its
formation in the late 1980s for no other reason other than that he was Robert
Mugabe’s brother-in-law. Gata had to divorce his wife to marry Mugabe’s sister
and the appointment was delayed when he was suspected of dragging his feet over
the divorce.
Gata’s tenure as ZESA’s GM was marked by gross mismanagement,
rampant corruption and abuse of office. By the time Gata finally left ZESA, the
parastatal was in a real mess. It beggars belief that Gata was ever allowed
back to work for ZESA. He considers himself a part of the Zanu PF ruling elite
and hence the reason he is back at ZESA – this is a political appointment and
merit has nothing to do with it!
Other than express his “disappointment” with the criminal waste of
human and material resources at ZESA, there is very little else Tendai Biti and
his parliamentary committee can do about it. Tendai Biti is nothing but a Chihuahua
barking at a marauding head of elephants, they will not interrupt their feeding
because they fear of being eaten alive by the Chihuahua!
16 comments:
Zanu PF blatantly rigged the 2018 elections, the regime failed to produce something as basic as a verified voters' roll, and there was a deafening public silence. Alex Magaisa, Professor Madhuku, Professor Jonathan Moyo and many others have gone into overdrive over whether Mnangagwa should have informed the nation when Mohadi resigned! No wonder Zimbabwe is is a real mess, we really like to make mountains out of molehills
Now that China has established it colonial influence, Zanu PF is nothing but China's puppet given China's hold on those in power and the nation's wealth, China will never allow Zimbabwe to become a democratic nation.
It will come as no surprise if China is not only actively supporting the military Junta in Myanmar but was the one that actively supported the 1st February 2021 military coup. It is no secret that China was unhappy to see democracy take root in Myanmar. China will be equally determined to see Zimbabwe remain a dysfunctional one party dictatorship!
Tendai Biti and his fellow MDC friends had the golden opportunity to implement the democratic reforms and dismantle the Zanu PF dictatorship once and once for all. Mugabe and his Zanu PF cronies knew the bribe of the gravy train good-life, “Vhara muromo!” as one would say in Shona was working wonders on the MDC leaders.
“Mazivanhu eMDC adzidza kudya anyerere!” (MDC people have learned to enjoy the gravy train good-life and no rock the boat!) Zanu PF mocked the MDC leaders when asked why Tsvangirai and company were not implementing the reforms.
The real big surprise for me was that MDC leaders were so naive not to see what was going on. How was it possible that all the MDC leaders could be so narrow, thick and slow and to remain in this stupefied state for five years! When they started falling over each other in singing Mugabe’s praises it was clear they were beyond the pale!
Tendai Biti and his fellow MDC leaders have never imagined Zimbabwe being ruled by anyone else other than Zanu PF and hence the reason their failure to implement any reforms and dismantle the Zanu PF dictatorship was the natural thing to do. They have settled for the few gravy train seats Zanu PF has offered them.
Yes Tendai Biti and company are quite content to be official opposition party much the same way Abel Muzorewa was content to be Ian Smith’s side kick. It is most disconcerting when a human being forfeit the chance to be a human being and be a barking Chihuahua instead. Worst of all these village idiots are fostering this Zanu PF dictatorship on the nation by giving it legitimacy and thus forcing the rest of us to accept the reality of rigged elections as normal.
@ Arthur Mntungwa
“Nothing new here. Old stories about The Gukurahundi ZANU's waywardness, the GNU and reforms etc, now boring. Its water under the bridge.
We need new strategies and tactics to deal with, and correct these past errors, rather than non-stop preaching about them, as if we don’t know about them.
How does that help the current situation?
You run the risk of alienating people, wena Guramatunhu.”
Zanu PF has managed to stay in power for the last 41 years because it rigged the elections we have not learned how the party has done this and hence the reason we have failed to make them stop. During the GNU, MDC leaders had the best chance ever to stop Zanu PF rigging the elections but they clearly had no idea how this was to be done. These are all, old stories.
As long as Zanu PF is able to rig elections, the party will remain in office there will be no escaping from the economic and political mess we find ourselves in. Any one at the coal face of this mess will be desperate for a way out!
The way out of Zimbabwe’s economic and political mess is by stopping Zanu PF rigging the elections and to do it one must go back to the old stories and learn why we failed to stop Zanu PF rigging elections so we do not make the same mistake again.
Only a fool will refuse to go back to the old stories and continue making the same mistakes because the old stories are “water under the bridge!”
@ Hosini
“I hoped that by this time around Guramatunhu would have formed his own party that will showcase how to deal with the monster once and for all.”
No few than 130 political parties participated in the July 2018 elections and still you want more political parties to be formed!
Zimbabwe is not in this economic and political mess because there are not enough political parties in the country.
The country is in this economic and political mess because there are political parties like MDC who got the golden opportunity to implement the democratic reforms and they sold-out.
The country is in the mess also because the people, electorate, themselves are naive and gullible and were easily conned by the corrupt and incompetent politicians.
We can have an additional 130 new political parties but how will that stop all of them selling out especially when the electorate are naive and will follow anyone blindly no questions asked!
@ She Makambe
“This Patrick Guramatunhu is now boring us. If he has running out what to write, he should just keep quiet. You can not be writing about the same issue which happened more than 10 years ago. The Public Accounts Committee was grilling a public officer for sleeping on the job. What is wrong with that? So because there were no reforms that were implemented 10 years ago, the country must stop? Come on my brother.”
There are many reasons we should be talking about MDC leaders’ failure to implement the democratic reforms during the 2008 to 2013 GNU. Here are just some of the reasons:
Like it or not we are still paying dearly for Tendai Biti and company’s betrayal; Zimbabwe is still a pariah state ruled by corrupt, incompetent and murderous tyrants who are able to rig elections because MDC failed to implement any reforms when they had the golden opportunity to do so.
MDC leaders have changed the goal post, before the GNU to demand was for democratic reforms leading to free and fair elections. Since the GNU MDC leaders are now telling the nation we can participate in flawed and illegal elections in which we know Zanu PF is rigging because MDC have devised Winning In Rigged Elections (WIRE) strategies. This is just nonsense because only Tendai Biti and a few others will win the few gravy train seats Zanu PF gives away as bait leaving the nation stuck with the corrupt and incompetent Zanu PF dictatorship. Only a fool would believe that having a Chihuahua barking will stop the marauding elephants!
Some of us still read the Bible, stories that happened over 2 000 years ago because there are important lessons to be learned. If something that happened 2 000 years ago in a far and distant land is still relevant to me you bet something that happened to me in my own home is very much relevant. Of course, there are nincompoop who want Gukurahundi, GNU and many other similar events airbrushed out of our history because they do not want to be held to account for what happened. Only a fool would let a nincompoop have the better of him!
@ Chamisa
“A: We have done our best. We have gone to Sadc. We continue to go to the AU. We continue to appeal to (South African) President (Cyril) Ramaphosa and also South Africa to play a role to bring us together.
When two brothers are not agreeing, there is need for a third brother, and we think that South Africa and even Botswana, Malawi or any other brother from Sadc or the AU would be an appropriate umpire to help underwrite and scaffold the coming together of brothers that are not agreeing.
So, yes, we still hope that it's possible for people to agree on reforms. We have said we do not want to sit down to share power or to share government.
We want to share a vision. We want to share a trajectory to the future.
We want to share a future and we want to share the reforms that we need to see so that there is no dispute out of any election, there is no dispute out of any governance process, there is no dispute out of any kind of attempt to resolve political processes or governance processes.”
Chamisa has a very selective memory and is in denial of the truth. SADC did bring MDC and Zanu PF together in the 2008 to 2013 GNU. SADC leaders did remind MDC leaders to implement the reforms and they were ignored. MDC leaders had their snouts in the feeding trough and forgot about the reforms. Worse still, MDC leaders had the cheek to blame SADC for failure to implement reforms.
SADC leaders have the common sense to know the problem in Zimbabwe is not just a corrupt, incompetent and tyrannical Zanu PF but an equally corrupt and incompetent opposition. If any new GNU is going to be dominated by these two [parties then it is a waste of time.
Both SADC and AU did not do themselves any favours by endorsing Zanu PF as the winner of the July 2018 election, that gave the illegitimate regime in Harare a feather in its cap and cause for arrogance.
We want a solution to Zimbabwe’s problem and not another fudge. Both Zanu PF and MDC are the problem in Zimbabwe and therefore cannot be the solution too!
State university employees also gave a 14-day notice to the Public Service ministry announcing their intention to embark on a strike in protest over low wages.
Their notice came at a time government has approved a 200% hike in university fees, which will result in students at State universities forking out between $25 000 and $40 000 per semester, up from $9 000.
"This is a 14-day notice of intention to embark on a strike by the Zimbabwe Universities and Allied Workers Union (ZUAWU) and the Zimbabwe State Universities Union of Academics (ZISUUA), hereby referred to as the Zimbabwe State Universities Joint Council, on behalf of all State universities' workers.
"The employees demand that the employer makes urgent steps to attain the regional level salary scales as per the agreements of 2010," read the letter by Alois Muzvuwe and Readyforward Dube, the ZISUUA and ZUAWU representatives.
The Amalgamated Rural Teachers Union of Zimbabwe (Artuz) released a statement yesterday inviting citizens to join them on the streets on March 22 in nationwide protests dubbed #SaveOurEducationZw.
The rural teachers threatened that the protests would continue until their grievances were addressed.
What is disappointing here is that government has known all along that there was an outstanding salary problem with the teachers to be sorted out. Why this was not dealt with during the corona virus induced school closure is proof of just how breathtakingly incompetent Zanu PF is.
Our schools and universities are in very advance state of rot and decay because of decades of being starved of funds. Students have already lost a year of schooling because of corona virus shut down. And now the students are facing yet another disruption.
If the truth be told Zimbabwe’s education service has all but collapsed. What kind of future will this nation have with the overwhelming majority of the population dumb and illiterate?
Former MDC-T spokesperson Obert Gutu and Senator James Makore have joined Zanu-PF.
The two are currently in a meeting with President Mnangagwa and Vice President Constantino Chiwenga at State House in Harare.
When MDC leaders failed to implement even one democratic reform during the 2008 to 2013 GNU anyone with any brain should have written off these men and women as instruments of democratic change in Zimbabwe. After that blatant betrayal what these MDC leaders have done since has been no surprise at all!
MDC Alliance MPs Tendai Biti, Willias Madzimure and Settlement Chikwinya and three other party legislators have all been recalled from parliament by their former party, the People's Democratic Party (PDP).
The shock announcement was made Wednesday by National Assembly Speaker Jacob Mudenda.
This recall has proven to be so disruptive it should be scrapped. It is bad enough that party members are spending so much time fighting amongst themselves it is unfair that parties should let their internal squabbling spill over into nation affair. If it was not for by-elections being cancelled how many by-elections will the nation have held since the national election?
Honestly people are very much aware of the fact that this so called new dispensation under the leadership of President Emmerson Mnangagwa has nothing to offer and is just there to decimate the opposition, loot the country's resources and self enrichment not the improvement of people's lives.
About 70% of Zimbabweans are living under the poverty datum line and cannot afford even two decent meals per day. They are scrounging from one day to the other and go home with nothing whilst these political bourgeoisie are excelling every day in self preservation.
I totally agree that Mnangagwa is decimating the opposition but, it must be said, he is doing it with the help from the opposition politicians themselves. There is no denying that Chamisa’s seizure of power after Tsvangirai’s death did violate the MDC constitution and pretending that he did nothing wrong has only made a bad situation worse.
When the MDC leaders failed to implement even one reform in 5 years of the GNU they proved that they were corrupt and incompetent and beyond the pale. The very fact that there are some people who still continue to look up to the MDC for leadership out of this mess goes to show we have a lot of very naive and gullible Zimbabweans out there.
A naive and gullible electorate is democracy’s worst curse!
Tendai Biti and his fellow MDC leaders had the golden opportunity to implement the democratic reforms and thus end the Zanu PF carte blanche powers to rig elections. MDC leaders have accepted the reality of Zanu PF rigging the elections and securing 2/3 majority and the presidency in return for the 1/3 gravy train seats Zanu PF has been giving away as bait.
With its 2/3 majority Zanu PF has been able to do as it pleased and the opposition have settled for the role of the noisy Chihuahua barking at the marauding elephant. Other than making a lot of noise the Chihuahua is pretty much useless.
The people of Zimbabwe have to wake up to the reality that it will take a lot more than a noisy Chihuahua to end the Zanu PF dictatorship!
What is really infuriating here is that Tendai Biti and his MDC friends had the golden opportunity to implement the democratic reforms that would have dismantled the dictatorship during the 2008 to 2013 GNU. The MDC leaders sold-out.
Ever since the GNU MDC leaders have participated in flawed and illegal elections under the pretext they have devised strategies to win rigged elections. All nonsense, just feeble excuses for participating in elections they knew were being rigged.
Tendai Biti and company knew Zanu PF was offering a few gravy train seats to entice the opposition to participate in the flawed elections. This they found irresistible.
The few opposition politicians who won the few gravy train seats have made a big song and dance of whatever they are doing just to attract public attention and place themselves into pole position in the rat race for the gravy train seats.
Of all people, Tendai Biti knows his damning PAC reports were not going to change a damn thing. He is only playing to the naive and gullible, who believe the reports were going to transform Zimbabwe so all would live happily ever after!
@ Mwembe
“Rubbish is peeling off as the pple's project moves on . This will make the alliance cleaner and smarter than before . To join zanu the cold blooded killer, molester , and the most incompetent of all so called liberation movements in Africa tells us that those who are joining this monster are doing so for money they are just gold diggers and of course useless. In all imizabalazo sellouts are there.”
This is very interesting! Now that the likes of Obert Gutu has publicly taken off their MDC regalia to put on the Zanu PF finery with the portrait of E D you finally believe Gutu was incompetent and a sell-out. The worst thing Gutu has ever done was to fail to implement even one reform during the GNU, but since he was not the only MDC leaders to do it, you have airbrushed all that out of Zimbabwe history.
Gutu’s stands condemned for discarding the red MDC uniform for the green and yellow of Zanu PF!
No wonder the country is in a mess, we have an electorate that is so shallow, thick and slow it will make a mountain out of molehill and fail to notice the mountain before them!
@ Blessing Mugwagwa
What development has Zanu PF brought in the last 41 years?
Zimbabwe is in this economic mess because Zanu PF has destroyed everything. How anyone can mistake that for development beggars belief!
@ Seke
“Good riddance of stinking rubbish…”
What is shocking here is the likes of Obert Gutu have done worse things in their political career but you never even noticed any of these things. It is only when he cross the floor you noticed he was “stinking rubbish!”
We all know the honey badger has one of the most powerful sense of smell in the world, it can pick the scent of a snake hours after the snake has gone and even tell which direction to went. The honey badger has a stench so power it is painful on one’s senses. Just as well the badger is not sensitive to its own odd, it will knock itself out every time.
What is clear is that MDC leaders and supporters will never pick up “stinking rubbish”, regardless how nauseating the stench, as long as the individual of wearing party regalia! Leaders should be judge on the basis of what they have said and done but when you intellectual capacity cannot master much beyond the five letters of the alphabet, like Boxer in Animal Farm, you judge the leaders on the basis of the party regalia they are wearing.
There are a hell lot more “stinking rubbish” in MDC but you will never know them because some of them are very comfortable in MDC and will never take off the bright-red MDC regalia!
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