Starting tonight, 10 pm UK time, Al Jazeera will broadcast a four-part documentary titled Unveiling Zimbabwe's Dark Secrets: Al Jazeera Exposes Looting, Plunder and Money Laundering.
The Zanu PF regime knows what is coming and the damage limiting exercise has already started.
"Is there corruption in Zimbabwe? Yes. Is there smuggling of minerals and forex out of the country? Yes. Is there money laundering in Zimbabwe? Yes, including by non-governmental (organisations.) Is the government fully committed to getting rid of all the above ills? That is a fact," tweeted Nick Mangwana Information and Publicity ministry secretary.
It is one thing to admit there is corruption in Zimbabwe and then sweep the problem with the usual counter claim of we are not the only country it’s corrupt or we are dealing with the problem; when the details of the corruption are sketchy. The Al Jazeera documentary is putting the flesh to the bones and defining the level of corruption in graphic details; dismissing corrupt now is mission impossible.
In 2019 Dr John Mangudya, RBZ Governor, revealed that Zimbabwe was losing US$1.2 billion per year to gold smugglers alone (forget the leaks in diamonds, lithium and all the other corruption and cartel activities). He admitted that Zimbabwe would not need to borrow money from outside to buy essentials such as covid 19 equipment then or to fund the country’s development.
The smuggled US$1.2 billion constitute 30% and 12% of the nation’s US$4 billion budget and US$10 billion GDP respectively. What other nation was making comparable loses?
Zimbabwe is a failed state unable to provide basic services such as education and health care, clean running water and electricity, the country’s once upon a time robust economy has collapsed and 50% of our people are now living in abject poverty. This is not surprising given the burden on the economy of 43 years of gross mismanagement and rampant corruption.
Yes, corruption is a problem the world over but how many other countries out there are failed states? And is this the rat race to the bottom we want to join much less want to win!
"What is lamentable in this case is that the overriding purpose of the documentary is to interfere with the electoral process of a sovereign state. We cannot afford to have foreign news media attempting so grossly to interfere with the outcome of our election. Al Jazeera would not dare do the same thing in Japan, in Asia, in America or in Europe. Zimbabweans must choose their destiny with no interference from foreigners. Al Jazeera's interference is as brazen as it is nauseating," chipped in UK based Dr Maimba Mavaza, writing in the Zanu PF control Herald.
How typical!
The primary purpose of the documentary is to inform the people of Zimbabwe of the true nature of this ugly creature called corruption. The country’s public media’s express purpose has been to brainwash the people and keep them ignorant. The private media has largely been harassed and brow-beaten into silence.
Democracy, a government of the people for the people and by the people, only works if the said people are informed and educated. A free and independent media is therefore essential. It is therefore regrettable that the people of Zimbabwe should have to rely on a foreign media house to inform and educate them!
“Major shortcomings in the pre-election environment impacted on the free expression of the will of electors, state resources were misused in favour of the incumbent and coverage by state media was heavily biased in favour of the ruling party,” stated the EU 2018 Election Observer Mission Final Report.
“Further,The electoral commission (ZEC) lacked full independence and appeared to not always act in an impartial manner. The final results as announced by the Electoral Commission contained numerous errors and lacked adequate traceability, transparency and verifiability.
“As such, many aspects of the 2018 elections in Zimbabwe failed to meet international standards.”
The EU made 23 recommendation to ensure future elections are free, fair and credible. Not even one of these recommendations have seen the light of day.
The Al Jazeera documentary has left President Mnangagwa and his cronies feeling as sick as a parrot for three main reason:
- people had only seen the ears of the hippo or dark shadows in the dark and, for once, they see the creature in its full ugliness
- and, most important of all, who created and milk this monster; President Mnangagwa and his cronies cannot only deny benefiting but being the godfathers of corrupt.
- it is clear why Zanu PF rigged 2018 and is rigging 2023 election, a regime this corrupt cannot afford the luxury of holding free, fair and credible elections. The electorate are simple people but they are not stupid, especially when they have the mountain of evidence of corruption before their own eye.
20 comments:
@ Takura
What also amazes is how most of the key people end up crossing the divide.
Think of Maridadi, Gutu Khupe, Mwonzora..the list is endless
All have been in the top leadership but somehow have been supping with the 'enemy'.
Those who have remained have done nothing in all their 23 years. The greatest MDC failure was failing to implement even one reform in 5 year of the GNU and all the leaders are guilty of that. Those who have cross the floor to join Zanu PF have only done so because they were squeezed out of the party but that is nothing compared to the damage done by failing to implement reforms.
The new Unit 7 at Hwange Thermal Power Station is expected to come on the grid in the coming two weeks while Unit 8 is expected to come on line next month to give an additional 600 MW of electricity to the national grid.
This was said by Energy and Power Development Minister, Soda Zhemu during the National Assembly question and answer session.
Zanu PF received the Batoka Gorge Dam and Hwange Unity 7 and 8 feasibility studies from the out going Ian Smith government in 1980. The whites would have carried out the two project was it not for the worsen civil war. And so Hwange Unity 7 and 8 are 43 years overdue and God only knows when Batoka Gorge project will happen.
Mugabe splashed US$4 billion building the sprawling Blue Roof mansion, that Pantheon to human greed, enough to pay for Batoka Gorge project. The mansion is already decaying as Grace Mugabe has abandoned it for the Far East.
The contribution Hwange Unity 7 and 8 and Batoka Gorge projects would have made to the nation’s economic prosperity can only be imagined. The nation gained nothing from the Blue Roof mansion. We have a priorities upside down! The glory of Caesar trumps the good of Rome and in a country where Caesar’s will is law what else can we expect!
@ Wakurawarerwa
"# register to vote!" From 2018 to 30 May 2022 CCC only managed to get 1/4m registered or 4% of its 6m target! You can pretend you mass voter registration is working all you want the fact still remain that this is dead and buried. Meanwhile Zanu PF has been busing its rural supporters from Domboshava, Goromonzi, etc. to register as voters Harare.
Zanu PF is rigging the 2023 elections, CCC know it and are participating to give Zanu PF legitimacy to win the few gravy train seats on offer as bait. The idea that CCC should be allowed to once again sell the nation’s fight for reforms for 30 pieces of silver is insane! Enough is enough!
@ Liberty
“Tell us the current stats. You cant keep referring to May 2022.”
Zanu PF has been registering its supporters the last few months, this the normal vote rigging routine. The rural voters from Domboshava, etc. registering in Harare will not be on the voters’ roll under the pretext it was too late to add then to the voters’ roll. This is just one of the many ways Zanu PF is rigging these elections.
What is infuriating here is that CCC leaders know that Zanu PF is rigging the elections but have to pretend their idiotic mass voter registration strategy is working even when they know it is dead! sadly there are many out there who are easily conned!
The documentary on Al Jazeera was cancelled!
“Al Jazeera lawyer but be going through pages and pages of law books to deal with a potential legal and Qataris diplomatic minefield amid reports of law suit threats. The people named know the leaders. Without strong whistleblowing laws, this could end with broken bones,“ tweeted Brighton Musonza.
The essence of this story, that corruption in Zimbabwe is rampant is beyond dispute, even President Mnangagwa himself has acknowledged that corruption in Zimbabwe is rampant. The legal threats must be a clear cut case to silence and stop the truth being heard. Who will benefit from stifling the truth. Those who stand to benefit from the ongoing wholesale looting and/or from the rigged elections.
Is the threat a bluff? Given what is at stake for the beneficiaries of the looting and rigged election and the humongous size of their combined financial and political muscles, coupled by complete lack of social and moral responsibility to the victims of their greed, they must be straining at the leash to go after all those behind this expose.
The fear that the documentary will never see the light of day as for now is real. However what one can say with the certainty of the sun rising tomorrow is the truth of the looting and vote rigging in Zimbabwe will come out. The truth alway comes out no matter how deep the hole happen to be. If it is hole dug by a mere mortal, another mortal can dig it out!
Part 1 of 2
Uebert Angel offers to launder US$1.2 billion dollars of dirty cash from China
HARARE – Al Jazeera on Thursday said it had put a pause on a broadcast of a four-part investigation into official corruption in Zimbabwe without giving reasons.
The first episode of Gold Mafia, a two-year investigation by the Qatar based news network, had been advertised for 12PM CAT on Thursday. Other episodes were to follow on March 9, 16 and 23.
In a brief statement, Al Jazeera said: “The report we were planning to release will no longer be released this morning (March 2). Bear with us while a new release time is arranged.”
A statement released ahead of the planned first broadcast said the investigation was carried out by undercover journalists from Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit who infiltrated rival gangs that control Africa’s gold.
“Criminal networks turn dirty cash into gold, which is sold around the world. The investigation leads to the highest offices of state in southern Africa,” Al Jazeera teased.
Gold Mafia looks at how society’s obsession with gold through the ages underwrites a global shadow economy. It exposes the complicity of global financial institutions, regulators and governments in the criminality.
Undercover reporters pose as criminals with over a billion dollars of black money that needs to be cleaned. The team is led by a fictitious Mr Stanley, a Chinese gangster with links to the Triads. His undercover reporters befriend members of rival gold mafia gangs.
In Episode 1. The Laundry Service: The founder of the UK-based Good News Church, which has 15 branches around the world, offers to launder 1.2 billion dollars of dirty cash from China.
“I am the second largest diplomat in the country,” Uebert Angel tells undercover reporters.
Angel is also presidential envoy and Zimbabwe’s ambassador-at-large to 85 countries. He offers to use his diplomatic cover to fly Mr Stanley’s dirty cash into Zimbabwe where it can be laundered through gold and other investments.
“Right now I can have a bag like this with US$1.2 billion and put red tape written diplomat. Nobody can touch it,” Angel says. “It is a very, very easy thing.”
Mr Stanley and his team get invited to closed door meetings with Kamlesh Pattni, notorious for devising a gold export scam that siphoned US$600 million from Kenya in the nineties.
They also sit down with Pattni’s competitor and convicted gold smuggler, Ewan Macmillan.
“There is an opportunity, a hell of a big opportunity to wash money here,” Macmillan says.
Both men are licensed gold traders in Zimbabwe and Dubai. They offer Al Jazeera’s undercover team lucrative deals to launder over US$100 million through government gold export schemes.
Part 2 of 2
Both men are licensed gold traders in Zimbabwe and Dubai. They offer Al Jazeera’s undercover team lucrative deals to launder over US$100 million through government gold export schemes.
The rival crime bosses reveal that at the centre of it their operations is southern Africa’s biggest laundromat, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe.
The investigation reveals that the Gold Mafia are employed by Zimbabwe’s ruling elite to export gold on the government’s behalf. It is a scheme to bust international sanctions placed on political leaders and government entities.
Mr Stanley speaks to Henrietta Rushwaya, president of Zimbabwe Miners Federation and niece of President Emmerson Mnangagwa. She was arrested two years ago carrying 6kg of gold at the Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport let go by a court after claiming to have picked the wrong handbag.
Within minutes, she offers them a laundry service that can clean US$10 million of dirty cash a week through the reserve bank and gold producers she knows.
In other explosive revelations, Angel was filmed soliciting a “gift” of US$200,000 for President Mnangagwa from Mr Stanley. He allegedly tells the Al Jazeera journalists that the money is not a bribe, “but the president appreciates gifts.”
Macmillan, meanwhile, allegedly refers to Vice President Constantino Chiwenga as a “dunderhead.”
Both men allegedly flaunted their proximity to power, even demonstrating that with phone calls to top ranking officials in the presence of the journalists.
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What is undeniable is the gene of gene of corruption and its twin rigged elections are out of the bottle and cannot be put back. Zanu PF will try to use its economic and political muscle to stifle the documentary and silence the truth. But what one can say with the certainty that the sun will rise tomorrow is the truth of corruption and vote rigging in Zimbabwe will come out.
No matter how deep the hole Zanu PF bury the documentary and the truth it will come out because there is no hole dug by a mere mortal that another mortal cannot dug out!
@ Tafadzwa Mugwadi
“The noisy that never was! We are too powerful & intact as a system to be bothered by tricks of cash-seeking nonentities who are desperate to make money out of nothing.
@AlJazeera
risks reducing itself into a zimeye by being trapped to pay huge money to earn rights over nonsense.”
Well the “too powerful & intact” Zanu PF propaganda machine is in a panic because only yesterday Nick Mnangagwa was on twitter admitting there is corruption and money laundering in Zimbabwe. “Is the government fully committed to getting rid of all the above ills? That is a fact,” he finished lamely. Because the documentary is saying the exact opposite and he knows it!
If the documentary is “nonsense” as you say then why is the regime spending good money paying lawyers to silence nonsense?
The truth of corruption, long hidden, is now out and there is no putting the gene back in the bottle. Zanu PF is clearly Not as powerful as you say. The dictatorship is finished. Mark my words!
A statement released ahead of the planned first broadcast said the investigation was carried out by undercover journalists from Al Jazeera's Investigative Unit who infiltrated rival gangs that control Africa's gold.
"Criminal networks turn dirty cash into gold, which is sold around the world. The investigation leads to the highest offices of state in southern Africa," Al Jazeera teased.
Gold Mafia looks at how society's obsession with gold through the ages underwrites a global shadow economy. It exposes the complicity of global financial institutions, regulators and governments in the criminality.
Through thousands of confidential documents and exclusive interviews with whistleblowers from within the criminal underworld, investigators obtain the blueprints of billion-dollar money laundering operations that service the political elite.
Undercover reporters pose as criminals with over a billion dollars of black money that needs to be cleaned. The team is led by a fictitious Mr Stanley, a Chinese gangster with links to the Triads. His undercover reporters befriend members of rival gold mafia gangs.
Zimbabwe is a failed state and now we can see why. The shadowy Mafia economy of corruption has morphed to become the dominant economy with a bigger budget and GPD then that of the formal economy that has been reduced into nothing more than a side show of informal sector ants.
The Mafia Godfathers have not just captured the state institutions, they are the state. Corruption has been institutionalised.
Zimbabwe’s vast natural resources which, properly used for the good of all, should have secure the nation’s prosperity has been used instead to secure the Mafia Kingdom whose appetite for wealth is insatiable and so is their wastefulness. The Mafia Godfathers have amassed billions of dollars but have precious little to show for it and hence they reason why the looting has grown exponentially.
Whilst the Mafia have grown filthy rich, millions of ordinary Zimbabweans have been condemned to abject poverty. The Mafiosi must go, that is not negotiable. They have become addicted to looting and will fight like wild cats to retain the Mafia Kingdom. We must be ready to fight to retain sanity to Zimbabwe.
@ Professor J Moyo
1/3 "Al Jazeera postpones premiere of Zim corruption documentary"
@NewsDayZimbabwe 3/3/23
Postponed "due to technical issues," they say.
"Technical issues" can mean anything. Hopefully, they don't mean that the corruption documentary is being corrupted!
It is possible that the corruption documentary is indeed being corrupted. But this will only be a temporary setback.
Corruption in Zimbabwe has become rampant it was out of control. In SA people talked of “state capture” in which the Mafia gangsters had muscled in to control a number of state institutions including the Zuma presidency. In Zimbabwe the Mafiosi control everything and they have institutionalised the wholesale looting by granting carte blanche powers to its members to loot.
What we are seeing here is the corruption has grown out of control and rivalry gangs and attaching each other in their effort to feed their insatiable greed. The little blob in the Petri dish has engulf everything and now is turning on itself as the final act. Corruption in Zimbabwe has become so rampant is can no longer be hidden nor sustained.
The delimitation report is a side show to draw attention away from the real big issue - the failure to produce a verified voters' roll!
How ironic the regime is now resorting to censorship in its desperation to keep corruption under wraps! There is only so much dirty that can be swept under the carpet; the carpet is now nothing more than one of those saucer cap on a lion's mane!
@ S Mukwepi
This i just hopeless. Mass voter registration was CCC's flagship "Winning In Rigged Election (WIRE)" strategy from 2018. As of 30 May 2022 ZEC announced that only 1/4 m had registered to vote or 4% of CCC's 6m target.
The party has never explained why this pathetic failure because they know from the past that ZEC would make it near impossible for the opposition to register its supporters. To therefore continue to pretend that mass voter registration is still achievable is disingenuous and down right dishonesty, to say the least.
The world is watching in disbelief how so many Zimbabweans can be so naive and gullible to believe this WIRE oxymoronic nonsense after 43 year of rigged elections and in this day and age! FCUK me! Just how idiotic can you be!
ROLLING blackouts, which have deepened in the past few months, could cost the economy close to US$5 billion this year, industrialists told the Zimbabwe Independent.
They said many companies had already warned that first quarter (Q1) output would be far below performance during the same period in 2022.
The power crisis, which has worsened since output at the Kariba hydroelectric power station was rattled by low water levels on Lake Kariba, have been grounding industries for up to 18 hours a day, triggering extensive production.
This week, industrialists and economists said Zimbabwe's power crisis had complicated an already bad situation for the economy, which is battling to placate three-digit inflation levels, foreign currency shortages and exchange rate fragilities.
Yesterday, the Kariba power station was producing 247 megawatts (MW) against a 1 050MW installed capacity.
The Hwange thermal power station was generating 73MW, out of 920MW installed capacity, underscoring the crisis confronting an economy that requires between 2 000MW and 2 500MW to run its industries.
This is a self inflicted injury. The Zanu PF government was given feasibility studies for Hwange unit 7 and 8 and Batoka Gorge Dam (second Kariba Dam) in 1980. The white regime would have completed these projects if it was not for the civil war.
This Zanu PF government has only installed the two units at Hwange this year, 43 years late. God only knows when Batoka Gorge will be done. The regime money to build such vanity projects as Mugabe’s US$4 billion Blue Roof mansion, that Pantheon temple to human greed.
Zanu PF has failed to keep the inherited power generation working much less build the additional power stations. The true cost of Zanu PF greed and mismanagement will never be known but the US$4 billion in lost production every year with this cripple economy shows just what a robust economy would be doing.
Zimbabwe will never rise out of this hell hole as long as the country remains a pariah state!
The broadcast of Al Jazeera corruption documentary Unveiling Zimbabwe's Dark Secrets remains uncertain. The truth will come out no matter what the Mafiosi try to do. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1uE20z6FHc
@ Zimbabwean
“I am just thinking: Zimbabwe senyika toda kungotsvagirwa rimwe day rekuchema (National Crying Day) Kungochema hako pasina anobvunza umwe kuti urikuchemei.
#Tatambura”
Zanu PF is rigging 2023 elections, forget the CCC “winning in rigged election” nonsense you do not give this Mafiosi regime carte blanche power to rig the elections and expect it to lose. You will have choice to stay home and cry or dare join the street protesters and be shot! We all have another five more years of hell as the nation sinks deeper and deeper into the abyss.
Kurumwa nechekuchera! We are the ones participating in a flawed election to give Zanu PF legitimacy.
@ Zimbabwean
“I am just thinking: Zimbabwe senyika toda kungotsvagirwa rimwe day rekuchema (National Crying Day) Kungochema hako pasina anobvunza umwe kuti urikuchemei.
#Tatambura”
Zanu PF is rigging 2023 elections, forget the CCC “winning in rigged election” nonsense you do not give this Mafiosi regime carte blanche power to rig the elections and expect it to lose. You will have choice to stay home and cry or dare join the street protesters and be shot! We all have another five more years of hell as the nation sinks deeper and deeper into the abyss.
It is imply unbelievable that anyone much less hundreds of thousands can be conned into believe something as foolish a winning in Mafiosi rigged elections especially after 43 years of Zanu PF rigged elections. Yes the nation has suffered these last 43 years and in August will add another 5 more years. The morning of yet another Zanu PF rigged election should be called Kurumwa nechekuchera Day and not Tatambura Day!
Using oratory skills and Biblical verses to promise an economic turnaround, Chamisa, however, narrowly lost the presidential race to Mnangagwa in the disputed 2018 election.
Chamisa has refused to acknowledge his political foe as the legitimate President, and has built his 2023 election challenge bid on that basis.
Despite his overflowing confidence that he will this time around upstage the veteran 80-year-old former liberation war guerrilla fighter, the 45-year-old charismatic Chamisa has, however, not been able to push for meaningful reform of the old electoral laws that largely worked against him in 2018.
Some, such as Team Pachedu have cast doubt on the country having free and fair elections after exposing discrepancies in the voters roll and a delimitation exercise that has triggered a storm of criticism from literally all and sundry.
And just recently, Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (zec) chairperson Justice Priscilla Chigumba, refused to come clean on the contentious delimitation as all signs point to a disputed election.
MDC leaders had the golden opportunity to implement the democratic reforms to ensure free, fair and credible elections during the 2008 to 2013 GNU. They failed to implement even one reform in five years because of two reasons. One greed, they were bribed by Mugabe with the trapping of high office and they forgot about the reforms. Two, they are breathtakingly incompetent; they really believed they could win the election without reform.
And ever since the GNU debacle MDC/CCC have been locked into this mind-numbing and oxymoronic cul-de-sac of winning rigged elections - so flawed MDC failed to win even with 73% of the votes. The party leaders have offered one idiotic winning in rigged elections strategy after another to justify their stubbornly insisted on participating in flawed elections and to hide their greed.
The tragedy to the nation is that many Zimbabweans have been conned by MDC/CCC into participating in these flawed elections and thus giving the Zanu PF legitimacy and perpetuating the dictatorship and the nation’s suffering. There is no denying that the majority of our people are simple, naive and gullible folk and the nation is paying dearly for it!
The ruling Zanu-PF party has been accused of forcing villagers and residents to attend its cell verification meetings as political tension rises ahead of the impending general elections.
On Saturday, Zanu-PF youths allegedly went door-to-door in Eastview suburb, east of Harare, demanding that people attend a cell verification meeting addressed by local leaders.
Residents who spoke to NewsDay said they were told that they risk not getting title deeds if their names did not appear in the Zanu-PF cell register.
Zanu-PF Mashonaland East chairperson Daniel Garwe, party secretary-general Obert Mpofu, spokesperson Christopher Mutsvangwa were not answering their mobile phones when contacted for comment.
Harare Province chairperson Godwills Masimirembwa, however, confirmed the cell verification meetings, but denied that people were being forced to attend.
Zanu PF’s coercive powers was graphically demonstrated in the 2008 watershed elections. SADC leaders were right in forcing Zanu PF to sign the 2008 Global Political Agreement, agreeing to the need to implement a raft of democratic reforms to end the party’ carte blanche vote rigging and coercive powers. It is a great pity that not even one meaningful reform was implemented in five years of the GNU. Zanu PF still enjoys the coercive and vote rigging powers to this day.
Zanu PF is blatantly rigging the 2023 elections just as readily as the party has rigged past elections.
The tragedy here is that so many ordinary people have been conned by MDC/CCC into believing the nation can still have meaningful change and good governance without implementing the democratic reforms and restoring the rule of law! How anyone can believe in the oxymoronic nonsense of winning rigged election especially after 43 years of Mafiosi Zanu PF rigged elections beggars belief!
The tragedy here is that some people have not yet learned that if elections are NOT free, fair and credible participating in such election to give vote rigging Zanu PF legitimacy is insane, especially after 43 years of the Mafiosi Zanu PF rigged elections.
#Registertovote! Yeah right! CCC only registered 1/4m from 2018 to 30 May 2022, 4% of the party’s own 6m target. Since 30 May 2022 it is Zanu PF that has been registering its supporters, rural folk bused in from Domboshava, Goromonzi, etc. to register in Harare. These rural voters will vote early in their rural area and then bused into the urban centres to vote again!
Zanu PF is rigging these 2023 elections and CCC are keeping up the pretence they are “winning big” to hide the real reason they are insisting in participating in these elections is greed!
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