EDITORIAL COMMENT: Mpofu must pay for desecrating Parliament 

Source: EDITORIAL COMMENT: Mpofu must pay for desecrating Parliament | The Financial Gazette March 1, 2018

By Staff Reporter

LAST Thursday, a bellicose Home Affairs Minister Obert Mpofu faced down a parliamentary committee that had invited him to testify on his controversial tenure as mines minister, when he superintended Zimbabwe’s poorly managed diamond resource.

Mpofu headlines a growing cast of officials handling public money while disdainfully refusing to account to the same taxpayers, vicariously through their elected officials in Parliament.

Recent weeks have seen Sakunda Holdings officials making spirited attempts to avoid parliamentary scrutiny over the uneconomic Dema diesel plant as well as the financing of Command Agriculture. The Agriculture and Rural Development Authority (ARDA) board and management did turn up, only for the proceedings to degenerate into a shouting match.

Mpofu’s defiant performance, however, dragged Parliament to a new low, even considering the recent dramatic proceedings in the legislative chambers.

By his belligerent act, Mpofu, a senior official in President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s Cabinet and party, undermined the President’s promise to run a clean, accountable administration.