History of chefs’ looting

Source: History of chefs’ looting | The Financial Gazette May 25, 2017

INCIDENTS whereby ZANU-PF chefs have helped themselves to opportunities that should benefit the marginalised are beginning to sound like a broken record.
The jostling for opportunities around Tokwe-Mukosi Dam rekindles memories of how Masvingo Province became the epicentre of another property grab not so long ago.

At the turn of the millennium, ruling party chefs grabbed hunting concessions at the lucrative Save Valley Conservancy at the expense of the majority of ordinary people in the region.
While government claims to have cancelled the hunting permits awarded to the mighty and powerful within ZANU-PF and government, nothing on the ground seems to suggest this was the case.
In the meantime, the pillaging of the wildlife conservancy continues unabated.

In 2015, the Who is Who in Masvingo also descended on the Lowveld’s sugar estates and grabbed much of the 4 000 hectares availed by Tongaat Hulett for new players in the sugarcane industry.
The list of government programmes that have ended up solely benefiting political bigwigs at the expense of ordinary citizens reads like a housewife’s shopping list.

It includes a blocks of flats along Harare’s Willowvale Road in Highfield that benefited senior ZANU-PF and government officials who already owned more than one property each.

The 1997 war victims compensation fund also raised a lot of dust after it was abused by top government officials who feigned war-time injuries to access money which was being paid to those injured during the liberation war struggle, depending on the degree of their disability.

Zimbabwe also missed an opportunity to ride out of its enduring economic crisis after politicians looted gems from the Chiadzwa diamond fields whose estimated value was put by President Robert Mugabe at US$15 billion.

Last year, the lion’s share of resources availed under the Command Agriculture, funded to the tune of US$515 million, was reportedly monopolised by senior government officials and the elite in ZANU-PF.
And more recently, the Kurera/Ukondla Youth Fund, under the Ministry of Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment was discovered by Parliament to have been abused by ZANU-PF youths, who diverted loans towards consumption.

Reports that ruling party bigwigs are preparing to grab chunks of land at the recently commissioned Tokwe-Mukosi Dam, just serve to prove that history, indeed, repeats itself.