Mugabe fumes over Zesa bill

http://www.thestandard.co.zw/

Friday, 23 March 2012 10:07

Owen Gagare

ENERGY and Power Development minister Elton Mangoma (pictured) came under
fire from President Robert Mugabe and Zanu PF cabinet ministers at a
high-level meeting on Tuesday in which leaked Zimbabwe Electricity Supply
Authority (Zesa) bills, including disclosures that the First Family owed the
power utility more than US$345 000 in unpaid power bills, featured
prominently.

Several ministers, senior civil servants as well as service chiefs were
named among people who have not been paying their electricity bills
resulting in Zesa failing to settle its debts and ensure adequate power
supplies. This has caused  severe load-shedding, particularly in the
high-density areas.
While defaulting VIPs were not switched off, poor people, whose bills are
comparatively small, always live in darkness or without electricity for
domestic use.

Official sources say the Zesa bills issue came up for discussion at the
charged meeting, chaired by Mugabe, after Indigenisation minister Saviour
Kasukuwere accused Mangoma of leaking the “confidential information” about
the bills to embarrass Mugabe and Zanu PF ministers, while scoring political
points. Mangoma angrily denied the allegations.

Sources said after Kasukuwere’s outburst, Industry and Commerce minister
Welshman Ncube chipped in to rescue Mangoma who was under siege, saying the
Indigenisation minister’s language was improper, although the issue he
raised was legitimate. Ncube, sources said, indicated it was unprofessional
for bills to be leaked because they were meant to be a private issue between
Zesa and its clients.

A number of ministers felt the relationship between a client and Zesa should
be similar to that of a client/lawyer, client/banker or patient/doctor
relationship where confidentiality was paramount.

After Mangoma was attacked by Kasukuwere who accused him of leaking the Zesa
bills and Ncube had protested the strong language, Mugabe joined the fray to
renew assaults on the MDC-T minister. Kasukuwere is also one of the VIPs not
paying their bills.

“The president (Mugabe) stepped in and said it did not matter who leaked the
information because the buck stopped with Mangoma since Zesa is under his
ministry,” said a source. “He charged and demanded that Mangoma must accept
responsibility.”

While holding his line insisting he was not personally responsible for
leaking of the information, an angry Mangoma was said to have accepted
responsibility and promised to issue a statement assuring the public of
confidentiality on their bills.

However, other Zanu PF ministers, who apparently wanted to defend and
impress Mugabe, refused to let Mangoma get away with it. They attacked him
around, fuelling a heated and long debate on the controversial unpaid bills.

Mines minister Obert Mpofu was said to have insisted Mangoma had leaked the
information given that he had promised to “name and shame” bigwigs who were
not paying their electricity bills. Mangoma had previously raised the issue
in cabinet and in parliament but he maintained on Tuesday that he was not
behind the leaks.

Mangoma told the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Mines and Energy last
month that some government ministers and senior civil servants had not paid
their power bills since adoption of the multi-currency system in 2009.

He has been on a crusade to urge defaulters to pay their electricity bills
to enable Zesa to settle a US$80 million debt owed to Hydro Cahora Bassa of
Mozambique.

Zesa is owed in excess of US$450 million by defaulting consumers. Mangoma
warned last month that his ministry had taken a position to switch off all
defaulters “without fear or favour”.

Mangoma was left exposed at the Tuesday meeting since his party boss and
Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai did not attend the meeting as he is out of
the country. Deputy Prime Ministers Arthur Mutambara and Thokozani Khupe,
who could have also rescued him, were also not at the meeting while MDC-T
secretary-general and Finance minister Tendai Biti did not intervene.

This gave the Zanu PF camp, led by Mugabe, a free rein to attack Mangoma.

Mangoma confirmed to the Independent yesterday the issue was discussed on
Tuesday. He said he accepted that it was wrong for people’s debts to be
leaked, saying he had clearly stated this position to Mugabe and his fellow
ministers.

“My belief is whatever is owed is private and should not be for public
consumption and therefore as the minister responsible I can only apologise
to those whose accounts were made public. I stated that position and it’s
the same position I’m stating now,” said Mangoma.

He however insisted he did not leak the bills and charged it was
“mischievous” for anyone to think he had done so.

The leaked Zesa bills allegedly showed that as at December 31 2011, Mugabe’s
family owed more than US$345 000 to the power utility.

The electricity bill for the first family’s four plots at Foyle Farm plus a
cottage as well as Gushungo Dairy stood at US$143 667 while Gwebi Woodlot
1st Farm owed US$24 901. Sigaro Farm 1st PO, 2nd PO, 3rd PO and 4th PO owed
a total of US$78 218.

The First Lady Grace Mugabe’s Iron Mask Cottage, Iron Mask 2nd POIN, Iron
Mask 3rd POIN, Mazowe Wholesalers, Annant Cottage, Iron Mask Farm 5th, 6th,
7th and 8th owed a total of US$98 306 as at December 31 2011.

Defence minister Emmerson Mnangagwa reportedly owed US$240 824 while the
Transport and Communications minister Nicholas Goche owed US$158 245 for his
plots at Ceres Farm and businesses, which include grinding mills, a farm
store and a service station.

Presidential Affairs minister Didymus Mutasa owed US$179 590 and Central
Intelligence Organisation Director-General Happyton Bonyongwe owed US$350
989 although he has made significant moves to clear his debt.

Air force chief Perence Shiri owed US$26 947 for his Hopdale Farm while
police boss Augustine Chihuri’s homestead and his Inyika Farm owed US$106
778.

Kasukuwere, who was breathing fire on Tuesday, owes Zesa US$100 602.

Bigwigs under probe over inputs scam

http://www.thestandard.co.zw/

Friday, 23 March 2012 10:02

PARLIAMENT is probing the distribution of inputs for the 2011/2012
agricultural season as more names of influential people who used their
political muscle to grab large amounts of inputs, particularly fertiliser,
emerged this week.
Topping the list is Police Commissioner-General Augustine Chihuri who
accessed 80 tonnes of fertiliser from the Grain Marketing Board depot in
Shamva for use at his Inyika farm while the majority of small scale farmers
failed to get even a single bag.

A list prepared by the Agriculture, Mechanisation and Irrigation Development
ministry on how inputs under the Agriculture Loan Scheme were distributed
revealed that Chihuri received 40 tonnes of Compound D fertiliser and 30
tonness of AN fertiliser before accessing an additional 10 tonnes of AN at a
later stage.

Indigenisation minister Saviour Kasukuwere accessed 24 tonnes for use at his
Cornucopia Farm from the Concession depot, while Brigadier General Herbert
Chingono got 21 tonnes, 12 of which were Compound D and nine tonnes of AN
for use at Pentland Farm.

The list was handed to the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Agriculture,
Lands, Water, Irrigation and Resettlement chaired by Chikomba legislator
Moses Jiri last week. The committee as well as cabinet is probing the
matter. The investigation comes at a time when the country is facing a
serious food deficit. Documents show details of how inputs were distributed
between January 2 and March 14.

Mashonaland West governor Faber Chidarikire got 60 tonnes from the Banket
depot. He received 30 tonnes of Compound D and an additional 30 tonnes of AN
for use at his Kingstone Farm.

Former Mashonaland West governor and Zvimba West legislator Nelson Samkange
got 41,5 tonnes of fertiliser for Rukaba Farm.

Chief magistrate Mishrod Guvamombe got 16 tonnes of compound D from
Concession depot for his Georgia Farm while President Mugabe’s nephew
Patrick Zhuwao got 15 tonnes for his Diandra Farm.

Agriculture minister Joseph Made and Minister of State for Presidential
Affairs Didymus Mutasa are among the ministers named in the inputs scam. —
Staff Writer.

Zanu PF factions battle in district polls

http://www.thestandard.co.zw/

Friday, 23 March 2012 10:00

Faith Zaba

THE convoluted saga of President Robert Mugabe’s succession is now being
played out in District Coordinating Committee (DCC) elections as the fight
for control of the provinces by the two main Zanu PF factions led by
Vice-President Joice Mujuru and Defence minister Emmerson Mnangagwa
intensifies.

The ongoing DCC elections have now become the battleground for the two
factions wrestling for control of the provinces.

Although Zanu PF has two main camps, there are several other cliques defined
mainly by regions and ethnicity, operating within and across the main blocs.
In addition to these, there is also another group loyal to Mugabe.

Even though the 88-year-old leader remains the party’s presidential
candidate for the elections, which Zanu PF wants to be slated for later this
year, the two major camps are trying to position themselves for a
post-Mugabe era — they are now looking beyond him.

Senior Zanu PF officials said this week the Mnangagwa faction’s strategy is
to seize control of the party at a time when Mujuru is struggling to use her
position in government and the party to her advantage.

Although the vice-president seems to be losing ground in her home province,
Mashonaland Central, after her candidates lost in five of the eight DCC
elections held last week, her faction is now concentrating on the other
provinces.

Sources said the Mnangagwa faction was gaining more traction after the death
of the vice-president’s influential husband, former army commander General
Solomon Mujuru, in its bid to produce a successor to Mugabe.

Despite this, Zanu PF officials aligned to Mujuru’s faction were
unperturbed, vowing that “the fight is now on”. The sources said the battle
is now playing out in Manicaland where party functionaries aligned to
Mnangagwa’s faction have been accused of imposing their candidates, the
reason why Mujuru’s allies lost.

DCC elections in Makoni were abandoned, sources say, after it became
apparent that the Mnangagwa faction’s candidate, incumbent Albert
Nyakuedzwa, was losing.

The ballots, after being stuffed in “OK” supermarket plastic bags, were
whisked away from the nine polling stations to Chipinge police station.

Manicaland leaders said provincial chairperson Mike Madiro, who is aligned
to the Mnangagwa faction, took the ballot boxes at Vhengere polling station.
They said election observers, who consisted of war veterans and war
collaborators, were not consulted when the elections were nullified.

One provincial leader said: “They (people aligned to Mnangagwa’s faction)
had lost in Chipinge and when they saw that they were losing in Makoni, they
decided to abandon the election process, citing irregularities.”

“What irregularities? Who raised these issues and who is the complainant?
They are now panicking and disrupting the DCC elections,” he added.
One of the candidates for the Makoni chairmanship, Guy Mutasa said the order
to abandon the process came from Madiro.

“There was no counting of the votes after the last person cast their vote at
6pm. We were just told that elections have been nullified. They didn’t
consult anyone and no polling agent accompanied the ballots,” Mutasa said.

“We are now not even sure if all the ballots were taken to Chipinge police
station. Vote counting was supposed to have been done at the polling
stations.”
The succession battle is also playing out in Mashonaland West with John
Mafa, aligned to the Mnangagwa faction, recently won a fiercely-contested
provincial chairmanship against deputy ministers Reuben Marumahoko and
Walter Chidhakwa connected to the Mujuru camp.

Harare businessman Philip Chiyangwa, who also bounced back as the
vice-chairperson, is also linked to the Mnangagwa faction, although his
loyalty is fickle.

Tycoon Shanfari threatens to close Independent

http://www.thestandard.co.zw/

Friday, 23 March 2012 09:58

THAMER al Shanfari, the mega-rich former chairman of Cayman Islands-based
mining company Oryx Natural Resources (ONR) believed to own the Glen Lorne
house where crack units drawn from the police, immigration, Central
Intelligence Organisation and Zimbabwe Revenue Authority flushed out two
suspected diamond and gold dealers before deporting them, has threatened to
use financial muscle to shut down the Zimbabwe Independent for reporting on
the story which has angered him.
The Independent last week reported two senior Zanu PF politburo members,
Minister of State for Presidential Affairs Didymus Mutasa and his
Indigenisation counterpart Saviour Kasukuwere, were linked to Israeli and
Russian underworld gold and diamond dealers who were recently deported after
a raid on their hideout in Harare’s Glen Lorne suburb. The house is believed
to be owned by Shanfari.

Mutasa and Kasukuwere confirmed going to the property located at Number 57
Follyjon Crescent during the January 3 raid. Mutasa however said he was only
visiting, while Kasukuwere said he had gone there to meet some South African
investors who wanted information on the indigenisation programme.
But those involved in the raid said the ministers were called by Russian
national, Alexander Filegon alias Alexander Filatov and an Israeli Mike
Raslan, who were accused of being diamond and gold dealers, to rescue them.

The story incensed Shanfari. In reaction, his lawyer Gerald Mlotshwa of GN
Mlotshwa& Company Legal Practitioners initially called last Friday to
complain but it was agreed that Shanfari, who was not part of the story
besides mentioning that he owned the house and providing his background,
would
be interviewed to give his own side of the story.

The Independent on Tuesday contacted Mlotshwa over the issue and it was
agreed the interview would go ahead. However, midstream Shanfari
dramatically changed and in subsequent conversations he exploded and
threatened to close the newspaper.

Shanfari, instead of giving his own side of the story given the overwhelming
public interest in the matter as shown by the involvement of two ministers,
chose to threaten to close the newspaper and go after its journalists.

“You don’t know who I am and what I do. You are fighting the wrong person
and I will make sure your newspaper is closed,”  said Shanfari.  “Do you
know who I am? I’m going to go after you (Independent),”

He was particularly angered by a picture of his house which appeared in the
paper showing part of his property which was raided by the police. He
accused the Independent of being unprofessional for taking pictures of his
house and “tarnishing his image”.

“You guys are very unprofessional. Why did you take pictures of my house? I
have reported you to the police,” he said. “I will make sure your newspaper
is closed.”

After the dramatic outburst by Shanfari, Mlotshwa also changed his tune and
sent an email threatening to take legal action against the Independent.
“Our client had considered an interview to rebut many of the statements
contained in your report. However, as it is apparent that any such rebuttal
is likely to be published  in circumstances where he has little or no
control over the content thereof,  our client can see no value in conducting
such an interview,” wrote Mlotshwa.

“Further, the immense damage caused by certain of the allegations contained
in the story cannot be remedied by anything other than legal action. Our
client is inundated with queries from the world over regarding the same,
particularly from his business associates. We have instructions to institute
immediate legal action. Please be guided accordingly.”

Shanfari, who was on the United States and European Union sanctions for
alleged dealings in the DRC and links to Zanu PF, was mentioned in the UN’s
2001 report titled The Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other
Forms of Wealth of the DRC. The alleged looting had occurred during the DRC
civil war between August 1998 and July 2003. Sanctions against him were
subsequently lifted and looting allegations withdrawn. — Staff Writer.

River Ranch feud rages on

http://www.thestandard.co.zw/

Friday, 23 March 2012 09:51

Faith Zaba

THE fight between Khupukile Resources (Pvt) Ltd, a company owned by the
Mujuru family, and the majority shareholder in River Ranch diamond mine,
Adel Abdul Rahman al Aujan, has intensified after the Saudi-based tycoon
allegedly tried to sell the company’s headquarters in Harare to a third
party in violation of an agreement between the two.
New evidence that emerged this week shows a battle is unfolding over River
Ranch headquarters located at No 99 Churchill Avenue, Gunhill, Harare.
This is despite claims by Aujan that his relations with the late army
commander, General Solomon Mujuru, never soured.

Rani Investment, owned by Anjan, claimed last week that the relationship
between Mujuru and Aujan had always been “one of friendship and mutual
respect”.

However, documents seen by the Zimbabwe Independent this week further show
that Aujan, who clashed with Mujuru over the mine in Victoria Falls three
months before the general died in a mysterious fire in August last year, is
now dishonouring an agreement to sell the River Ranch diamond mine offices
to Khupukile Resources as initially agreed.

According to a letter from Khupukile Resources director, Nyasha Mujuru del
Campo to Aujan, dated January 31 2012, the Saudi businessman initially
agreed to sell the offices to the Mujuru family for US$400 000, in addition
to his 80% stake in River Ranch mine.

“When we met you (Aujan) in Harare and you said that you would sell No 99
(Churchill Avenue, Gunhill, Harare) and your shares in River Ranch to us,
you said that you would like to have the deal concluded and payments made by
December 31,” reads Nyasha’s letter.

“We told you that it was impossible because in Zimbabwe most things, other
than shops, close between December and mid-January.”
However, Nyasha said she arranged with the company’s bankers, CBZ Bank, to
transfer US$400 000 to be held in trust by Aujan’s lawyers Sawyer & Mkushi.
According to Nyasha, CBZ failed to pay on time as it was experiencing
liquidity problems. While still trying to make the payment, the Mujuru
family got a letter from Aujan’s lawyer Honour Mkushi of Sawyer & Mkushi in
mid-February advising that the property would no longer be sold to them
because the payment had still not gone through.

“However, the legal advice we have received is that the late receipt of the
money by Mr Mkushi does not mean that you can cancel the sale. Firstly,
there was no provision in the agreement we entered into that payment had to
be made by December 31, January 7 or any other date. Secondly, even if a
fixed date had been agreed to, where the late payment was not due to us not
having the money, but due to CBZ not having it, then we are not liable for
the default and therefore the agreement cannot be cancelled because of late
payment,” reads the letter.

Nyasha said her company eventually paid the money and would not accept
reimbursement, adding that they would remain in possession of the property,
fuelling the conflict between the two parties.

In addition to dishonouring the agreement to sell the property to the
Mujurus, Aujan has also rebuffed the Mujuru family’s offer to buy his 80%
shareholding.

In the same letter, Nyasha said: “With regard to the purchase of your shares
in River Ranch, yesterday we received the letter dated 19 January from Mr
Mkushi notifying us that you will look for another purchaser if you do not
receive an acceptable offer by 31 January. Mr Mkushi says that your first
choice is to sell to us but then if that is not possible then you must find
another purchaser if you do not receive an offer by January 31.

“To give us one day to come up with an acceptable offer is completely
unrealistic. We have not seen the audited accounts for 2010. We have not
seen management reports or reports of diamonds recovered and sold during the
last three years.”

Rani Investment has since indicated it was now offering the shares to
government, which it said was ideally suited to manage the mine in the best
interests of the country.

Documents seen by the Independent show there were serious problems between
Aujan and Mujuru over River Ranch mine before his mysterious death.
The feud over the diamond mine has been going on over the past decade and is
still raging.

Exhume Mujuru, demands family

http://www.thestandard.co.zw/

Friday, 23 March 2012 09:49

Wongai Zhangazha

THE family of the late former army commander General Solomon Mujuru is
intensifying its demands for the exhumation of the remains of the late
liberation struggle hero for further specialist forensic investigations.
The family has expressed dismay at the outcome of the 13-day inquest,
presided over by Harare Regional Magistrate Walter Chikwanha, saying its
findings were flawed.

Chikwanha ruled out foul play in Mujuru’s death despite the inquest raising
more questions than answers. He declared Mujuru died as a result of
carbonisation from smoke, although the cause of the fire could not be
ascertained.

The general’s brother, Joel Mujuru told the Zimbabwe Independent yesterday
he was unhappy with the inquest outcome which he said was predictable from
the start.

“The magistrate says there is no foul play as the newspapers reported, but
can someone explain to us what the gunshots heard at Solomon’s farmhouse on
the night of his death were targeted at? If they are able to tell us that
information, then we can conclude that there was no foul play,” Joel said.

“Why did they say he died of carbonisation when they don’t know what caused
the fire in the first place? I thought as experts they would have told us
the possible causes of the severe fire before they conclude that he died of
carbonisation.”

He added: “The police guards at the farmhouse know how the fire started.
They should not try to hoodwink us.

“We are going to meet to discuss this matter with our lawyer and our
specialists on the way forward. If the government of Zimbabwe is democratic,
it should allow us to exhume Solomon and get the pathologist we want to
examine his body.”

The inquest, which saw 39 witnesses testifying, left Zimbabweans puzzled as
to the cause of the fire which burnt Mujuru to ashes. Testimony from the
forensic experts, pathologist, Harare Fire Brigade, and the Zimbabwe
Electricity Supply Authority experts all proved inconclusive, while
witnesses from the farm gave contradictory testimonies.

In addition, there are many issues, including the mysterious blue flame,
bungled postmortem, the unburnt carpet beneath the body, compromised
evidence and missing keys,  which remain  in the air.

Zanu PF woos young voters

http://www.thestandard.co.zw/

Friday, 23 March 2012 09:45

Wongai Zhangazha/ Paidamoyo Muzulu

ZANU PF, whose core constituency is old people and villagers, is now turning
to the younger generation in a desperate push to break the MDC-T’s
stranglehold in Manicaland.
Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s party won 20 of the 26 seats in the
province during the March 2008 elections. It also holds four of the six
senate seats.

Following dismal performances by the party’s old guard, Zanu PF has
seemingly resolved to field mostly young candidates in a move aimed at
winning the hearts and minds of youth voters.

To attract young candidates, Zanu PF is also awarding them state-funded
business ventures. Among the young turks being considered is journalist and
former Affirmative Action Group president Supa Mandiwanzira.

Mandiwanzira was seen campaigning in Nyanga South constituency this week.
The Nyanga South seat is currently held by the MDC-T’s Willard Chimbetete.

However, Mandiwanzira has denied holding a political rally but called it a
business rally to empower the youths in his home area. “That is not true,
your sources are completely wrong,” said Mandiwanzira. “I was with the
Zimbabwe Youth Council (ZYC) to mobilise some youths in my home area to have
funding in business projects,” he said.

“I was actually with Livingstone Dzikira (ZYC director) there and even
Interfin Bank meeting the youths on empowerment issues since I am involved
in that.The rally had members from both Zanu PF and MDC and different
churches. When I go into politics, I will make a very formal announcement,”
he said.

However, sources close to him say he is dangling the empowerment carrot as a
way of attracting young voters who are desperate for employment.

The journalist-cum-businessman is believed to have got the nod to contest
for the seat from Zanu PF secretary for administration Didymus Mutasa, who
reportedly endorsed him at Sedze Business Centre in Nyanga last year.

In its central committee report, Zanu PF highlighted the need to capture the
youths “in view of the fact that youths constitute the majority of voters”.

Besides Mandiwanzira, other young candidates gunning for elections on a Zanu
PF ticket include businessmen Enock Porusingazi and Trinity Munowenyu,
commercial farmer Joshua Sacco and Dorothy Chitima, daughter of the Chipinge
Central MP, among others.

In a related development, Joseph Chinotimba and senior police officer Oliver
Mandipaka have thrown their hats into the ring for the Buhera West seat.
Mandipaka is a police chief superintendent and national spokesman.

His entrance has brought a new dimension into Zanu PF with top civil
servants, particularly those from the security cluster, now publicly
contesting for public office.

The security sector and former war veterans are pushing Zanu PF to set aside
20% of all seats for them in recognition of their role in ensuring Zanu PF’s
continued stay in power.

Notable state security officials who have gone into politics include retired
top army officials Mike Nyambuya, Hubert Nyanhongo, Ambrose Mutinhiri,
Claudius Makova, Kairo Mhandu and the late former army generals Vitalis
Zvinavashe and Solomon Mujuru.

Villagers in Buhera confirmed Mandipaka’s bid saying he was donating day-old
chicks to villagers to start income generating projects. “Mandipaka has
become more visible in the constituency and his team is donating day-old
chicks to potential voters,” said a villager.

Mandipaka was not available for comment but his principals confirmed that he
was officially on leave. “Mandipaka is on leave and we expect him to be back
at work at the beginning of April,” said police chief spokesman Wayne
Bvudzijena.

Fellow aspiring candidate Wilbert Nzuma urged Mandipaka to resign from the
police force and enter politics fulltime.

“I hear that Mandipaka has a team on the ground preparing for the party
primary elections. I think it would be fair if he resigns from the police if
he wants to contest the elections on an even playing field,” Nzuma said.

Bribes, kick-backs in NSSA property acquisitions

http://www.thestandard.co.zw/

Friday, 23 March 2012 09:44

Herbert Moyo

NSSA acquired various properties under dubious circumstances that included
inflated prices and, in terms of construction projects, used companies that
were not qualified to carry out these projects, according to the National
Economic Conduct Inspectorate (NECI).
Some of the properties acquired under suspicious circumstances include
Ballantyne Park Shopping Centre, Dominion Building and Survey House which
were bought at exorbitant prices amid allegations of bribes and kick-backs.

In the case of the purchase of Ballantyne Park, NECI’s investigations
revealed that NSSA chairman Albert Nhau instigated the purchase  from Dennis
Green and his wife Sandra who were his personal friends and business
associates over a 10-year period during which they gave each other loans.

“Given his long-standing relationship with the Greens, good corporate
governance and ethics would have required Mr Nhau to recuse himself of the
dealings between his friends, the Greens and NSSA,” NECI concluded.

Further, the property was bought for US$2,2 million while an independent
evaluation had put it at US$1,5 million.

Approached for comment, Nhau refused and accused the paper of failing to
contact him from the outset.

“You should have called me before the two articles you wrote earlier. I have
got absolutely nothing to say,” he said before switching off his phone.

NSSA Management said that instead of buying the property, the authority was
made to buy shares in Ballantyne Park (Pvt) Ltd, a company that owned the
building, and yet did not acquire a majority shareholding in the company.
Ironically, the amount they paid for the 33% shares was enough to buy the
property on its own.

Other irregularities extended to the purchases of Survey House and Dominion
House, also known as Chibuku House. In both instances, NSSA controversially
switched agency from Bard House to Raydon Properties despite the fact that
the former had worked on the deal since 2006.

The transfer proved costly after NSSA paid US$3 million, up from the agreed
price of US$2,5 million. In the case of Survey House, NSSA hadto fork out a
further US$20 000 in agency fees to Raydon.

NSSA embarked on the Marondera Housing Project where the contractor, Charuma
Blasting and Earth Moving Services, allegedly took more than four years to
complete what should have been eight months’ work amid claims that delays
were deliberate “in order to keep on pumping money from NSSA for their
selfish needs”.

NSSA also bungled a deal on the construction of a hotel in Beitbridge after
Matiza and the State Procurement Board (SPB) awarded the tender to Costain,
a company which lacked the resources and capacity to undertake the project.

Costain breached its contractual obligations to procure its own goods for
the construction and requested NSSA to procure the necessary materials on
its behalf. NECI concluded that the tender process had not been thoroughly
carried out, resulting in Costain winning simply because they submitted the
cheapest bid at US$17 375 427, even though they lacked the capacity to
implement.

The report says directors allocated themselves NSSA stands and loans funds
to build  houses.

‘Govt has no treaty record’

http://www.thestandard.co.zw/

Friday, 23 March 2012 09:42

Paidamoyo Muzulu

JUSTICE minister Patrick Chinamasa told parliament yesterday government did
not have an up-to-date record of which international human rights treaties
and conventions it had signed and ratified since independence.
Chinamasa made the remarks when he appeared before the Misheck
Marava-chaired Senate Thematic Committee on Human Rights while apprising
senators on Zimbabwe’s compliance with domesticating international treaties.

“Ideally, we should keep a proper record that captures all treaties we have
signed and those we have ratified or not,” Chinamasa said. “The register
should be with the ministry of Foreign Affairs that conducts international
relations for us. Unfortunately, we don’t have that register.”

Chinamasa told the committee that his ministry was tasked with compiling
that register and expects to complete it in the near future.

Zimbabwe has signed but has not ratified the African Charter on Children’s
Rights, Convention on Elimination of Discrimination and Abuse against Women
and the Convention against Torture, among others.

Chinamasa told the committee that his ministry had engaged a consultant to
study each of the signed instruments and recommend how the country could
domesticate them.

Zimbabwe committed itself to implementing 130 of the 177 United Nations
Human Rights Council recommendations last week after presenting its Human
Rights report in Geneva for 2011.

Among the recommendations is democratisation of the political field, opening
up of the media, putting a stop to political persecution and outlawing of
torture while in custody.

Chinamsa’s inability to produce a list of treaties and conventions which
Zimbabwe has signed and ratified exposed government’s incompetence and
failure to safely keep important and accurate administrative documents and
records.

Law Society reads its members the riot act

http://www.thestandard.co.zw/

Friday, 23 March 2012 09:41

Wongai Zhangazha

THE Law Society of Zimbabwe (LSZ) has read the riot act to its members amid
revelations that corruption and misconduct through soliciting for work and
conveyancing by legal practitioners was on the increase.
In a memo written to members on February 28 2012, the organisation’s
executive secretary Edward Mapara said the LSZ was worried by the amount of
“unprofessional and dishonourable conduct allegedly committed by legal
practitioners”.

The unprofessional conduct ranged from touting for work, undercutting, and
shameful behaviour of sharing proceeds of the practice with non-legal
practitioners.

“Some of the conduct complained of is outright corrupt and criminal. I
believe the majority among our members are law-abiding and honourable but
the increase in the complaints is a serious concern and we need to
collectively address it,” wrote Mapara.

He said according to information he had received, some conveyancers were
soliciting for work from financial institutions.

“Soliciting or touting is dishonourable and unprofessional conduct in terms
of Section 23 of the Legal Practitioners Act. Lawyers are not allowed at law
to tout or solicit for work, period. It is dishonourable conduct and should
be stopped…. This form of aggressive brazen marketing has no place in the
legal fraternity under the current laws. It should accordingly be stopped.
This circular should serve as a stern warning to all those engaging in this
untoward behaviour tocease forthwith. This circular is also an encouragement
to victims of this practice to please come forward,” reads the letter.

On undercutting, Mapara reminded the lawyers that they were bound to charge
for their services as per the LSZ general tariff and the conveyancing
tariff.

“The last gazetted tariff for conveyancing is 148/2006, the EGM of 2009
resolved to adopt a new tariff which was (by resolution of EGM) applicable
immediately (notwithstanding date of gazetting) as it reduced the
percentages chargeable. Some members have ignored both the gazetted tariff
and the new EGM recommended tariff. Such acts violate the legal
practitioners.”

He warned lawyers that sharing of proceeds of their legal practice with a
non-legal practitioner was a serious misconduct.

“The secretary has repeatedly been informed that some lawyers are not
content with the shameful acts of soliciting for work. They go further to
share proceeds of their work with non-lawyers by way of illegal
 “commissions” or plain bribes to those who award work to their firms.”

On other unethical conveyancing practices, Mapara said some practitioners
have “also fallen foul of rules by either recklessly releasing purchase
prices prior to transfer without proper due diligence and or written and
informed consent/indemnity of their clients while others have allowed their
offices, names or official stamps to be used for fraudulent ends”.

Mapara warned that the LSZ was not going to just watch what was going on but
investigate and deal promptly with all complaints.

Local contractors let us down –– Zinwa

http://www.thestandard.co.zw/

Friday, 23 March 2012 09:39

Paidamoyo Muzulu

THE Zimbabwe National Water Authority (Zinwa) failed to complete the
construction of seven dams and 20 other water rehabilitation projects
between 2004 and 2009 due to bungling by contractors, lack of machinery and
hyperinflation.
This was revealed when the Zinwa board and senior management appeared before
the parliamentary Public Accounts Portfolio Committee on Monday to explain
why it had failed to deliver on the projects as outlined in the 2010
Comptroller and Auditor-General’s Report.

Zinwa hired indigenous contractors for most of the projects during the
period under review since most competent international companies shunned the
Zimbabwean market for paying in worthless Zimbabwe dollars.

Indigenous contractors remained the only option, but most of them lacked
requisite functional equipment to undertake such projects.

Zinwa board member Vavarirai Choga said indigenous companies had let down
the water authority as they needed massive hand-holding during
implementation of the projects.

Choga said: “The indigenous contractors usually came with equipment that
would breakdown after two or three days on the job. They would then seek an
advance payment but even with that they still failed to complete the job.
The indigenous companies lacked experience in delivering on large projects.”

Among the Zinwa outstanding projects are the Binga borehole drilling,
Tokwe-Mukosi, Matezva, Mutange, Gwayi-Shangani and Shave dams.

Zinwa board chairman Never Mhlanga attributed the delays in project
completion to inadequate and erratic funding the water authority received
from treasury.

“The main challenge Zinwa faced was hyperinflation and underfunding from
treasury during the period under review. For instance in 2011, we were
allocated US$68 million and to date only US$900 000 has been disbursed from
treasury,” Mhlanga said.

However, Zinwa conceded to Chikomba East MP Edgar Mwembwe’s observation that
the water authority did not have adequate technical staff within the group.
Choga said it was true that at some point Zinwa did not have adequate staff.

“However, we have since recruited and we can now deliver on our mandate,” he
said.

Zinwa also revealed it was sitting on a debtors’ book valued at US$88
million in contrast to its own debts of US$55 million. The majority of the
debtors are newly resettled farmers failing to settle their irrigation water
bills, government institutions, local authorities and corporate
organisations which receive bulk water supplies.

“In 2011 we billed a total of US$43 million, but unfortunately we collected
US$27 million,” Mhlanga said.

Rampant graft: Govt takes business as usual stance

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Thursday, 22 March 2012 17:51

Paidamoyo Muzulu

ALTHOUGH the coalition government has managed to bring about relative peace,
stability and economic recovery, it has dismally failed to root out endemic
corruption and has stumbled at the same hurdles the previous Zanu PF regime
President Robert Mugabe failed to scale.

The ongoing Constituency Development Fund (CDF) audit has unearthed acts of
corruption among MPs as well as ministers; which in itself is a microcosm of
the broader societal battle with rampant graft, including bribery, fraud,
embezzlement and extortion.

As a result four MPs were arrested for abusing US$50 000 funds, but
Attorney-General Johannes Tomana (pictured) recently moved to stop the
Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission (ZACC) from nailing legislators accused
of fraudulently converting constituency development funds for their own use
at the expense of the people they represent. As the arrests gathered
momentum, Tomana, from nowhere, halted the process, accusing the
anti-corruption commission of rushing to arrest the lawmakers before
carrying out thorough investigations.

Tomana, who has been accused of trying to selectively prosecute his
political opponents mainly from the two MDC parties on baseless charges,
claimed that ZACC was “clumsy” and had congested his office with piece-meal
evidence of arrests based on information gathered through newspapers or
individuals. He then insisted he will not prosecute lawmakers on “flimsy
allegations”.

This sparked controversy. The commission’s chairperson Denford Chirindo hit
back, saying his campaign against corruption would continue unabated.
“ZACC has noted with great concern several press reports suggesting that
directives had been given to ZACC to stop or hold in abeyance investigations
into allegations over the Constituency Development Fund,” Chirindo said.

“ZACC will continue to investigate all cases thoroughly, professionally,
without fear, favour or prejudice. ZACC would like to reiterate
unequivocally and unreservedly in terms of its mandate and powers that it
will continue to investigate all reports relating to any cases of
corruption, theft, misappropriation, abuse of power and other improprieties,
including abuse of constituency development funds.”

Tomana’s action brought back the memories of similar state interventions on
corruption once big names became involved. Zimbabwe has witnessed this since
the Willowgate scandal in 1988. Since then, the political elite have lived
another day to loot with tacit approval from the government which lacks the
moral fibre and political will to root out the scourge.

The government has in the past made half-hearted inquiries into corruption
cases involving powerful politicians. In some cases government simply failed
to act despite overwhelming evidence of corruption. Examples of scandals in
which government failed to act adequately against abuse of public funds
include the Civil Servants Housing Scheme, War Veterans Compensation Fund
and multiple farm ownership under the controversial land reform from 2000,
among others.

The CDF facility was open to abuse. No legal safeguards and clear-cut
accountability procedures were put in place. For the first time since
independence, MPs directly got funding from treasury and in the absence of
checks and balances, the money was at the mercy of corrupt politicians.

MPs from across the political divide predictably misappropriated the funds.
The Constitutional and Parliamentary Affairs ministry accused MPs of abuse
of the fund, theft and in certain instances failure to utilise the money
after some legislators just left it in bank accounts for more than 13
months.

The CDF scam comes hard on the heels of the Willowvale civil servants
housing scandal under Housing minister Giles Mutsekwa. Mutsekwa’s National
Housing and Amenities ministry has largely remained unmoved and no heads
have rolled thus far, meaning corrupt individuals remain protected despite
evidence of abuse.

Zanu PF chief whip Joram Gumbo blamed the CDF scandal on the executive which
rushed to introduce the project without putting legal safeguards.
“The ministry did not take advice. I had recommended that we can’t give
money directly to MPs,” Gumbo said, “There was no accounting system in place
to run that fund smoothly.”

Social commentator Blessing Vava said inaction by the coalition government
on corruption reflected failure of leadership and attempts to protect those
with skeletons in its closets.

“The whole system is rotten from the top such that if investigations are to
be conducted by a professional body, you will realise that almost everyone
in that government would go to prison,” Vava said.

The MDC-T has promised to investigate cases of corruption and take action
against its members found guilty. However, nothing much has been done in
that regard.

The CDF abuse closely resembles the Willowgate scandal. Both involved MPs
who abused their privilege to corruptly benefit from state resources. In
Willowgate, MPs and ministers had access to cheap Toyota Cressida vehicles
which they sold at a premium to the public. Those caught in the web and were
convicted received presidential pardons. Some, for instance Zimbabwe’s
ambassador to China Frederick Shava, were even rewarded later, showing how
the executive tolerated corruption.

The Local Government ministry under Ignatius Chombo has been accused of
corruption but nothing has been done about it. Prime Minister Morgan
Tsvangirai has tried unsuccessfully to seek President Robert Mugabe’s
authority to have Chombo investigated but all in vain. Instead Chombo has
now taken to probing others, MDC mayors and councillors on allegations of
corruption in a move widely seen as diversion. Chombo has been cracking down
on Harare, Masvingo, Bindura, Chegutu, Kariba, Mutare and Chitungwiza.

However, Chombo has not been swift in dissolving councils led by Zanu PF
except interfering in Harare’s affairs at different times. Chombo’s vast
wealth and allegations of corruption came to public attention during his
acrimonious divorce case with his wife Marian. The inventory of property
that should be shared includes nearly hundred properties scattered across
Zimbabwe.

Government’s incoherent approach in dealing with corruption and selective
application of the law exposes authorities’ insincerity in dealing with the
scourge. All signs currently show a continued “business as usual” approach
even under the present coalition arrangement while corruption remains
rampant.

Corruption will not be rooted out so long as authorities allow rent-seeking,
discretionary powers, monopolies, lack of transparency and accountability
and the prevailing culture of impunity to remain in our national affairs.

Zimplats takeover far from a done deal

http://www.thestandard.co.zw/

Thursday, 22 March 2012 17:33

Chris Muronzi

BY agreeing to an indigenisation plan allowing Zimplats to cede 51% of its
stake to locals a fortnight ago, Implats CEO David Brown could have given
government enough rope to hang itself.
Analysts and mining experts feel that the implementation plan is going to be
difficult and judging by Zimplats’ market capitalisation and balance sheet,
the cash-strapped government has to fork out anything between US$500 million
and US$1 billion for the 31% stake.

As a result, analysts believe the government is most likely to shift
goalposts and opt for a conversion of mineral rights into equity, something
which will not add value to the company although the shareholding structure
would have fundamentally changed.

The analysts said through the National Indigenisation and Economic
Empowerment Board (NIEEB), government could claim sovereign rights on
minerals to facilitate the deal.

If the government could claim sovereign rights on minerals through NIEEB to
muscle into Zimplats, the controlling shareholder of Zimplats, Implats,
might not get a cent in the process.

But one expert said should Zimbabwe take that route then its mining laws
would have to be reviewed. The expert said while all minerals in the ground
remained the property of the state even after a claim or special grant has
been issued by government, any move to reclaim the mineral resource changed
the thrust of the mining laws. As such, the expert said, government should
then stop charging royalties after these changes.

NIEEB CEO Wilson Gwatiringa indicated that government, through the bankrupt
National Indegenisation and Economic Empowerment Fund (NIEEF), would pay for
the shares, saying there was huge appetite to finance such a deal given the
platinum mine’s balance sheet.

The NIEEB is broke and cannot afford on its own to pay for its equity.
Similarly other new shareholders have no means of funding their
shareholdings.
Analysts see fundraising as a challenge given the ongoing global financial
crisis. The NIEEF would have to securitise the acquired shares, effectively
mortgaging the shareholding again to another foreign player, defeating the
purpose of indegenisation, or at the least, government would have to
mortgage other reserves not linked to Implats to unlock funding — again
undermining its own policy.

Of the platinum companies doing business in Zimbabwe, analysts say Implats
would be the most affected. “We view Impala as the most exposed to the
Zimbabwean risk: Together, Zimplats and Mimosa account for 17% of Impala’s
NAV of operating assets, compared with 16% for Aquarius and 4% for Implats.
On our FY12 estimates, Zimbabwe accounts for 13% of Impala’s revenue and 23%
of its EBITDA,” another analyst said.

“This is slightly lower than the numbers for Aquarius but with the ramp-up
of Zimplats, we estimate that Impala will be the most exposed of the three
by 2014. Aquarius will become more reliant on South African production, with
the ramp-up of Everest over this period, and Implats continues to have the
most optionality in its portfolio with regard to future production growth.”

Others see NIEEB raising the funds in China, Zimbabwe’s new best friend
after relations between the troubled Southern African country soured with
the West over human rights abuses and electoral violence.

But critics say government buying a stake in Zimplats defeats the whole
purpose of indigenisation and instead promotes the notion of expropriation
or nationalisation.

Analysts do not see Zimbabwe coming up with even the US$500 million that is
required to cover the essentials of the real value —US$153 million for the
ground Implats released in exchange for empowerment credits that did not
materialise, plus the US$350 million that represented 31% of Zimplats’
market capitalisation.

Experts valued a 31% stake of Zimplats at “a significantly higher figure”
than the US$350 million value that 31% of the current market capitalisation
amounts to.

In arriving at a fair value, Implats would take into account the net present
value of Zimplats’ Phase two expansion which was in the process of ramp-up,
as well as planned future investment and the value of the platinum that is
still in the ground.

Others feel this is no longer about empowerment but a veiled attempt at
nationalisation.

Analysts say the deliberate use of words such as “cede” in a the deal
structured by Caledonia that would see indigenous investors taking a
controlling stake in the group, points to a new strategy to avoid paying for
the shares.

Strangely, the use of the word “cede” in the indigenisation matrix was
opposed by industrialists and bodies representing business because of its
connotative meaning. “Cede” generally implies handing over or surrendering
for no financial or other consideration.

Following the furore over the word “cede”, government changed the word to
“dispose”. Now, “cede” has reappeared again much to the chagrin of
investors. But Gwatiringa denies government wants to grab shares for free.

With elections looming, analysts fear Zanu PF could be trying to use the
policy to win elections likely to be held next year.

Analysts say Indigenisation minister Saviour Kasukuwere could be attempting
to curry favour with President Robert Mugabe by mounting pressure on mining
companies, especially after the aged leader said negotiations had closed at
a recent function to officiate the Zvishavane Community Share Trust at
Mimosa Platinum Mine.

Many feel Mugabe’s speech in Zvishavane had largely emboldened Kasukuwere’s
tough stance on mines and accelerated government’s move into Zimplats.

“It boggles the mind that while Zimbabwe is well-endowed with natural
resources that are of a finite nature, particularly in the mining sector,
since the onset of colonialism, Zimbabweans have not benefited from the
exploitation of these resources. Instead, they continue to be under threat
not to benefit now and in the future, mainly because of the neo-colonial
forces currently threatening the African continent,” Mugabe said.

Given all these complexities, the battle for Zimplats might still be far
from over.

Govt tackles US$9,1b external debt overhang

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Thursday, 22 March 2012 17:28

Happiness Zengeni

ZIMBABWE has moved to tackle its US$9,1 billion external debt overhang
through a combination of natural resources leveraging and traditional
debt-resolution tactics.
Finance minister, Tendai Biti, this week launched the Zimbabwe Accelerated
Arrears Clearance Debt and Development strategy, in a bid to lower the
country’s debt.

Zimbabwe’s external debt of US$9,1 billion, translates to 118% of the
country’s GDP. Analysts have long said it would be difficult to realise the
United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals in the absence of a resolution
on the external debt.

The country owes the African Development Bank US$550 million, the World Bank
US$1,5 billion and the Paris Club US$3,3 billion. In terms of the split of
the multilateral debt, the World Bank is owed 45%, AfDB 21%, IMF 22% and the
EIB 9%. The Paris Club makes up 85% of the bilateral debt.

Although Zimbabwe has achieved economic stability, the debt was the only
macro-convergence figure that the country was not complying with.

Biti said the strategy was a hybrid model seeking to end Zimbabwe’s
isolation in terms of funding.

He said the plan would include the adoption of the traditional
debt-resolution initiative in the post Highly Indebted Poor Country (HIPC)
status, combined with leveraging the country’s natural resources to achieve
sustainable economic development.  The major issue, Biti added, would be to
deal with major infrastructure deficiencies.

“It is clear that Zimbabwe cannot rehabilitate its infrastructure and move
forward with socio-economic transformation reforms if the debt overhang
challenges persist,” he said.

Under the plan, government would firstly leverage on natural resources in
pursuit of economic development.

This will entail finalising the new Mining Legal Framework, carrying out a
geological mineral survey as well as establishing a framework which
incorporates development funds for the benefit of communities.

On completion of the leveraging processes, Biti said government would
re-engage the international community on the removal of sanctions, re-engage
creditors for the clearance of arrears and debt relief, and also re-engage
the IMF and all the other creditors. Biti said cabinet and government had
been working on this since 2010.He called on the international market to
judge the country by what has been achieved since dollarisation, rather than
from a political viewpoint.

Speaking at the Euromoney Conference which started in the capital on
Wednesday, Biti said Zimbabwe’s position cannot be compared to Greece or the
US where children were born with debt in excess of millions.

“In Zimbabwe every child is born into a US$50 000 debt,” said Biti.

He pointed out that in order to get the economy back to the 1990 levels,
Zimbabwe needed US$14 billion.

No going back to Zim dollar –– Biti

http://www.thestandard.co.zw/

Thursday, 22 March 2012 17:28

FINANCE minister, Tendai Biti, said Zimbabwe would not revert back to the
Zimbabwe dollar but would push for a regional currency since the country had
a much smaller market.
Until then, the country would maintain the multiple-currency regime, which
is currently in place, as it has been the major contributor to the economic
stability being experienced in the country. Biti said Zimbabwe was a small
market with relatively weak demand, and there would be limited benefits if
the country was to introduce its own currency.

Various views have been peddled on the course to take in as far as the
currency system in this country is concerned.

Some economists say Zimbabwe should reintroduce a local currency that is
linked to the South African rand through the Common Monetary Area, which
links South Africa, Lesotho, Swaziland and Namibia. This means that Zimbabwe
would revert to its own local currency but the exchange rate would be at par
with the rand.

This system would make it easier to shift to the Sadc single currency, they
said. Another option would be for Zimbabwe to push for full dollarisation
where the United States dollar is adopted as the currency of the nation.

However, economists argue that because Zimbabwe’s economy is remotely linked
to the US economy, dollarisation might not be the best option. The US dollar
is the commonly used currency. Others such as Reserve bank of Zimbabwe chief
Gideon Gono want a gold standard backed currency.

The gold standard is a currency system in which the standard economic unit
of account is a fixed weight of gold. There have also been calls for the use
of the Chinese Yuan amid arguments that Zimbabwe’s economic recovery was at
the mercy of the US dollar, which was facing threats from the global
financial crisis.

Biti said that if the ratio of exports to imports changed to 5:1 from the
current 1:3, the country would be ready to have its own currency.  Last year
Zimbabwe had a trade deficit of US$5 billion from imports of US$8 billion
and exports of about US$3 billion. Biti said treasury would continue with
cash budgeting but also noted that there was an over-reliance on the budget,
with Zimbabweans largely overtaxed.  He said this was reflected in the
revenue to GDP percentage which was at 30% against the average of small
economies of 16%.

Biti said Zimbabwe had survived without direct donor assistance to the
budget and could do even better if foreign direct investments improved.

The country hopes to maintain the above average growth rates, which is
underpinned by firm commodity prices on minerals and tobacco.

Broadacom: Telecoms’ new player

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Thursday, 22 March 2012 17:27

Clive Mphambela

The landscape of the telecommunications industry appears set for a
significant re-shaping with the latest entry of yet another network,
Broadacom, which threatens the entrenched positions currently enjoyed by
incumbent telecoms giants Econet Wireless, Telecel, Net-One, Tel One and
Africom.
Founded by former Econet Wireless executive, Zachary Wazara, (pictured)
Broadacom could significantly chew into the existing players’ near
oligopolistic dominant positions in the country’s telecommunications sector.
Broadacom’s offering cuts across voice telephony and broadband internet on
cheaper platforms.

This is in contrast to some companies’ approach of offering new products at
a premium price, enabling them to quickly recoup their investment and
thereafter gradually reduce prices as the number of customers increases and
competition picks up. Broadacom is entering the market with fairly low
prices, where according to their submission to Potraz, an intra-network call
will only cost six US cents a minute.

According to a business analyst, Broadacom is employing a phenomenon known
as disruptive innovation, a process where new start-ups firms gradually but
systematically chip away at dominant incumbent players’ market share by
offering a lowly-priced option to lower and middle-income consumers. They
then improve the quality of their offering and attract more discerning
customers until their quality catches up with or even surpasses that of
incumbents.

The Broadacom service is based on a platform called McWILL.

“This technology has a very efficient utilisation of bandwidth and can
therefore deliver very fast speeds and penetrate buildings very easily,’’
Broadacom CEO Zachary Wazara said, adding that the technology allows the
seamless delivery of video streaming, data, voice and value-added services
at the same time.

This differs from the conventional mobile telephony system, GSM.

Analysts say the potential of the McWill system to disrupt the existing
status quo is high and may explain why major companies as Econet, as the
dominant owner of Wimax infrastructure in Zimbabwe, launched its own VoIP
products early this year.

Wazara said: “We are targeting the average Zimbabwean who has been denied
value for money on voice, and has had no access to broadband. So currently,
all high density areas of Harare have instantly available and affordable
voice and broadband. Service is now also in Chitungwiza, Ruwa, parts of
Bulawayo and Mutare is coming up in the next 30 days. Thereafter we move
into the cities in between.’’

Broadacom was granted a Class ‘A’ IAP licence and which allows them to setup
and operate a national broadband network encompassing both public and
private data networks, VPN Services and Internet Services. The licence also
allows the establishment and operation of a voice network using Internet
Protocol (VoIP) together with attendant services.

Broadacom has invested more than US$20 million to date and are now closing
their next round of financing for a further $10-15m over the next 18-20
months, with 90% of the base station equipment needed for the next 12 months
already in the country.

The company expects the quality of service in terms of coverage and capacity
to increase with each month as it rolls out. In the next three months, they
expect to introduce a few value-added services that will not be replicated
in the short-term by existing networks.

Civil servants drown in microfinance loans

http://www.thestandard.co.zw/

Thursday, 22 March 2012 17:13

Clive Mphambela

THIRTY-THREE year old Stephen Mbanje walks into a smart, well-lit reception
area of a popular microfinance company. There, he finds a seat on a rather
long couch that serves to control the long queue of aspiring borrowers who
line along the couch as they move towards the receptionist’s desk, where
they make enquiries and are quickly handed a set of application forms to
complete.
Stephen is a teacher at a rural school in Mutoko and this is his third trip
to a similar office set-up in Harare.

This will be his fourth micro-finance loan in less than six months. He wants
to borrow US$200 and needs the money to top up his child’s form one school
fees. His effective take home pay has been dwindling ever since he took out
his first loan from a microfinance company.

The loan repayments, which now total US$135 a month are taking up most of
his net income, leaving him with accumulating bills.

In the queue for loans, Stephen joins two soldiers and a policemen in
uniform, a dozen other people and a well dressed elderly nurse.

The common characteristic of this company’s clientele is that they are all
civil servants and they are all looking to access easy loans.

The loans are now synonymous with civil servants to the extent that it would
be fair to call them civil servants loans.

Most of the civil servants waiting with Stephen are not accessing their
first loan. They have loans with several other lenders of similar ilk.

Across the road from where Stephen and his kin are waiting, George Bere is
also filling in forms to access a business loan from yet another
Microfinance Institution.

George is a commodity broker and needs US$5 000 to finance an order for
spares that he has received from a large company from which he reckons he
will make a profit of US$3 500 after delivery of the goods in about thirty
days time. George is willing to cede his 2001 Mercedes C180K worth about
US$12 000 to access the loan. He has spoken to his wife and they have agreed
to share their second car in the meantime.

In both cases, Stephen and George will have the loans processed in a short
while. In just over a day, they will collect their cash after the lenders
have deducted as much as 15% in various upfront fees and charges.
Thereafter, interest rates are as high as 20% a month on the outstanding
balance, with serious penalties accruing once the repayment date is reached
and payments have not gone through. Herein lies the problem. Such has become
the norm for the Zimbabwean working class, who are falling prey to loan
sharks.

The workers are attracted initially by the easy credit which ensnares them
and eventually enslaves them; they keep coming back not because of good
service and favourable loan terms but they ‘’have to come back” to refinance
moneys that would have been deducted from their meagre salaries at Salary
Service Bureau (SSB) to service these ballooning loan repayments.

For instance, George will on the other hand suffer a similar fate as his
“Order Financing Loan” will quickly go bad.

He will supply his spares, but because this is the first time he is dealing
with the ‘’large company’’ he has not done his homework. They will pay him
for his supplies after 90 days, long after his loan has fallen due. By that
time, the interest charges and attendant default penalties will have eaten
up his profit margin and he will be left with an outstanding balance and
interest on the loan. He will unfortunately have to sell his other car to
eventually save his prized Mercedes from disposal by the lenders, who will
want to exercise their rights to the pledged collateral.

The above scenarios would not occur if Zimbabwe introduced proper
legislation to regulate the credit markets.

Analysts say there is need for the establishment of a proper and well
capacitated national Credit Clearing Bureau where the names and credit
histories of all borrowers can be accessed. This, many feel, does not only
protect borrowers from unfair lending practices, but also enables lenders to
access vital credit history information about their clients and potential
clients. A situation where there is no functioning central credit bureau,
and no legislation to protect borrowers and lenders, leaves consumers
vulnerable to irresponsible and sometimes downright unfair credit practices.

Lenders are also lending in the dark as they cannot meaningfully assess the
creditworthiness of would be borrowers.

The result is a highly dysfunctional credit market which is sure to implode.
Analysts say it is just a question of time.

The say it’s time Zimbabwe borrowed from best practices and institutionalise
regulation of the credit markets. South Africa did this in 2005, enacting
the National Credit Act 34 of 2005. This saw the birth of the National
Credit Regulator, NCR and a plethora of supporting institutions, credit
clearing agencies and credit counsellors. This has led to more responsible
lending practices, better protection for consumers and more stable credit
markets.

Zim’s liquidity crisis easing — Biti

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Thursday, 22 March 2012 17:10

Gamma Mudarikiri

ZIMBABWE’s perennial   liquidity crisis is easing, aided by remittances from
banks’ Nostro accounts and a step up in the country’s Real Time Gross
Settlement (RTGS) balance, according  to Finance minister Tendai Biti.

Biti told businessdigest  that there was a marked  improvement in the
country’s RTGS  balance , which  as of  the first week  of March was  US$264
million, a development he said significantly improved liquidity.

Biti said noticeable improvement on remittances from banks’ Nostro accounts
and a US$110 million drawndown   from  the International Monetary Fund’s
Special  Drawing Rights,  which the  treasury injected  into the economy
last year, also helped the liquidity situation.

He said treasury was working on the restoration of the Reserve Bank of
Zimbabwe’s (RBZ) Lender of Last Resort (LOLR) function which will this year
receive a further US$3 million.

This was in addition to the already existing US$27 million channelled
towards the same purpose early this year.

Biti said progress had also been made in setting up a Special Purpose
Vehicle (SPV)to allow investment by shareholders – government – into the
central bank and this should be operational within a few weeks.

In terms of the US$83 million in statutory reserves owed to banks by the
RBZ, the central  bank was set to issue  treasury instruments that will have
tenures of  two, three and  four years  with interest  rates  of 2,5%, 3%
and 3,5%,respectively.

“We are busy working on the agreement on the SPV and we have already issued
treasury bills that monetised the statutory reserve of US$83, 2 million,”
Biti said.

He said the agreement would promote inter-bank trade and allow banks to use
the statutory instruments as security in accessing the LOLR funds from RBZ.

The development will ensure utilisation of resources which banks have been
failing to access because of the dysfunctional central bank’s LOLR facility.
Treasury  has also mandated the Infrastructure  Development  Bank  (IDBZ) to
issue  US$50 million worth of infrastructure development bonds  to
complement the Public Service Investment Programme (PSIP) budgetary
resources allocated in the 2012 budget.The bonds are designed to facilitate
inter-bank market operations.

Biti said in order to improve on the availability of lines of credit,
treasury, through the Zimbabwe Economic and Trade Revival Facility (ZETREF),
had to date allocated US$62 million to the banking sector.

Biti said the ZETREF assessment committee approved US$42,5 million worth of
projects, with actual disbursed funds amounting to US$17,8 million.
The country however continues to face high interest rates ranging between
20% and 40%, figures Biti said were detrimental to the economy.

“We are working on easing interest rates which has been hovering around 20%
and in some insane cases around 40% and this is unhealthy for the economy,”
he said.

Turning to the shortage of coins in the country, Biti said treasury was
facing challenges to transport the US$5 million in coins held overseas.

He, however, noted that involved  stakeholders,  including  his ministry
and the Bankers Association of Zimbabwe, were still  in discussions on the
most cost effective way  to transport the coins amid hopes that by end of
April  an agreement would have been reached.

Zimbabwe faces acute hunger, starvation

http://www.thestandard.co.zw/

Thursday, 22 March 2012 18:00

By Tendai Marima

ANOTHER season, another failed harvest and the nation faces a grain deficit,
hunger and possible starvation. And yet once again, the government, always
reacting to problems, finds itself unprepared to deal with an impending food
crisis.

According to the final crop assessment by the government itself, this past
farming season 1 689 000 hectares of the maize crop were planted but due to
erratic rainfall patterns, 500 000 hectares are a write off. So this means a
third of the yield has been written off, leaving a huge deficit.

Zimbabwe, once a bread basket of the region, has struggled to feed itself
since government’s disorganised land redistribution programme which began in
2000.

Although the production of maize rebounded from its low of 400 000 tonnes at
the height of farm seizures a few years ago to 1 350 000 tonnes during the
2010/2011 season, the country is still struggling to meet its annual grain
consumption of nearly two million tonnes.

As a result of this season’s poor yields, Zimbabweans are now facing hunger
and urgent measures are needed to avert starvation. To make matters worse,
Zimbabwe is likely to have problems in importing grain from the region as
South Africa, Zambia and Malawi may not be in a position to export.

Of late, uneven cyclonic rains over Southern Africa resulted in a contrast
between heavy downpours in the eastern region and inadequate falls in the
drier, western parts so while parts of Mozambique and Madagascar battle
floods, traditionally semi-arid areas in Namibia and Botswana still need
more water.

In Zimbabwe, this geographic difference can be seen in how the drier,
southern provinces have had the lowest rains and correspondingly poor
harvests and the biggest grain deficit, whereas the wetter northern half of
the country still expects more heavy rains.

Although continued torrential falls have affected crops in Manicaland and
Mashonaland provinces, the government’s inadequate and delayed provision of
farming supplies to subsistence farmers is another major reason Zimbabwe
faces an acute food shortage. From the start, seed supply for the planting
season was well below national requirements and very little top dressing
fertiliser needed most by those in heavy rainfall areas was distributed.

Consequently, the 2011/2012 harvest is lower than the 2007/2008 harvest when
hyperinflation was at its peak during the economic meltdown and when
government’s disastrous price control policies were ruining the
manufacturing sector and the economy at large. Now, in a more economically
stable period, similar chronic seed and fertiliser shortages have persisted.

It has been more than a decade since the 2000 violent land reform programme
which was meant to benefit the “landless”, but the country still cannot feed
itself. Not because of “imperialist sanctions”, but because the government
just can’t get it right.

If it is true that Agriculture minister Joseph Made and Presidential Affairs
minister Didymus Mutasa were involved in large-scale looting of inputs at
the Grain Marketing Board and nothing has been done about it, then it’s
clear that national food security is of little concern to those in charge.

Unsurprisingly though, fears of maize meal shortages and starving
populations haven’t stopped cabinet ministers from unfairly hording land,
seeds or farming implements because loot and grab is how President Robert
Mugabe’s ministers operate.

From mining, to agriculture, banking and tourism, these elected and
appointed public officials have constantly had their hands in the till and
no amount of pictures of emaciated babies crying and dying from malnutrition
will move their conscience.

Embarrassingly, it’s these very images which make “imperialist” NGOs hand
out food, while a “pro-poor” government can’t be moved to make adequate
provision for its own starving people.

The classic slogan, “Zimbabwe will never be a colony again” rings hollow
when Western NGOs are the ones distributing food aid because the state
neither has the funds nor capacity to feed its own people.

At last week’s meeting with Bulawayo’s business community, Reserve Bank
governor Gideon Gono openly encouraged people to occupy the offices of
ministers and bankers supposedly responsible for stalling the disbursement
of the Distressed and Marginalised Areas Fund to struggling companies. If
Gono genuinely wants Matabeleland to mirror Wall Street and other global
protests against bankers and corrupt governments, let the people go forth
and occupy ministerial offices, not only against the drip-feed of distress
funds, but also against inadequate farming provisions which, because of
patchy rains, affect Matabeleland’s harvest more severely than other
provinces.

Even though the region’s historic marginalisation has a lot to do with the
current system and patterns of distribution of resources, food security isn’t
a regional issue but a national one.

At a time when revenue inflows are below expected projections, an unending
liquidity crunch affects the banking sector and a dangerously high trade
deficit, importing 1,5 million tonnes of maize is bound to push up the cost
of living because of imported inflation dynamics.

More unsettling is how maize shortages will probably be used to coerce an
impoverished electorate into voting for those who will cynically claim to be
feeding the people — even though they are the ones responsible for creating
these food shortages in the first place.

For Zanu PF, it’s standard electoral practice to use food and other state
humanitarian interventions as a political tool as we have seen in previous
years of hunger and bloody elections. Testimonies and evidence collected by
local and international human rights organisations shows how Zanu PF
cardholders got first preference for subsidised GMB inputs and maize while
opposition supporters had to buy grain at extortionist prices on the black
market.

In 2008, another drought and ballot year, reports from Masvingo’s rural
areas claimed pro-Mugabe youths and war veterans beat up villagers for
receiving American aid because it was a sign of betrayal.

The rampant politicisation of something as basic and essential as a bag of
maize meal is a deliberate policy of cruelty and repression which
disproportionately affects the poorest communities the most. Arguably, rural
women and child-headed households are Zimbabwe’s most marginalised
communities demographically, but this is of little concern to the government
whose primary role aught to be ensuring physical and food security of its
citizens.

Unless it is to feed the multitudes, there’s no good reason why well-off
people like ministers should have priority access to 30 000 tonnes of
fertiliser while rural farmers are denied 25kg. Such is the incoherence of
an incompetent and heartless leadership that willfully starves its own
people and uses aid as a political weapon.

If the supposedly less corrupt MDC members of government have any political
muscle, it’s time to use it to ensure this crisis of food shortages does not
become a humanitarian disaster as has been the case in past years.

With 12 million people at risk of starvation in the Horn of Africa because
of poor international response and a further 13 million people without food
in the Sahel region because of drought and poor harvests, members of
parliament have a duty to ensure Zimbabweans do not become a starvation
statistic.

Marima (PhD) is an independent analyst and researcher.

MuckRaker: We’re more alarmed by you Cde Chombo

http://www.thestandard.co.zw/

Thursday, 22 March 2012 17:48

CONGRATULATIONS to the Daily News for its investigative reports on the
enormous electricity bills that defaulting Zanu PF chefs –– and a few MDC-T
legislators –– have run up which help explains the parastatal’s parlous
condition. Meanwhile ordinary folk are cut off for minor debts.

Some of the nation’s most important political luminaries have failed to pay
their Zesa bills, the newspaper reports, and come up with feeble excuses.

The newspaper cites a few examples: At the end of last year Goromonzi North
MP Paddy Zhanda owed Zesa in excess of US$174 000; Zanu PF provincial
chairman Amos Midzi owed US$34 057; MP for Zvimba East and President Mugabe’s
nephew, Patrick Zhuwao, had a bill which ran to US$54 407; Indigenisation
firebrand Saviour Kasukuwere owed  US$100 602; Higher Education minister
Stan Mudenge ran up a US$9 478 bill.

Manicaland governor Chris Mushowe had a bill of US$367 606; CIO boss
Happyton Bonyongwe came second in the province with a bill for US$350 989;
while DidymusMutasa owed the utility US$179 590,  the Daily News reports.

What is interesting about these revelations is that they include the usual
nationalist zealots who blame all the nation’s problems on sanctions.
Mutasa immediately comes to mind.

He once referred to the sanctions as the “highest form of economic terrorism
against the people of Zimbabwe”.
Paralysing Zesa by not paying your bills comes very close to that, Cde
Mutasa.

Local Government minister, Ignatius Chombo, has warned the electorate
against voting for MDC-T councillors in the anticipated harmonised elections
as they have “destroyed most urban local authorities through looting council
resources for personal aggrandisement”.

Speaking after a Zanu PF District Coordinating Committee meeting in
Chitungwiza, Chombo said government will not hesitate to fire councillors
and council officials found guilty of corruption or abuse of resources as it
seeks to “protect” the electorate.

“The levels of corruption in these local authorities are alarming,” Chombo
said.

If long-suffering residents only have Chombo to look up to for protection,
then there is reason to despair indeed.
Chombo’s property-sharing wrangle with his estranged wife, Marian, has
helped shed some light on the even more alarming amounts of properties he
owns.

According to the Herald, Marian claimed properties that included two Glen
View houses, two flats in Queensdale, a property in Katanga Township, four
Norton business stands, three Chinhoyi business stands, four Banket business
stands, one commercial stand in Epworth, two residential stands in Chirundu,
four commercial stands in Kariba, one stand in Ruwa, one stand in Chinhoyi,
two stands in Mutare, two stands in Binga, four stands in Victoria Falls,
one stand in Zvimba Rural, two residential and two commercial stands in
Chitungwiza and four stands in Beitbridge.

The list goes on: 20 stands in Crow Hill Road, Borrowdale, 10 stands in Glen
Lorne, two flats at Eastview Gardens, one flat at San Sebastian Flats in the
Avenues, one house in Milton Park, two houses in Chegutu, two houses in
Victoria Falls, and three  stands in Bulawayo among others.

Due to space constraints, the list cannot be reproduced in its entirety. We
really wonder whether all these acquisitions came from the minister’s
salary. If this list is not alarming, we don’t know what is!

At the same event Zanu PF politburo member, Tendai Savanhu also chipped in
saying that most MDC-T led local authorities were not prioritising service
delivery and the electorate should draw lessons from the “mistakes” made in
the 2008 harmonised elections.
“The mistakes made by our people in 2008 are there for all to see,” said
Savanhu.

We couldn’t agree more Cde Savanhu. The people can see for themselves how an
arrogant cabal continues to amass for itself ridiculous swathes of land and
properties, whilst the majority remain without decent housing.

The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) has added its voice to the
condemnation of the conviction of University of Zimbabwe lecturer,
Munyaradzi Gwisai, on the charge of “conspiracy to incite public violence
with a view to overthrowing the unity government”.
According to the ICJ, there are two main concerns in this case: “Firstly
that all the six accused persons reported that they had been tortured while
in police custody and kept in prison for 27 days before being granted bail
under stringent conditions.”

“This treatment did not only violate the constitution of Zimbabwe regarding
the right to the presumption of innocence and a fair trial, liberty and
freedom from torture, it also violated international human rights guarantees
enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the African Charter
on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights and the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman
or Degrading Treatment or Punishment,” the ICJ states.

“Secondly, the arrest and prosecution of citizens freely and peacefully
gathered to share civic information violated their rights to the freedom of
assembly and association, thought, conscience and to hold opinions, either
alone or in community with others and in public or private such as in a
seminar setting in which Mr Gwisai and his fellow accused were involved.

“Other rights violated in this case include the right to information and
freedom of expression as well as their right to take part in the affairs of
their government.” the ICJ goes on to state.

Alex Duval Smith (UK Independent)  seems to have stirred a hornet’s nest
with her article on how President Mugabe’s popularity has “surged”. He has
wrong-footed the MDC, she argues, by launching the indigenisation crusade.

Once gain Mugabe looks like the country’s best defender, she writes.

Saviour Kasukuwere is hauled in to confirm this wonky interpretation. But it
doesn’t really wash.

It is true that Morgan Tsvangirai has sometimes been asleep on the job since
2008, failing to make the most of opportunities coming his way.

But as his speech in London last weekend demonstrates, he has a clear idea
of what a principled politician with a vision for Africa should sound like.
And Mugabe certainly hasn’t enhanced agriculture –– rather he has decimated
it ––  and his party may soon discover that indigenisation hasn’t the same
electoral appeal as occupying other people’s property.

“In power for 32 years,” Smith writes, “Mugabe has suddenly in the eyes of
many Zimbabweans regained the revolutionary credentials he earned fighting
white rule in the 1970s.”

Really? Do Zimbabweans want to revert to that period or the bloody mayhem
that followed in the mid-80s? Smith argues that Mugabe has called for
elections because he has sensed his new-found popularity.

She doesn’t mention the resurgence of violence and electoral manipulation
that is now returning to the political landscape. Nor does she mention the
media crack-down that, while depriving Zimbabweans of their right to free
expression, abuses the public media for partisan gain.

What needs to be said in Smith’s narrative is that since 2008 Zimbabweans
have watched and noted as their liberties have been eroded one by one.
Arbitrary arrests and incarceration have confirmed the growing impression of
Zimbabwe as a police state. Most notably the Global Political Agreement,
intended as a democratic blueprint, has been trampled on, something a
journalist like Smith should be concerned with.

It would be helpful the next time she ventures out of her Johannesburg
encampment if she could speak to a few journalists.

Still on the subject of a police state, the public may be unaware of just
how easy it is to commit an offence under Zimbabwe’s draconian laws. We have
the Sunday News to thank for publishing a list of “offences” the public may
stumble upon under the Miscellaneous Offences Act of 2002.

According to the Act, any person who is caught doing the below-listed
offences shall be guilty of an offence and liable to a fine or to
imprisonment for a period not exceeding three months or to both such fine
and such imprisonment.

The offences include wantonly or mischievously ringing any bell, making any
noise or disturbance or playing any musical instrument or wireless  in a
public place.

It is also illegal to wantonly or mischievously knock at doors or remove any
property from any place or  give a false alarm of fire.

Wantonly provoking any animal  as well as riding any animal on any pavement
could also attract a fine or jail term.

According to the Act, it is also illegal  to shout or scream in a public
place to the annoyance of the public.

Added to this, skating in or upon any street, road, thoroughfare, sidewalk
or pavement, or commiting any nuisance in any street within view of any
dwelling whereby public decency may be offended will also attract liability.

We thought we would bring to public attention just how comprehensive and
unforgiving this legislation is. And it would appear to clash with rights
set out in the Bill of Rights.

Meanwhile the Sunday Mail reports that Chief Luscious (No, seriously)
Chitsinde Negomo has said that his court will attach Prime Minister Morgan
Tsvangirai’s property at his Strathaven home, in Harare, after the premier
defied an order to pay a fine for allegedly marrying in November, a month
the chief deemed to be sacred.

Tsvangirai was fined two head of cattle, two sheep, a 10-metre cloth and a
ball of snuff for paying the bride price for Locadia Karimatsenga Tembo on
November 22 last year.

We found Chief Negomo sentiments on the premier amusing. Tsvangirai had
acted out of stubbornness, the chief muses, but remained a “child under the
guidance of a chief”.

Is the “guidance” imposed, we wonder. Clearly the premier does not seem to
have solicited this guidance which also now entails confiscation of his
property.

Poor old Morgan. It never rains for him but it pours.

South Africa’s e-tv has been screening a news clip showing his arrival in
Germany recently. The message was: Brush up on the protocol.
Morgan seemed to be in a hurry. After the honour-guard welcome he bowed in
the wrong direction, had to be guided where he should go next and then lined
up for the welcoming address in front of the wrong flag.

In fairness we should point out that the colours are similar to ours but the
design is very different. He then squeezed Merkel’s hand so tightly that she
had to pull herself free.

Both Merkel and Morgan smiled throughout this faux pas but the episode
provided fodder for the networks.

Message from Muckraker to Morgan: Our flag has a red star on its “fly” so it
is fairly easy to spot, especially when there is only one other. And there’s
no need to charge ahead like a bull in a china shop. Slower is better!

Erich Bloch Column: The pursuit of bank stability in Zim

http://www.thestandard.co.zw/

Thursday, 22 March 2012 17:46

ALMOST worldwide, economies have been weakened or collapsed by instability
of banks, and Zimbabwe is no exception to the negative economic impact of
straitened circumstances of many banking institutions.  Over the past 10
years there have been recurrent instances of Zimbabwean banks collapsing, or
being so weakened that the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) has had to
intervene, pursuant to its supervisory role over banks and other financial
institutions. Its interventions have ranged from the forced closure of some
banks to the placement of others under curatorship. The RBZ has had to
prescribe minimum capital requirements for banks as a pre-condition to their
being licensed, and to the continuance of licences and, therefore, of the
banks’ operations.

However, despite such controls and measures, the stability of various banks
and the security of depositors’ funds in those banks have continued to be
uncertain. Such banks have been unable to fulfill their obligations to their
depositors, and grossly unable to effect timeous interbank transfers on
behalf of clients, or to fund client withdrawals of funds.

This has necessitated greater supervision and controls by the RBZ, but up to
now without restoration of public confidence in the banking sector, and
ongoing reluctance of non-resident institutions to avail lines of credit to
Zimbabwean banks.

Internationally, as bank collapses occurred periodically with concomitant
weakening of economies, First World countries have sought measures to assure
bank stability and, therefore, enhanced confidence of populations in
general, and business sectors in particular, being a prerequisite of stable
and sound economies.  The first endeavour to achieve this was the adoption
of a policy framework via the Bank for International Settlements, through
that Bank’s Committee on Banking Supervision in Basel, Switzerland.

That policy was the “International Convergence of Capital Measurement and
Capital Standards”, which became known as Basel I, and became effective in
July 1988.

It was progressively adopted by bank supervisory authorities in more than
150 jurisdictions in the world, including Zimbabwe, and was expected to
provide stability to the international banking system by its definition of
consistent safety and soundness standards, and by promoting better
coordination amongst the regulators and financial supervisors in the
participating countries.

However regrettably, it became apparent that the Convention’s methods of
calculating bank requirements did not suffice to achieve effective and
sensitive measurement of risk exposures.  In particular, the Basel I
provisions did not sufficiently determine the levels of regulatory capital
required in a progressively increasing complex and dynamic banking system in
developed countries functioning internationally. Some modifications were
therefore effected to the Convention in 1996, prescribing that banks had to
allocate capital for both credit risk and market risk exposures.

Even those modifications did not suffice to maximize the wellbeing and
security of banks nationally and internationally, hence in June 2004 a new
international banking accord was concluded, known as the Basel II
Convention.  That accord was agreed between the Bank of International
Settlements, the heads of the central banks of the over 150 participating
countries (again including Zimbabwe), and the heads of the supervisory
authorities of the G10, being effectively the world’s largest economies.

To a major extent the many provisions of Basel II were centred upon three
key elements, being:

Regulation of minimum capital requirements for key banking risks;

Supervisory review processes and assessments, by banks, of their overall
capital needs  relative to their risk profiles; and

Comprehensive market disciplines, founded upon extensive disclosures; those
elements being driven by an overarching goal to advance the practice of
comprehensive and effective risk management.

It was envisaged that Basel II would convey seven key benefits, being:

Creation of an enhanced linkage between minimum regulatory capital and the
risk profiles of each bank;

Promotion of banking sector stability;

Bringing about an increasingly integrated global financial system;

Strengthening of the linkage between regulatory capital and risk management;

Incentivisation of banks to improve risk measurement and management;

Provision of a consistent framework for improving supervisory assessments of
capital adequacy and risk management; and

Ensuring that banks maintain levels of capital aligned to their risk
exposure, concurrently with adequate control of risks.

Despite these measures, major bank failures have been witnessed during the
last four years in Scotland, the USA, Greece, Spain, Zimbabwe and other
countries, whilst others are still in perilous circumstances thus creating
widespread lack of confidence in the security of depositors’ funds.

In Zimbabwe, depositor security concerns have been a major contributor to
the pronounced illiquidity in the money market in recent times.  This has
been despite a progressively intensified monitoring and control of the
banking sector by the RBZ, including intensified bank audit requirements,
prescription that banks must apply the Basel II standardised approach to
allocation of capital for market and operational risks, and issuance of
numerous guidelines.

The global financial crisis of the last few years has highlighted weaknesses
in some elements of Basel II, which motivated the Basel Committee on Banking
Supervision to enhance the Basel II provisions.

That enhancement has been dubbed Basel III, and RBZ and the Ministry of
Finance are now energetically prescribing banks’ compliance therewith,
concurrently with much concentration on restoring viability and security to
presently endangered banks.

Inconsistency dents human rights drive

http://www.thestandard.co.zw/

Thursday, 22 March 2012 17:32

Blessing-Miles Tendi

PRO-DEMOCRACY activist and public intellectual Brian Raftopoulos in an
article titled “Sanctions regime strengthens Mugabe’s hand” (Zimbabwe
Independent, March 16 2012), made some observations which I agree with
although I disagree with most of his assertions.

In his article Raftopoulos wrote: “Western countries, through an
increasingly problematic sanctions regime, have added to the political
gridlock in Zimbabwe in the guise of being the arbiters of global human
rights. In the face of the inconsistencies in the application of the ‘right
to protect’ by the Atlantic emporium in contemporary global politics, this
potentially noble project is in danger of being cast as yet another form of
imperial arrogance”.

I concur with him that as the West involves itself ever more frequently and
ever more inconsistently in the affairs of other non-Western societies, the
legitimacy of its human rights standard is put into question. Western moral
authority on human rights is diminished when the United States ignores
Uzbekistan’s poor human rights record because it is an ally in its fight
against terrorism, but imposes targeted sanctions on Zimbabwe.

Moral authority also diminishes when Britain calls for its national team to
boycott cricket tours of Zimbabwe because of its poor human rights record
but remains silent when its cricket team tours Pakistan, which is a grave
human rights violator.

Where I part ways with Raftopoulos is on his silence on the complicity of
some MDC and civil society elements in the imposition of the Western
sanctions regime he decries. Zanu PF complains opposition forces campaigned
for  the application of unjustified sanctions to achieve regime change in
Zimbabwe.

However, the MDC and civic groups deny that they campaigned for the
imposition of sanctions but their retort has never been as cogent and
consistent as the Zanu PF argument. For instance, former MDC MP Gabriel
Chaibva on September 22 2009 stated that in 2000 the MDC met in Nyanga to
draft Zidera which formalised the US sanctions. Chaibva’s revelation has not
been effectively rebutted by the MDC to date.

Moreover, after the 2000 parliamentary election, David Coltart advanced the
following rationale as one of the causal factors for the MDC’s choice not to
enlist mass action or civil disobedience: “The international community
pleaded with us to hold off on the use of mass action, promising at the same
time that if we backed off, they would do all they could to increase
pressure on Mugabe”.

Such declarations allowed Zanu PF to infer that by “pressure” the MDC meant
sanctions or any other such measures. It did not help that opposition
members at the time, such as Trudy Stevenson, publicly boasted that “we
(MDC) have good contacts with the international community and Mugabe is
going to have to negotiate with us”.

I vividly recall a 2005 interview with Andrew Nongongo, then a local civil
society actor with the non-governmental organisation Hivos, in which he
admitted to me that he and other prominent civil society actors I will not
name here, for now, lobbied the European Union to impose targeted sanctions
on Zanu PF in 2002.

The West’s condemnations and targeted sanctions against Zanu PF would
command more authority if the same human rights standards were applied
everywhere evenly, but it is intellectually dishonest for Raftopoulos to be
silent about the “invisible hand” of some MDC and civil society figures in
the Western sanctions regime’s genesis. It is high time some MDC and civil
society actors took responsibility for their strategic blunders. They made
their bed and must lie in it.

Secondly, I find problematic Raftopoulos’ assumption that Zanu PF will stand
by while sanctions, which he maintains “strengthen Mugabe’s hand”, against
it are lifted. If sanctions benefit Zanu PF politically as Raftopoulos
maintains, what is to prevent Zanu PF from timely upping egregious
violations of the Global Political Agreement (GPA) in order to guarantee
their renewal during the annual periods of sanctions review by Western
states?

If sanctions are indeed beneficial politically to them then Zanu PF has good
reason to perpetuate them, albeit indirectly. There is physics in sanctions
renewal that Zanu PF can easily manipulate, and it does. Raftopoulos must
have considered this.

Thirdly, Raftopoulos grasps at the shadow, while losing the substance when
he writes that “unlike the Kenyan agreement, negotiated by former UN
Secretary-General Kofi Annan with the full support of the Western countries,
the Zimbabwean GPA has been bogged down by the continuing dispute between
Sadc and the West over its implementation”.

Far more civilians died following Kenya’s disputed 2007 elections than in
Zimbabwe between March and June 2008. The reasons why Kenyan President Mwai
Kibaki formed a power-sharing government that was embraced by Western powers
is Kenya’s greater economic significance compared to Zimbabwe, and the fact
that unlike Mugabe he has not attacked whites and seized their farms. Face
it, the West largely regards Mugabe as an irredeemable “demon” for the farm
seizures and mollycoddling on this naked reality is unhelpful.

Lastly, it is deeply flawed and superficial for Raftopoulos to think that it
is “instructive to compare the current period in Zimbabwean politics with
that leading up to the Lancaster House agreement”.

Lancaster House was a defective decolonisation process and agreement. Many
of the problems Zimbabwe has faced during the independence era have their
roots in the fact that nationalists were forced by the convergence of
regional and international forces into the agreement which tied the new
government’s hands in pursuing its national objectives around decolonisation
and other related issues.

Raftopoulos mistakenly lauds the Lancaster House agreement that maintained
racially-biased land

distribution, compartmentalised races and deepened a culture of impunity as
a progressive arrangement when clearly it was not.

In fact, it can be argued that a number of post-independence problems in
Zimbabwe could have been avoided had it not been of the Lancaster House
Agreement and how it was structured and sustained. Let us see the past and
present for what they are, not what could have been. Superficial comparisons
will not get us anywhere. Otherwise, Raftopoulos’s piece was useful in many
different ways.

Blessing-Miles Tendi is a Lecturer in African History and Politics at the
University of Oxford (UK) and author of Making History in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe:
Politics, Intellectuals and the Media.

Devolution is the way to go

http://www.thestandard.co.zw/

Thursday, 22 March 2012 17:30

Qhubani Moyo

IN their belated contributions to the constitution-making process President
Robert Mugabe and Local Government minister Ignatius Chombo recently made
misleading statements on the issue of devolution of power. As men who are
well-read and experienced politicians both know what devolution is and its
parameters, yet they decided to mislead the people on such an important
national issue in pursuit of their insular and self-serving agendas.
Their disingenuous contributions to the constitution-making process, which
come exactly 18 months after Copac completed the outreach programme, are
obviously meant to condition the nation to their views and influence the
drafters to ignore the overwhelming demand for devolution by the rest of the
people of Zimbabwe.

There is a small clique of Zanu PF politicians trying to misinform the
people about devolution by making false claims of what it is and what it
entails to maintain the current structure of over-centralisation of power,
which has helped to destroy the nation.

But before we can go any further we need to define what devolution is and is
not. Devolution simply means a legal granting of powers from central
government to lower levels of government such as provincial, district or
municipal tiers. It is a political and financial issue as it involves
election of local representatives by local people and giving those lower
levels of government a budget that is normally administered by central
government.

Federalism involves the sharing of power to govern between the national and
state or provincial governments as defined by the constitution. Quite
clearly, there is a world of a difference between devolution and federalism.

It is quite clear the current system of a highly-centralised state as we
have in Zimbabwe has promoted autocracy, inefficiency, corruption and
exclusion of people from full participation in how they are governed.
Devolution can certainly help to address some of these problems.

So claims by Mugabe and Chombo that devolution divides people are not just
misleading but also false. There are many examples of devolved states in
Africa and elsewhere in the world which are working well. In fact,
devolution, instead of dividing people, promotes equitable distribution of
resources and above all national cohesion.

The only reason why Mugabe wants to maintain the current system is that it
enables him to control and run the country like his backyard. We have all
seen what the results of that approach have been. So his argument is
completely driven by self and not national interest. It does not even serve
Zanu PF interests, so it can only be about him, nothing else.

Beyond this, Mugabe and Chombo must be reminded that Copac afforded all
Zimbabweans the chance to present their views on all issues, including the
issue of the structure of government. The two either decided to undermine
the process by ignoring the outreach programme or to downplay the importance
of the people’s views by desperately trying to dilute their views through
some of the weirdest arguments about devolution we have heard so far.

Unfortunately for them they are not an embodiment of Zimbabwe and what
Zimbabweans want cannot be thrown down the drain because of individuals who
want to maintain a highly centralised system of government which has failed.
It is interesting that Mugabe and Chombo, who coincidentally come from the
same area — Zvimba district — want to maintain a system which has mainly
benefited their region at the expense of others.

The truth of the matter is devolution in our context is mainly about social
justice and equitable distribution of resources. Mugabe and the likes of
Chombo are responsible for the current patterns of uneven development in the
country and have presided over systematic impoverishment of some regions
which are rich in natural resources but don’t benefit  because of the
failures of central government.

There is overwhelming evidence that regions like Masvingo, Manicaland and
Matabeleland have generally been neglected and impoverished by central
government even though they have some resources which can be used to develop
those areas. For instance, Manicaland is rich in diamonds but the province
has nothing to show for it since mining activities started in Marange,
except the building of relocation houses to justify displacing people from
their lands. The people of Manicaland must benefit from their resources
which of course must also be shared nationally.

That is why a diamond polishing company should be located somewhere in
Manicaland, not in the Mashonaland region where Mugabe and Chombo come from.
Also picture this: Hwange contributes a lot of power to the national grid
but most schools in Hwange district have no electricity. Clearly, most areas
in the country which have resources around them have not benefited from
them.

But Mugabe and Chombo want to pretend that all is well and try to mislead
the nation by claiming that devolution of power divides the nation, yet
empirical evidence proves that in fact it is the unitary system that is
divisive.

At the core of any government is the ability to deliver a sound economy and
sound governance to its citizens and that can only be achieved if there is
fairness in the distribution of the resources. What is happening now does
not at all reflect fairness in the distribution of the national cake.

The reason why people spoke like that on this issue is because it resonates
with the majority. Devolution brings power to the people and ensures that
those who are governing are accountable to the citizens. This is important
because it assists in bringing national stability and cohesion. It is
usually the unfair distribution of the national resources that has been at
the heart of many conflicts in Africa.

It is important to ensure that we move away from the current two-tier system
of government and create provincial governments — which are connected to the
national or central government — that are empowered and functional to make
important decisions in their provinces. This will entail having provincial
assemblies or councils in charge of social and economic development of their
areas.

There is also a need to have a functional, small but efficient provincial
cabinet or whatever it might be called to spearhead development of those
areas. Most importantly there is a need for elected governors to administer
provinces which should have some powers to collect taxes and decide on their
development prioritises.

This will allow the provincial governments and the governors to focus on the
development prioritises of their areas, not the current set-up where they
are mere provincial watchdogs for the president.

The representatives for the provincial assemblies together with the
governors should be elected either by direct vote or by proportional
representation. This should be a simple process because if we already vote
for our councillors, MPs, senators and president, why should it be difficult
to have elected governors? This arrangement will help different provinces to
take charge of their economic development and not wait for central
government to do things for them as what happens in a unitary system like
the one we have now.

Definitely, devolution is the way to go.

Moyo is the National Organising Secretary of the MDC led by Professor
Welshman Ncube. He is contactable on qmoyo200@yahoo.co.uk .

Independent Comment: Policy certainty critical element

http://www.thestandard.co.zw/

Friday, 23 March 2012 10:31

PRIME Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, despite embarrassing gaffes in Germany
this week after he amateurishly muddled protocol, delivered an important
message on Monday in his address to The Times CEO summit in London attended
by high-profile political leaders and business executives.
Tsvangirai seized the opportunity to make a good case for Zimbabwe and
reassure investors, rattled by nerve-racking moments over the controversial
indigenisation campaign following government’s move on Zimplats last week,
that there is still room for a stable and workable policy framework.

He spoke extensively about vast investment opportunities in Africa and the
continent’s “toxic politics”, indicating there is a new generation emerging
on the continent which wants to build strong economies, create jobs and
develop a qualitative and affordable social delivery system, especially in
the fields of health and education. He also spoke about the development of
ICTs to better link the people to their governments, businesses and
economies.

“Our challenge is to differ from the old generation of African leaders which
has pilfered national resources, pick-pocketed the collective people’s
struggle and shut their ears to the loud national demand for democracy and
good governance,” he said.

“They have personalised national institutions, perfected the art of
political patronage and bastardised their own legacy all to the detriment of
prosperity, investment and economic growth. A small elite in many African
governments has benefited from the national cake while the ordinary African
survives on less than US$1 day.”

The premier went on: “It is the same culture that brought about the spring
revolutions when nations and their people became impatient with repressive
leaders”.

He said Africa is full of opportunities for growth and prosperity but this
could only be realised if there is competent leadership, good governance and
sound policies, indicating the continent is no different from China given
its huge market of over a billion people.

It was a good delivery but the key point was that Zimbabwe, apart from good
and competent leadership — which is simply not there at the moment — needs a
stable and predictable policy framework. Policy certainty is critical to
investment and economic growth. Genuine investors always prefer peaceful and
stable environments not countries in a state of flux.

“My experience as Prime Minister of Zimbabwe is that peace is a key factor
for investment. That is why policy consistency, stability and policy
predictability are the key ingredients of luring investment,” Tsvangirai
said.

This is precisely what we have always been saying, even though our leaders
just don’t get it.

Zimbabwe, which went through a decade of an economic meltdown and
hyperinflation and in the process achieved a dubious distinction of having
the highest rate of inflation in recent economic history and the
fastest-shrinking economy outside a war zone, needs to attract investment
and creates jobs. For this to happen, policies must be workable,consistent
and sustainable.

Ad hoc and chaotic measures create uncertainty and investors keep away
because they can’t be sure whether and how policies might change. That is
why policy credibility and certainty are critical.

For two years now President Robert Mugabe and his Zanu PF ministers have
been ratcheting up the pressure on foreign-owned companies, demanding that
they surrender 51% of their shares to indigenous Zimbabweans.

Last week they arm-twisted Zimplats, which is owned 87% by South Africa’s
Implats, the world’s second largest platinum exporter, into accepting in
principle to dispose of its equity. The move into Zimplats, Zimbabwe’s
largest exporter, has the potential of being a game-changer, economically
and politically, especially in view of the next elections.

Whether the intensifying campaign of expropriation, under the rubric of
indigenisation, swings the election for Mugabe or not, if foreign-owned
companies that form the backbone of the economy are grabbed, Zimbabwe will
go back to primitive subsistence economic levels.

And in the process Mugabe and his clueless cronies will learn it the hard
way that capitalism without capital cannot work.

Editor’s Memo: We’re living in a police state

http://www.thestandard.co.zw/

Friday, 23 March 2012 10:27

Dumisani Muleya

IF ever there was need for any further evidence that we are living in a
police state, that was provided this week in the form of the conviction of
former MDC MP and University of Zimbabwe law lecturer Munyaradzi Gwisai and
five others for conspiracy to incite violence designed to overthrow
government.

Gwisai, Antoneta Choto, Tatenda Mombeyarara, Edson Chakuma, Hopewell Gumbo
and Welcome Zimuto were convicted of plotting to incite public violence by
watching video footage of Egypt’s mass uprisings against deposed dictator
Hosni Mubarak and events in Tunisia at the height of the Arab Spring last
year.

They were fined US$500 each to be paid on or before March 26 and ordered to
perform 420 hours of community service. If they fail to pay they risk
spending 10 months in jail — for merely watching video footage of events
that were public and beamed live on international television networks around
the clock all over the world!

Police claimed the agenda of the meeting at which Gwisai and others were
arrested was “Egypt and Tunisia — What lessons can be learnt by the working
class in Zimbabwe and Africa”?  They alleged the meeting was calculated to
incite people to “subvert a constitutionally-elected government”.
Despite being initially accused of treason, Gwisai and others were later
charged with conspiring to incite public violence.

As the International Commission for Jurists said, it is appalling that
Gwisai and his colleagues were tortured during their 27 days in prison
before being granted bail under stringent conditions. That sort of treatment
not only violated the constitution regarding the right to the presumption of
innocence and fair trial, liberty and freedom from torture, it also violated
international human rights instruments.

Indeed, the arrest and prosecution of citizens for freely and peacefully
gathering to share civic information violated their rights to the freedom of
assembly, association and expression, as well as thought and conscience, and
to hold opinions, either alone or in community with others in public or
private.

In a country purporting to be democratic, laws ought to be used to protect
the citizens and not to persecute them for raising human rights-related
issues which the state is obliged to uphold. All persons ought to be equal
before the law and all offenders should be legally accountable.

Amnesty International was spot on when it said the conviction of these
activists shows there is still an urgent need to ensure respect for human
rights in Zimbabwe where systematic repression and impunity remain rampant.

Unquestionably, this case and how it unfolded provides further and clear
evidence that Zimbabwe is a police state. Not that this was ever in doubt,
but this case ranks as one of the most outrageous and appalling examples of
Stalinist repression.

It would  take a large leap of faith to believe Gwisai and his colleagues
wanted or were capable of overthrowing government. Unless this was a case of
someone with a serious paranoid personality disorder or malicious intent, no
serious  person could believe the contrived shaggy dog story obviously
concocted by sloppy and incompetent security agents.

But then, simple enough, that’s what happens in a police state in which the
government exercises rigid repressive controls over social, economic and
political spheres.

This case — among a litany of others — is emblematic of what Zimbabwe has
now become. Since 1980, this country has been a cauldron of gross human
rights violations. All sorts of abuses have been visited upon law-abiding
and God-fearing citizens of this country. Egregious human rights violations
on a massive scale have been committed during the past three decades of
President Robert  Mugabe’s disastrous reign.

The sentencing of Gwisai and others on the day when our neighbour South
Africa was celebrating Human Rights Day in commemoration of the Sharpeville
massacres in 1960, with President Jacob Zuma leading calls for the
protection of fundamental rights and freedoms, dramatically drew the
contrast between the two countries.

What the Gwisai case did was to send a chilling political message through
the pliant courts that Zimbabweans are not allowed to exercise their civil
and political rights freely; freedoms of association, assembly and
expression are endangered and people can’t express themselves without
risking a vicious backslash and severe consequences. That’s how a fascist
police state works.

dumisani@zimind.co.zw

Candid Comment: Of Tony Blair, good governance and baboons

http://www.thestandard.co.zw/

Friday, 23 March 2012 10:25

Itai Masuku

AFRICAN nations must improve their governance to take advantage of a mass of
“footloose capital” from private investors. This is what former British
Prime Minister Tony Blair told statesmen, including PM Morgan Tsvangirai
leading chief executives and global thinkers gathered at The Times CEO
Summit Africa at the Savoy Hotel in London early this week.

Blair, who helped put Africa on the agenda at the Gleneagles G8 summit of
2005, and whose Africa Governance Initiative is intended to help leaders on
the continent improve government structures, roots his views  from a general
sense of new optimism from the British government and investors about
opportunities in Africa.

However, the former British PM noted that while Africa has been touted as
the next big growth story and there is optimism and new capital starting to
flow into the continent, poor or lack of infrastructure and in particular,
poor governance were two of the biggest hurdles holding this back.

“It’s crucial to have in place a proper system for attracting that
investment, treating it predictably, having a legal system that functions
fairly and it depends on a minimum level of infrastructure. This is not only
about transparency.” Whilst there are some among us who might be emotionally
dismissive of Blair, we couldn’t agree with him more.

Good governance still appears to be an alien concept in this country. Take
for instance the NSSA debacle: It has been a month since our newspaper
published a report on the corrupt activities at NSSA. What we have seen in
response is a deluge of emails, letters, SMSs, direct phone calls from the
public expressing their outrage, some of which we have published. But there
has been no visible action from the powers that be. I

n fact, NSSA itself seems to feel that because the Minister of Labour and
Social Welfare, Paurina  Mupariwa, who ordered the probe, has not acted on
the report, this means that everything is okay. No, it’s not okay.

We are astounded by the conspiracy of silence by the Minister and her
counterpart in the Ministry of Finance, Tendai Biti, whose National Economic
Conduct Inspectorate conducted the investigation. One would be forgiven to
assume that the scandal involves perhaps a wider ring including the two
ministers? And where is Parliament?

The report was completed a year ago and had to be sneaked to our newspaper
by concern AFRICAN nations must improve their governance to take advantage
of a mass of “footloose capital” from private investors. This is what former
British Prime Minister Tony Blair told statesmen, including PM Morgan
Tsvangirai leading chief executives and global thinkers gathered at The
Times CEO Summit Africa at the Savoy Hotel in London early this week.,

Blair, who helped put Africa on the agenda at the Gleneagles G8 summit of
2005, and whose Africa Governance Initiative is intended to help leaders on
the continent improve government structures, roots his views  from a general
sense of new optimism from the British government and investors about
opportunities in Africa.

However, the former British PM noted that while Africa has been touted as
the next big growth story and there is optimism and new capital starting to
flow into the continent, poor or lack of infrastructure and in particular,
poor governance were two of the biggest hurdles holding this back.
“It’s crucial to have in place a proper system for attracting that
investment, treating it predictably, having a legal system that functions
fairly and it depends on a minimum level of infrastructure. This is not only
about transparency.” Whilst there are some among us who might be emotionally
dismissive of Blair, we couldn’t agree with him more.

Good governance still appears to be an alien concept in this country. Take
for instance the NSSA debacle: It has been a month since our newspaper
published a report on the corrupt activities at NSSA. What we have seen in
response is a deluge of emails, letters, SMSs, direct phone calls from the
public expressing their outrage, some of which we have published. But there
has been no visible action from the powers that be. I

n fact, NSSA itself seems to feel that because the Minister of Labour and
Social Welfare, Paurina  Mupariwa, who ordered the probe, has not acted on
the report, this means that everything is okay. No, it’s not okay. We are
astounded by the conspiracy of silence by the Minister and her counterpart
in the Ministry of Finance, Tendai Biti, whose National Economic Conduct
Inspectorate conducted the investigation.

One would be forgiven to assume that the scandal involves perhaps a wider
ring including the two ministers? And where is Parliament? The report was
completed a year ago and had to be sneaked to our newspaper by concerned
citizens.

Curiously, the Ministers presiding over this fiasco are from the MDC T, on
which the populace had pinned their hopes for positive change in the
governance of the country, but alas, no. The MDC T must realize that when
the populace voted, they were expecting delivery not for change for the sake
of change.

A senior member of a Zanu PF once said it didn’t matter whether his party
fielded a baboon in a constituency,  people had to vote for it.  In a way he
was right. We couldn’t care if baboons ran the cabinet, so long as they were
accountable and practised good governance.

Are we therefore to believe the joke doing the rounds in Harare that “GNU’’
means Gara Nesu Udye; effectively implying the former opposition parties in
government have joined the gravy train? The relevant minister did nothing
about the findings, despite clear recommendations for action issued by the
investigators in line with their terms of reference.

The MDC-T must remember that one doesn’t get a second chance to make a first
impression. The people expect a culture of accountability.  They must be
reminded that the reason why the Sandinista government in Nicaragua bounced
back is that the populace, who had voted overwhelmingly for the opposition
years earlier, later realised that they had been taken for a ride by the
opposition. ed citizens.  Curiously, the Ministers presiding over this
fiasco are from the MDC T, on which the populace had pinned their hopes for
positive change in the governance of the country, but alas, no. The MDC T
must realize that when the populace voted, they were expecting delivery not
for change for the sake of change.

A senior member of a Zanu PF once said it didn’t matter whether his party
fielded a baboon in a constituency,  people had to vote for it.  In a way he
was right. We couldn’t care if baboons ran the cabinet, so long as they were
accountable and practised good governance.

Are we therefore to believe the joke doing the rounds in Harare that “GNU’’
means Gara Nesu Udye; effectively implying the former opposition parties in
government have joined the gravy train? The relevant minister did nothing
about the findings, despite clear recommendations for action issued by the
investigators in line with their terms of reference.

The MDC-T must remember that one doesn’t get a second chance to make a first
impression. The people expect a culture of accountability.  They must be
reminded that the reason why the Sandinista government in Nicaragua bounced
back is that the populace, who had voted overwhelmingly for the opposition
years earlier, later realised that they had been taken for a ride by the
opposition.