Moyo lays into Mnangagwa

Source: Moyo lays into Mnangagwa – DailyNews Live

STAFF WRITER      27 March 2017

HARARE – Higher and Tertiary Education minister Jonathan Moyo has laid
into Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa, and appeared to accuse the
Midlands Zanu PF godfather of orchestrating a dirty campaign against him
using inaccurate command agriculture projections.

Moyo said while evidence on the ground shows that those participating in
the programme will not produce bumper harvests, as being portrayed, he
expressed worry that the project has been politicised in the deadly battle
to succeed President Robert Mugabe.

Moyo said the bumper harvest expected will be from peasant farmers arguing
that due to the good rains, it was inevitable that there was going to be
good yields. He said he was worried that the programme had been taken over
by “successionists.”

This comes after Mashonaland Central Provincial Affairs minister Martin
Dinha reportedly told the State media, that Moyo was castigating command
agriculture, yet he was a beneficiary of the programme.

On March 6, 2017, Prof Moyo tweeted: “Report by @Herald Zimbabwe that
`Command agric exceeds target’ is at best premature & at worst needlessly
false!”

This was after Mnangagwa projected a bumper harvest.

Blaming Mnangagwa for the stories that were published in the State media
saying that he had benefited from the command agriculture initiative but
was not criticising  it, Moyo said:

“In the afternoon of Friday March 24, 2017, I had a chance encounter at
State House with vice president … Mnangagwa who had just returned from a
command agriculture field day in Mt Darwin. As I greeted him, VP Mnangagwa
immediately said he `did not know that I had one of the best maize crops
at my farm in Mashonaland Central after receiving support from command
agriculture’ and that he `had flown over the farm by helicopter and seen
the excellent crop yet I was attacking the programme,” Moyo said in a
statement released on his Twitter account.

“I advised the honourable VP that I had not attacked command agriculture
anywhere but that, based on my first-hand knowledge in light of my
family’s farming experience in Mazowe and the harsh experience of other
farmers…,” he said.

Moyo said that he stood by what he had said about command agriculture as
he was basing this on facts. Moyo added that the programme had taken a
“factional and successionist agenda” and so was doomed to fail.

“Against this backdrop, and given the negative political fixation that
successionists who control the public media have against me, it did not
come as a surprise to see the scurrilously personalised Sunday Mail lead
story alleging that I am a beneficiary of command agriculture and accusing
me of behaving like an MDC activist only because I questioned the
misrepresentation and exaggeration of command agriculture routinely
published by Zimpapers.

“For the avoidance of doubt, I stand by everything I have said about
unanswered and very serious questions about the poor implementation of
command agriculture and about the folly of public media lies that the
government has adopted a command economy.

“No amount of vilification will intimidate me to move from truth to lies,”
Moyo said.

He said that the claim that he benefitted from command agriculture
demonstrates the ideological bankruptcy of successionists, who do not know
the intended beneficiaries of the programme.

He said the gospel that he benefitted from command agriculture was being
peddled by “command liars who bask in folly wishful thinking just like
their handlers”, whom he however, did not mention by name.

“In policy terms, command agriculture was designed as a `special maize
programme for import substitution’ and this in fact is its technical or
policy name.

“In other words, this is one contractual maize input scheme that is
intended to benefit the nation by getting farmers to produce for the State
to eliminate maize imports.

“Each contracted farmer is supposed to give the State five tonnes of maize
per hectare,” Moyo said.

He said despite his family farm being acknowledged as one of the best in
Mashonaland Central, ” the forces behind command agriculture could not
hide their evil intentions to investigate this farm…”

“Very satanic. Nothing new. We have suffered this evil and cruelty before.
Somebody should tell these evil command fellows that the whole deal is a
contract governed in terms of contract law,” Moyo said.

He said too many farmers did not get all the required inputs and when they
got some, it was not on time or the inputs were not sufficient as required
in terms of the contract.

“Consequently, the targets were not met…,” he said, adding that the
bumper harvest will come more from the presidential input scheme than from
command agriculture, which he projected could yield between 600 000 and
750 000 tonnes.

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