A LONG-expected power struggle that
threatens to widen the cracks within the faction-riven ZANU PF has erupted
in the run-up to next month's congress, which will elect the party's top
four leaders.
Party sources yesterday revealed that there were
feverish moves to bar Emmerson Mnangagwa from superintending the
administrative procedures ahead of the congress because he was now
considered an interested party, having publicly stated his desire to fill
the vice-president's post left vacant by the late Simon Muzenda.
Senior party members still serving as government ministers and some who have
since left the civil service confirmed that the sentiments expressed by
Mnangagwa in a rare interview with The Financial Gazette last week seemed to
have re-ignited the potentially explosive power struggles, with two distinct
bitter factions emerging as the jockeying for the vice-president's post
intensifies. One of the factions is behind Mnangagwa while the other is
rooting for Joyce Mujuru, who until recently had remained in the shadows of
the unfolding political drama in the ruling ZANU PF. Mnangagwa is
the ZANU PF secretary for administration tasked, among other things, with
running the party's secretariat and laying the groundwork for party events,
such as conferences and congresses. It has, however, emerged that those
against Mnangagwa's ascendancy to the vice-presidency are pushing for an
emergency politburo meeting today to give guidance on the nominations and
the general conduct of the congress elections. At the proposed
politburo meeting, which had not been confirmed at the time of going to
press, it would be proposed that Mnangagwa recuse himself from handling any
correspondence to do with the congress since he was an interested
party. The power struggle has spilled over to the party's 10 political
provinces, whose executives nominate candidates for the party's
presidency. "It has become a tale of suspicion, hate and craftsmanship,
which may work to the detriment of the party. "The young Turks are
completely out of this thing and it is the old ZANU now at each other's
throat," said a senior ZANU PF insider. "As the race progresses, there
are provincial chairpersons who have been cowed to drop candidates they were
backing for one reason or the other. The situation is quite bad," added the
source. Matabeleland South provincial chairman Lloyd Siyoka - a
perceived Mnangagwa backer - has landed himself in trouble over comments
that his province would not support a woman for the
vice-presidency. Siyoka raised the collective ire of ZANU PF
heavyweights from the region over the comments, made at a ceremony where
Mnangagwa was guest speaker. In a letter dated November 11 2004,
the day this newspaper published an interview in which he literally threw
down the gauntlet, Mnangagwa invited provincial executives to nominate their
preferred candidates. The letter was copied to the party's national
chairman, John Nkomo, and its secretary for the commissariat, Elliot
Manyika, as well as provincial chairpersons, provincial secretaries for
administration and provincial secretaries for the commissariat.
"The respective party organs shall meet on Sunday 21, November 2004 to elect
and nominate the above and submit nominated candidates' detailed curriculum
vitaes to the national secretary for administration by 22 November, 2004 for
onward transmission to the Politburo and the central committee before
election and ratification by the National People's Congress to be held in
December 2004. "Please note that all proceedings in terms of Article 7
Section 32 (1), Article 32 (2), Article 7 (9), Article 11, 79 (5), should
also be submitted to this office no later than Tuesday 23rd November 2004,"
reads part of the letter, signed by Mnangagwa. Among the top
positions open for nomination are those of the president and first secretary
of ZANU PF, two vice-presidents and second secretaries and the national
chairman. The congress is also expected to elect members of the party's
central committee and the national consultative assembly. Sources
said President Robert Mugabe, who has ruled Zimbabwe since independence in
1980, would be retained as president and first secretary for ZANU PF.
Vice-President Joseph Msika, who has flatly denied rumours that he would
retire at the congress, would also have his candidature endorsed, while the
formidable ZANU PF Women's League, which could meet again before the
congress, is set to throw its weight behind Mujuru for the second
vice-presidency. With just under two weeks left before the crucial
congress, the spotlight is fixed on the race to fill the vacancy left by
Muzenda, over which battle lines have been drawn between Mnangagwa and
Mujuru, a ZANU PF politburo member and the longest serving female Cabinet
minister. Either of Mnangagwa or Mujuru, who both fought in the
protracted struggle to liberate Zimbabwe, is tipped to replace Muzenda,
whose death last year worsened divisions in the faction-ridden Masvingo
province. Sources told The Financial Gazette this week that Bulawayo,
Matabeleland North and Matabeleland South provinces would be going to the
eagerly awaited congress with a cushion provided for by the 1987 unity
accord signed between ZANU PF and PF ZAPU. The three Matabeleland
provinces, the sources, will throw their weight behind Vice-President Msika
for the first vice-presidency and second secretary and Nkomo to continue as
the ruling party national chairman. It is in the Masvingo, Midlands,
Manicaland and Mashonaland provinces where political gamesmanship and deceit
has erupted as the ZANU PF bigwigs vie for Muzenda's post. Sources
said there were clandestine manoeuvres from camps tussling for Muzenda's
post to rope in the three Matabeleland provinces into supporting their
cause, while consolidating support in Masvingo, Midlands, Manicaland and
Mashonaland provinces. On the surface, Mnangagwa appears to have the
backing of five provincial chairmen and will be hoping for the support to
filter down to the entire provincial executive councils' members.
Mujuru is expected to wield "gender equality" as her trump card, while
drawing sympathy from the provinces aligned to her husband, retired army
general Solomon Mujuru.
THE state-run Grain
Marketing Board (GMB), which currently holds maize stocks many critics claim
are enough only to feed the country for about two months, needs about US$27
million (Z$165 billion) to import 222 554 tonnes of grain to replenish the
country's depleted grain silos.
Sources within the GMB told The
Financial Gazette that the 141 521 tonnes of maize imported in September had
long been consumed, making the importation of 222 554 tonnes a priority for
the parastatal, which is reeling from a massive $302 billion loss incurred
in the year to March 2004. According to confidential documents seen by
this newspaper, the GMB incurred the $302 billion loss in the year under
review due to an uneconomic pricing policy on grain and is anticipating
heavier losses in the current financial year as it continues to trade below
cost. Despite enjoying a monopolistic position in the grain market, the
GMB has consistently recorded heavy losses. In the 2003 financial year, it
registered a $24.8 billion loss. The GMB presently sells maize to
millers at $9 600 a tonne while buying the grain from farmers at $130 000
per tonne. The parastatal envisages purchasing between 500 000 tonnes
and 750 000 tonnes by the end of the year, a figure experts say is overly
optimistic considering the trickle of grain being delivered to the
silos. The sources said the GMB, whose silos last week were exposed as
nearly empty by a parliamentary committee that investigated the country's
food stocks following conflicting positions on the country's grain stocks,
now sought to raise foreign currency to purchase the 222 554 tonnes of
grain. Last week, the portfolio committee on Lands, Rural Resources,
Water Development and Resettlement produced an unsettling report showing
that the GMB only held 351 810 tonnes of maize as of October 18 2004, a
figure far below the government's contested projections of a 2.4
million-tonne bumper harvest. The parliamentary committee observed
that while the government's estimates "may be mathematically and
statistically correct in terms of hectarage, yields and probability factors,
your committee found it difficult to relate production forecast figures with
actual inflows to GMB". It noted that, for instance, in Masvingo, the
Midlands and the two Matabeleland provinces, inflows to the GMB came up to
just 2.3 percent of the forecast collective production of 1.23 million
tonnes in the provinces. "Your committee observed with concern that the
built-up statistics to the forecast figure of 2.4 million tonnes also
included known chronic deficit areas such as Masvingo, Midlands,
Matabeleland North and South provinces. "It was equally surprising
that the national average yield of 1.5 tonnes per hectare was applied across
the board, regardless of the climatic conditions that prevail in each of the
5 ecological regions in the country. This might easily lead to a distorted
crop forecast. Your committee would have preferred forecasts based on
average anticipated yields for the different ecological regions."
The country consumes an average of 158 000 tonnes of maize per month.
The committee, in its report to Parliament last week, said the GMB would
struggle to buy 500 000 tonnes from local farmers. The committee also
revealed that the perennially dry regions of Matabeleland South and North,
Masvingo and the Midlands were already reeling from serious grain deficits
due to poor harvests. It said these areas would, between now and the April
2005 harvesting season, need a total of 310 000 tonnes, roughly the global
stock presently being held by the GMB. "The committee says that it
was informed that the government was in the process of importing 141 521
tonnes of maize. This came through in September and has long been exhausted.
What the GMB is now waiting for is for money to importing 222 554 tonnes to
boost stocks," said a source. Although GMB chief executive Samuel
Muvuti could not immediately comment on the envisaged imports, some members
of the parliamentary committee on food stocks said the report released last
week should be taken seriously by the government as indications pointed to
grain stocks running out before April 2005 unless massive imports were
shipped into the country. "What the report proved is that it is a lie
that the country harvested 2.4 million tonnes," said Renson Gasela, the
Movement for Democratic Change shadow minister of agriculture and a member
of the parliamentary committee. "What our work has shown as a committee
is that the country has maize to last two months. We need to import and we
should be fast as the silos are empty. The maize that was imported has also
been consumed and the 222 554 tonnes needed is yet to be paid for. The GMB
is waiting for foreign currency to import. This is a serious food
situation," he said. About 280 000 tonnes of wheat were envisaged to be
produced from the current crop, against an annual requirement of 450 871
tonnes. At the time of investigations by the parliamentary committee, the
GMB had 63 565 tonnes in stock, with an additional 18 327 tonnes having been
imported from neighbouring countries. About 62 000 tonnes would be needed to
offset the deficit. The government has steadfastly claimed that
Zimbabwe will not need to import grain this year, nor will it require
humanitarian food aid, following a "bumper" harvest in the 2003/2004
agricultural season.
CLOSE to $2 billion
was blown by an investigation into the affairs of First Mutual Limited
(FML), whose report government sources indicated had been locked up by the
Ministry of Finance and may not be made public.
FML is reported to
have picked the tab following the investigation, which the sources said
gobbled an estimated $1.5 billion in costs and fees to auditors KPMG
Chartered Accou-ntants Zimbabwe. KPGM had also contracted external
forensic auditors from South Africa during its investigations. This
means that policyholders, who were last week informed that their $21.6
billion investment into the curator-managed Trust Bank had gone up in smoke,
financed the government-sanctioned probe. This revelation comes as it
also emerged that Norman Sachikonye, To Page 3
the deposed
FML CEO, was given a $1.2 billion golden parachute at the time of his
unceremonious exit. But the major concern among policyholders and
investors in FML is that they are unlikely to know the results of the
findings from the investigations as Finance Minister Herbert Murerwa has
indicated that he might not publish the report. "The minister has
intimated that he might not publish the report as it belongs to him," a
source indicated. This comes as it also emerged that the Commissioner
of Insurance, who had ordered the probe following a furore over the
financing of Capital Alliance, a management vehicle that snapped up a
controlling stake on FML's demutualisation, had ordered FML to resume
business. In ordering the investigations and appointing the
investigator, the Commissioner of Insurance had ordered that FML management
would be prohibited from initiating any new insurance business, disposing of
any property connected with FML business, operating any account with any
bank, building society or financial institution and entering into any other
transactions on behalf of FML without the express authority of
KPMG. The decision by Murerwa, under whose ministry the Commissioner of
Insurance falls, to keep a lid on the auditors' report on FML means that
policyholders might not know whether the report condemned or vindicated the
FML management. This comes at a time when a Cabinet minister is
reported to have an interest in FML, but The Financial Gazette could not
establish if this had any effect on Murerwa's decision to keep the report
away from the public. The investigations had been prompted by investor
concerns over the acquisition by management, through their Capital Alliance
vehicle, of a large chunk of shares in FML when the diversified life
assurance group was demutualised. Concern had been raised that the
management consortium, led by Sachikonye, may have used policyholder funds
to fund its acquisition of a 20 percent stake FML. Ruth Ncube, the
FML spokesperson, yesterday confirmed the company had received an order from
the Commissioner of Insurance to resume normal business, but refused to
comment on the contents of the auditor's report, referring questions to the
Commissioner of Insurance. On Sachikonye's exit package, Ncube referred
questions to FML board chairman David Murangari, whose office said he was
unavailable for comment because of a bereavement in his family. "As
you are aware, Sachikonye was accountable to the board and it would be
proper to speak to the board chairman on that," Ncube said. Murangari
sanctioned the $1.2 billion payout to Sachikonye, made through a transfer
from Standard Chartered Bank to Sachikonye.
BULAWAYO - The
Famine Early Warning System (FEWS) Network has finally hit the nail on the
head. While the debate about food in Zimbabwe rages on, the main problem at
the moment is affordability rather than availability. People need cash to
buy food rather than food aid itself.
According to its update for
October, FEWS says due to higher than expected maize prices with no
commensurate increase in rural incomes, more people in the rural areas are
now in need of food aid than previously estimated because they can no longer
afford to buy food at current prices. Even in urban areas, wages are lagging
far behind the cost of living. It says that while it had been
anticipated that maize would be available from the Grain Marketing Board
(GMB) at $471 a kg, the price had increased to $720 a kg at the GMB and was
as high as $1 000 a kg on the parallel market. Maize prices
normally start going up in December-January, three months from the harvest,
but this year, they started rising soon after the harvest. "In the
grain-surplus areas of the central part of the country, maize prices rose
from $8 000 a bucket (18kg) in April-May to between $10 000 and $15 000 a
bucket in October," FEWS, which is funded by the United States Agency for
International Development, says. "Maize prices in the deficit areas were in
the $15 000 a bucket range after the harvest and went up to over $20 000 a
bucket by the end of October." FEWS said food security continued to be
eroded by high inflation. Though inflation had dropped from 622 percent in
January to 209 in October, it remained among the highest in the world. The
cost of basic commodities for an average household had shot up to nearly
$1.5 million by September while the average salary for a commercial worker
was a third of that, the network said. The Zimbabwe Vulnerability
Assessment Committee estimated in May that 2.2 million people would need
food assistance of at least 52 000 tonnes from August to November.
The government stopped food assessments by the World Food Programme (WFP) in
April, claiming that the country had enough grain. It said the country had
harvested 2.4 million tonnes of maize, a figure disputed by aid agencies as
well as the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, which say the harvest
is less than one million tonnes. The government has been accused of
inflating the harvest to give the impression that its land reform was a
success, while donors and the opposition are accused of underplaying the
harvest to prove that it was a disaster. A parliamentary select
committee which looked into food availability reported last week that the
GMB only had 351 810 tonnes as at October 18, with some 224 554 tonnes to be
imported. The country was therefore likely to run out of stocks before the
next harvest. While food agencies have been pressing the government to
allow food aid into the country, accusing it of planning to use food as a
political weapon in next year's elections, a special report on food aid in
the German magazine Development and Cooperation says the WFP tends to
overestimate food aid needs because it underestimates farm yields.
It says: Aid organisations are too fixated on food deficits and fail to
consider the social situation of target groups as a whole. Because of
this... appraisals of the economic situation of aid recipients have tended
to be inaccurate in the past." The report says that though food aid
is essential because it saves lives in emergencies, cash would be better
because it is "considerably more efficient to give cash to the needy rather
than food". It says food aid is very expensive and is not always
available when it is needed but, rather, whenever donors want to get rid of
their surpluses. "Food aid is big business and creates structures which
are not easy to dismantle. Many actors involved earn a lot of money," the
report says. It says transport and logistical services, for example,
swallow up half of the budget for the WFP programme's Afghanistan
operation. The report quotes a World Bank official, Peter Middlebrook,
as saying: "Food aid subsidises the transport sector more than it supports
the rural poor." The United States, which supplies over half of all
the food aid, for example, insists that all its food aid should be
exportable surpluses. It also requires, by law, that 75 percent of
commodities, including those for relief purposes, should be shipped in
US-registered vessels.
IN life, the late
vice president Simon Muzenda was, according to popular perception, a buffer
around President Robert Mugabe - a loyal lieutenant who was the President's
hatchet man, both in government and within the ruling party.
In
death, Muzenda, through the increasingly emotive issue of who will replace
him both in the government and the ruling ZANU PF party, has provided a
timely diversion from what must certainly be appropriate debate over
President Mugabe's own stated retirement plans. Last year, President
Mugabe took the unprecedented move of opening up discussion about his
political future when he urged the party to debate the succession issue
"openly". Debate on President Mugabe's succession, an issue one could
only bring up to his own political detriment in the past, saw party
stalwarts who were previously outwardly averse to appearing over-ambitious
positioning themselves for the big one. Sharp differences - and
clashes in some instances - emerged to threaten the façade of unbreachable
unity ZANU PF, and President Mugabe, has always wanted to project.
To some, the fissures were a sign that the veteran leader, who has been at
the helm of ZANU PF for three decades and the government for 24 years, was
losing control. That was until Muzenda's death last September.
While President Mugabe will doubtless miss one of his most loyal and
fiercest defenders, the void left by Muzenda brought a fresh dimension to
the succession issue. To the feuding aspirants to the highest
office in the land, replacing Muzenda became an immediate and more urgent
goal - effectively shifting, albeit for a while, attention from replacing
President Mugabe, who has stated his intention to retire in 2008.
The provincial consultative process to forge a succession roadmap has been
abandoned - partly because it had begun to breed discomfort in high places,
and partly because of more pressing, immediate issues to be settled first.
The vacant vice presidential slot, for instance. To further compound
the conundrum, the ZANU PF Women's League, that formidable and vocal wing of
the party, resolved at its annual conference held in September to put
forward a name, from its ranks, as a candidate for the vice
presidency. Although it has been suggested that the appointment of
Muzenda's replacement will automatically become a key piece in the broader
succession puzzle, the women's league's surprise move seems to put a damper
on such speculation. While it remains a subject of conjecture
whether ZANU PF is ready for a female vice president - who will effectively
become the third most powerful politician in the party - it is even less
likely that that person will garner sufficient support within the party to
claim the ultimate post. The other vice president, Joseph Msika, 81, is
fast approaching the end of his political career and, despite his vehement
protestations to the contrary, cannot be a force in the succession politics
now panning out in ZANU PF. So, while temperatures are perceptibly
rising over the party's - and ultimately the ZANU PF government's - vacant
vice presidency, whatever will happen on that front will not help unravel
President Mugabe's exit route. ZANU PF holds its congress every five
years to elect the presidency, but no one is expecting the party, over which
President Mugabe has held a vice-like grip, to consider the election of a
president except to unanimously endorse the incumbent. But there
will certainly have to be elections for the vice presidents, and it is this
subject that has party stalwarts hot under the collar. Former ZAPU vice
president Msika has said he will not retire, meaning he will throw his hat,
not the towel, into the ring. The ZANU PF constitution, as amended after the
1987 unity accord, stipulates that one of the party's two vice presidents
should come from the former ZAPU camp. Following the women's league's
resolution, which received the tacit blessing of the first family, Cabinet
minister Joyce Mujuru has emerged as a front-runner for the other vice
president's slot. Despite President Mugabe's apparent support for a
female candidate for the vice presidency, the issue is far from securing the
unanimity the women had hoped for, even within their ranks. It has
emerged that while the resolution was passed, it had, according to Shuvai
Mahofa, no name attached to it. Further, Mahofa contended, the issue
had to be adopted by the ZANU PF congress, to be held in Harare early next
month. Oppah Muchinguri, a ZANU PF politburo member and one of the
leading lights in the women's league, is on record expressing dismay at the
lack of consensus within the league. What's more, Mujuru's name did not come
from the provinces as should have been the case. Away from the
women's league, Emmerson Mnangagwa and Didymus Mutasa have expressed
willingness to replace Muzenda, while retired army general Vitalis
Zvinavashe has hinted at "a national post" as he spurned the chance to
replace Muzenda as Gutu North Member of Parliament. Mnangagwa last week
said while the women's league had a legitimate case, ZANU PF did not have an
affirmative action provision in electing the presidency, saying aspiring
candidates needed the support and nomination of at least six of the party's
10 provinces. As the party and interested observers pore over this
constitutional and procedural poser, how the vacant vice presidency will
fill itself remains something of an enigma. The path to the
presidency, in the current circumstances, is decidedly byzantine.
THE ruling ZANU PF
this week turned the screws on the party's legislators, whose stra-ngely
dilatory attitude to parliamentary business almost scuppered the
government's moves to push through amendments to the draconian Access to
Information and Prote-ction of Privacy Act (AIPPA).
ZANU PF
legislators were outnumbered by the opposition Mem-bers of Parliament as the
bill to amend the contentious legislation came to the vote. ZANU PF
MPs had to be practically driven into the chamber, after the bells had
ceased tolling, to save the day for a frantic Jonathan Moyo, the information
minister who is the architect of that piece of legislation. Sources
watching the events said the strange development had been construed as a
deliberate attempt by the legislators, some of whom have grown disenchanted
by the destructive elements that have arisen out of "the commandeering of
the public press to suit the whims of a few individuals." Moyo's
handling of the government-controlled media has become the subject of heated
debate within ruling party and government circles in recent months.
Whereas the ruling party was only too pleased to see Moyo, a former fierce
ZANU PF critic now its ferocious defender, shackle the privately-owned media
and effectively wage an unrelenting propaganda war on the opposition, many
party stalwarts have in the recent past expressed displeasure at the
minister's unbridled self-promotion through the public media.
Several ruling party heavyweights, including vice president Joseph Msika,
ZANU PF chairman John Nkomo and information chief Nathan Shamuyarira have
been ridiculed in the state-owned press, over which Moyo wields
unprecedented control. As a consequence, the attacks have been
taken as emanating from Moyo himself, with whom the trio has clashed on a
number of issues, including the Kondozi Farm debacle, the visit by Britain's
Sky Television news crew as well as the raging internal debate about
multiple farm ownership among the ruling elite. President Robert
Mugabe himself recently launched an uncharacteristic diatribe at the
state-controlled Herald over a story deemed disrespectful of South African
president Thabo Mbeki, "a key ally." He is said to have promised to
raise the issue with the department of information and publicity, headed by
Moyo - giving credence to the widely held view that the minister was
responsible for the excesses. However, President Mugabe this week read
the riot act to ZANU PF legislators, who were reminded to "take Parliament
business seriously by attending all sittings." The ruling party
convened an emergency caucus meeting this week, where they were reprimanded
by ZANU PF chief whip Joram Gumbo. The MPs were warned that their
attendance records would be sent to President Mugabe to show "how many ZANU
PF MPs attend Parliament from 2pm until the time it adjourns."
Although the MPs dragged their feet to eventually vote the amendments into
law, their conduct betrayed their reservations on the legislation. It
is not unprecedented, however, for some ZANU PF legislators to buck the
trend and vote against the party's edicts. At the beginning of the
current Parliament, which was sworn-in in 2000, three ZANU PF MPs defied a
directive to vote for speaker Emmerson Mnangagwa, who faced a challenge from
former Chimanimani MP Michael Mataure. Mnangagwa polled 87 votes
against Mataure's 59. There were two spoilt ballots. All 148 MPs
who had been sworn in at the time voted. The opposition MDC had 57
representatives in the House at the time, while ZANU Ndonga had
one. Deputy speaker Edna Madzongwe's opponent for the post, Paul Themba
Nyathi, who is now the MDC's spokesperson, received two votes from the
ruling party as he polled 60 against Madzo-ngwe's 87.
NO less than seven banking
institutions have been placed under curatorship since the country's biggest
ever banking scandal began unfolding last December.
This was
designed to protect depositors' funds, ring-fence trouble spots in the
financial sector and put paid to inevitable systemic risk in the face of the
tremor that has left the financial sector noticeably shaken. The financial
tidal wave was touched off after the banking authorities turned the stone
that brought to light the systematic corruption and inappropriate actions
rife in the financial sector, much of which has since been made public. Thus
the rot in the financial sector is well-documented.
All this
notwithstanding, the picture however remains clouded in rumour, innuendo,
suspicion, wild speculation and unsubstantiated but serious allegations. As
a result there are many questions but few answers. This is not helping
matters as it is increasingly difficult to separate fact from allegations
without factual foundation. This comes as the early adulation that came with
Gideon Gono's appointment as Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) governor first
turned into scepticism and lately outright hostility. As a result, the
bull's eye on Gono's chest has been getting bigger and bigger or grande màs
grande as the Spanish would say.
Despite whispered complaints
mainly from corruption-accused bankers about how the central bank has so far
handled the banking crisis, Gono had not had a cloud placed against his name
or integrity. Sadly, this has now happened . The cloud formed in the early
months of the year when banks were choking from a liquidity crunch and a
host of self-inflicted problems. It turned darker a few months later. Now,
as we warned earlier in one of our comments of April 1 2004 headlined
"Unmask them", it has started raining with opprobrium, though without a
plausible and justifiable reason.
We warned then that by allowing
the devil to run away with the Bible - letting platitudinous and threadbare
claims of victimisation by uncouth bankers go unchallenged, the governor and
his team were literally shooting themselves in the foot. We felt then, as we
feel now, that they risk losing their credibility because while silence can
be golden, sometimes it can simply be yellow because it can be taken as a
tacit admission of guilt by the central bank.
That is why we
feel that it should have made public in footnote detail which banks were
experiencing a liquidity crunch and why, the capital inadequacies and other
compliance weaknesses, imprudent practices, frauds, the nature of the
speculative non-banking business and the billion-dollar related-party
transactions. What measures were taken before each bank was placed under
curatorship, how many times the banking authorities met the affected banks
to consider escape options and how many corrective orders it gave each of
the affected banking institutions?
We took this view because we
believe that credibility is like virginity - a one-off invaluable asset
which should be guarded jealously because it can never be fully restored
once lost. Moreso for the RBZ which controls the country's financial levers
and therefore needs to command public trust and confidence. Yet the central
bank in its wisdom maintained that despite the brickbats, it could not throw
stones from the pulpit! Despite the presence of a double-barrelled smoking
gun in the form of lack of integrity, probity, risk management and sound
corporate governance, the unscrupulous bankers took advantage of the RBZ's
silence and propagated lies which bordered on highfalutin
nonsense.
While it is not our intention to underline our editorials
with the we-told-you-so jibe, we are afraid our worst fears have come to
pass. Gono, whose integrity and purity of intentions we and indeed the
generality of Zimbabweans do not doubt, has been tarred with allegations
that he is compromised. Apart from the unfounded claims of victimisation, it
is alleged that he is trying to keep a lid on the banking scandal's
political dimension. This is hardly surprising, coming as it does, against a
highly polarised environment where everything done is defined in terms of
perceived political party affiliation and is supposed to have a political
twist to it.
Some of the bankers, who in private admit that they
were not operating above board, now conveniently hide behind some political
conspiracy theories and empty platitudes to discredit the central bank.
Little wonder therefore that Gono's integrity is being questioned mostly by
those consumed with anger and hatred over the loss of control of the banking
institutions they established.
It is pertinent to note here
that it is not like there is a massive groundswell of public opinion against
what the RBZ is doing. Far from it. On the contrary, the public has thrown
its weight behind the central bank's efforts to clean up the banking sector
after millions suffered the consequences of financial impropriety on the
part of bank executives. The cacophony of angry voices therefore is from the
very people that plunged the banking sector into unprecedented
crisis.
It is the same people who see Gono as a toothache of a man
and have depicted him as a liar who is misleading the nation because they
want his head on a stick. As a result, the governor has taken out some
precious time responding to criticism, innuendo and allegations of guilty by
association. This is despite the fact that instead of throwing the drowning
banks both ends of the rope, the central bank kept them on a life support
system through the Troubled Banks Fund. It has even gone further by giving
them a new lease of life through a shotgun marriage of the troubled
banks.
The foregoing smacks of some disgruntlement over the way the
crisis has been handled so far. It might be baseless but it is there. And
therein lies not only the legal but also compelling moral basis for state
intervention by way of a judicial inquiry into the unfolding banking crisis.
This will enable the aggrieved parties to face up to the public and defend
their honour and integrity, if they have any. Noone will escape scrutiny.
For the affected bankers this will help prove if there is any bit of their
deplorable actions that is notably less morally repugnant - even though we
feel that from the evidence at hand, Judas Iscariot should be sainted if
they can be cleared.
The idea of a judicial commission has
since been mooted by none other than the RBZ governor himself. Such a
commission will not only put everything on a perspective which justifies the
central bank's actions but will also be the poniard with which we can prick
the bankers' bloated bladder of lies. For this is precisely but unwittingly
what - typical of turkeys that vote for an early Christmas - the bankers are
asking for through their accusations.
To this end, the
government should recall retired Supreme Court judges to help with this
inquiry. The retired judges, most of whom are in what is known as the
gifting phase in the four-phase investment cycle, are unlikely to be
influenced by the prospect of future need or current obligations. They are
therefore best suited to impartially gather facts, interview both sides and
pronounce undiluted empirical findings.
The establishment of a
judicial commission will also bring with it a measure of transparency to
everything surrounding the banking crisis hopefully to the satisfaction of
those unhappy with the way the issue has been handled so far. And just as
well because, at a time when there are calls for a new political
dispensation characterised by transparency and democracy, economic
institutions such as banks, which in the case of Zimbabwe have spawned
stinking affluence among a corrupt few, in stark contrast to a sea of
stagnation and misery among the generality of the people, should be measured
by the same gauge of transparency and democracy as political
institutions.
In any case, in a contest of the most self-righteous
members of the Zimbabwean society, bankers would come tops. Over the past
few years, they have become self-appointed moral pointmen. It is they who
reminded all and sundry that unless governance issues (political pluralism,
democracy, transparency etc) are addressed, it would be difficult to put a
fresh heart into the enfeebled economy. They only toned down on the moralism
after the exposé. We suppose they will not have a problem in being put under
the miscroscope!
So, the saga
of Zimbabwe's phantom bumper crop harvest continues. The latest twist,
according to press reports over the past week, is that the parliamentary
portfolio committee on lands and agriculture has disputed government claims
that Zimbabwe would realise a harvest of 2.4 million tonnes of
maize.
This would make the nation self-sufficient in terms of food
until next year's harvest. Indeed, on the basis of these
projections, the government has publicly rebuffed would-be donors, telling
them they should take their food aid elsewhere because Zimbabwe did not need
their assistance. However, the portfolio committee has established that
things are not as rosy as the-powers-that-be have indignantly sought to
suggest. The committee has, in fact, painted a completely different and, I
dare say, disastrous picture. It has pointed out that when
everything is added up, including "covert" food imports, Zimbabwe will only
have 574 000 tonnes of maize. This represents a critical deficit, according
to the committee, which means there would be enough food to meet national
needs for only three-and-a-half months. To arrive at this
conclusion the committee, among other things, conducted a sample survey in
five provinces. This showed that what farmers would deliver to the Grain
Marketing Board would be 2.3 percent of what the government was
projecting. Like other bodies that have clashed with the government
over its grossly inflated figures, the committee questioned some of the
methods used to make the projections. These included using an
average yield of 1.5 tonnes per hectare to arrive at an overall figure
without taking into account the different climatic profiles of the country's
five ecological regions which have an impact on yields.
Predictably, the government has dismissed the committee's findings as
inaccurate and insisted that farmers, who are already pre-occupied with
preparations for the imminent new planting season, are yet to deliver the
bulk of their produce to the GMB. A real cock-and-bull story if
ever there was one. The government's insistence on its figures being
correct in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary suggests that food
abundance is one more"reality" being imposed on Zimbabweans by government
decree rather than on the basis of observable and verifiable facts.
The bumper crop yields the government has touted over the last few years
are, of course, designed to demonstrate that the land reform programme has
been a huge success. The government has gone to ridiculous lengths at
incredible expense to maintain that illusion. These have included
unrelenting propaganda and the incredible resort to covertly importing grain
in a bid to supplement vastly reduced local output. It is clear
that far from focusing on national needs and interests, the government's
single most important goal is now to prove it is always right regardless of
whether what it says is logical or not. And the less the government's
claims and pronouncements jibe with the situation on the ground and the
evidence of the people's own eyes and experiences, the more aggressively
they are propagandised and presented as the only truth. Those who see things
as they really are have been called all sorts of names and labelled prophets
of doom. The powers-that-be prefer to offer spin that tallies with
their sense of infallibility and invincibility even when it would be easier,
not to mention cheaper, to tell the people the truth. The trouble
is that there are now so many red herrings floating around that it is a
challenge even for the spin doctors to untangle the maze of unlikely tales
they have spun so far. The question is, where will it all end?
Surely, the government apologists know that they cannot fool all the people
all the time. For a start, they are in grave danger of running out of
untruths to bandy about, having exhausted all possible angles without
winning a single person with an iota of intelligence over. What is tragic is
that billions of dollars are being channelled into this unnecessary
propaganda war. These national resources should instead be used to solve
some of the self-inflicted problems Zimbabwe is facing courtesy of official
expediency and intransigence. A bumper harvest should, for example,
be a self-evident fact, not a "virtual reality" existing only on television
and in the fertile imaginations of propagandists. When will the
government realise that what weary and cash-strapped Zimbabweans need is
food in their bellies. They are not impressed with the childish obsession to
score points at their expense.
CHINESE firm Huawei
Technologies has lifted the veil on deals with the Zimbabwean government,
which will see the injection of more than US$320 million into phone projects
with state-run networks Tel*One and Net*One.
Government officials
who sealed the deals with a Chinese delegation that visited the country a
fortnight ago have remained mum on details of the multiple transactions,
which also involve other state enterprises across several sectors of the
economy. Huawei last week announced it had struck a US$288 million deal
to boost the subscriber base of Tel*One's fixed telephone network, which has
been plagued by under-investment, by more than 500 000 users. The
deal involves the provision of network expansion and optimisation solutions,
including switches, national transmission backbone, intelligence network and
data communications products. Huawei representatives were in the
country early this month to sign the deals as part of the Chinese delegation
led by Wu Bangguo, vice chairman of the Chinese Communist Party.
Mobile telephone operator Net*One also signed a US$40 million deal with the
same company as the government intensifies its "Look East" policy, which so
far has not yielded any tangible results. It was not immediately clear
how the two state firms, which have previously failed to optimise capacity,
intend to finance the deals. But power utility ZESA, which also entered
into agreements with other Chinese investors, has indicated that its
transactions would involve the export of "commodities" to China.
The government, facing a severe crisis of confidence over its failure to
create a conducive investment environment, has been secretive about most of
its deals with "friendlier" Chinese investors. Analysts say Zimbabwe's
efforts to shift trade away from traditional investors in Europe to Asian
investors are yet to bear fruits. The US$40 million Net*One deal will
see Huawei providing the Zimbabwean company with an entire set of GSM
systems and services, in addition to the existing 170 GSM lines which the
Chinese firm provided early this year. Huawei said of the Tel*One
deal: "When the project is completed, the capacity of Tel*One 's fixed
network is expected to increase by 500 000 users. The present
dissatisfactory communication situation will get improved and rural areas
and remote cities and towns will benefit from the improvement." The
project would also help Zimbabwe build an advanced national backbone
transmission and datacom networks, the Chinese firm added. Huawei said
the additional set of GSM systems and services would help Net*One further
expand its network coverage and increase capacity. Apart from Zimbabwe,
Huawei Technologies has clinched a series of contracts in Kenya and Nigeria
in the telecommunications industry worth US$400 million for the supply of
products and solutions that include optical transmitters, switches, routers
and intelligence networks.
LOCAL Government and
National Housing Minister Ignatius Chombo's interference in the affairs of
the embattled Harare City Council has delayed the formulation of proposals
for the 2005 budget.
The council, which has failed to beat the
October 31 deadline for all urban councils, is yet to come up with a date
for the presentation of its proposals. Even if the council manages
to craft the 2005 budget, it still faces a hurdle in getting it legally
approved. The municipality is currently operating with only eight
councillors following the suspension of 37 others by Chombo on trumped-up
charges of malfeasance. The suspended councillors were voted into the
municipality on a Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) ticket. The MDC,
Zimbabwe's largest opposition political party, has posed a threat to the
ruling ZANU PF since being formed in 1999. The Urban Councils Act
stipulates that the budget process should start at the grassroots level,
with councillors making their input. Town House sources said in the
absence of a full council, the budget, if formulated, could be rubberstamped
by a commission. "Now, in the absence of a full council and with a
commission at Town House, we do not know who is going to approve the
proposals before they are forwarded to the ministry," said the
source. The same sources said the remaining councillors, who had
defected to ZANU PF to save their skins from the marauding Chombo, did not
constitute a full quorum. Town Clerk Nomutsa Chideya conceded that
the presentation of the budget proposals would be delayed, but would not be
drawn to give reasons, referring this newspaper to council spokesperson
Leslie Gwindi. "It will take a bit of time but I think we will do so at
the end of November," Chideya said. Gwindi said the council would
beat the deadline for approval of all municipal budgets set by
Chombo. This week Chombo, who overturned Harare's trillion-dollar 2004
proposals, said the government would have approved all municipal budgets for
next year by end of December . The Harare City Council is facing a
number of problems, which include shortage of funds to pay staff on time and
lack of equipment.
IMBABWE'S embattled
commercial farmers' representative body, the Commercial Farmers Union (CFU),
has seen its membership dip by over 70 percent over the past four years as
government continues with its controversial land reforms. It has
been established that the union, which used to boast 4 000 members now only
has 1 200.
Sources, however, say the membership could have dwindled
down to a few hundred. An official from the union said there were
fears that the membership could continue to plunge as uncertainty emanating
from the land reform programme continued to force the CFU's members out of
business. The government began taking over commercial farms, in most
instances violently, in 2000 and the pattern has continued, thereby
disrupting activities in the agriculture sector. Millions of farm workers
have been displaced in the skirmishes while production levels have shrunk by
over 50 percent. "People have been removed from their farms and our
membership has decreased. The situation is not stable and the numbers will
continue to decrease. We have tried to address the problem by restructuring
the union," the official said. The sharp decrease in the CFU
membership spells the death of professional agriculture in the country.
Agriculture permanent secretary Ngoni Masoka recently said there was a
shortage of agricultural extension workers in the country as there were only
1 000 out of the 4 000 required to service the industry
efficiently. Masoka said agricultural colleges were producing few
graduates and the ministry had to rehire retired extension workers to
disseminate agricultural techniques. The CFU noted that it was
still critical to attract more members and retain the existing ones, but the
official would not be drawn into disclosing what measures would be
implemented to stop the ruin. Zimbabwe's new breed of commercial
farmers has found solace in the newly-formed Zimbabwe Commercial Farmers'
Union, which is believed to foster blacks interests. The CFU has been
accused of racism but over the years it has played a pivotal role in
providing the country's food.