From The Helen Suzman Foundation, September 2000.
You cannot appreciate why Mugabe and his henchmen are clinging so tenaciously to power until you know how much they have to lose.
ALTHOUGH CORRUPTION within the Zimbabwean government is notorious, journalists have persistently failed to find proof of corruption in the case of President Robert Mugabe himself. The only time that anything really juicy emerged was during the US Senate hearings into the collapse of the Abu Dhabi-based Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) in 1992. According to the published testimony of BCCI officials the bank had secured preferential banking rights in Zimbabwe by bribing Mugabe and Vice-President Joshua Nkomo in 1980-81.
One official, Nazir Chinoy, described how the bank's emissary, Aluauddin Sheikh, "carried a bag with him ... he went off to see President Mugabe and when they talked they wanted me out of the room". Chinoy and other officials said the bag had been full of cash and that Sheikh left it with Mugabe. Another official, Akbar Bilgrami, testified that "We paid Mugabe and Nkomo. I was at the Park Lane branch [in London]. BCCI was approached to look after the expenses of the delegates [at the Lancaster gate talks on Zimbabwean independence], which were paid. In addition, we paid £500,000.00 from the Park Lane branch. Someone from Mr Naqvi's office came to Park Lane and picked up the money. I don't think that Ian Smith was getting paid by us." BCCI did indeed acquire special banking rights in Zimbabwe that it retained until the bank's collapse.
To understand how politics and money work in Zimbabwe one has
to begin with the fact that Zanu-PF is more than just a political party. It owns
two companies, the M & S Syndicate, set up even before independence in 1980,
and Zidco Holdings (of which M & S holds 55 per cent of the shares), set up
straight afterwards.
Through these two companies the party has a vast
range of interest which include Treger Holdings, producers of building
materials, hardware etc; Ottawa, a property management company; Catercraft,
which runs the catering at Harare airport and also supplies all domestic and
international flights out of Harare; Zimdam, M&S's investment arm; Woolworth
Trading, which supplies the Zimbabwean armed forces, government central stores
and other ministries and departments; and Zidlee Enterprises, which controls the
duty free shops at Beit Bridge, Harare City and Harare Airport, also supplying
diplomats with a range of goods. Zidlee is believed to be particularly useful to
Zanu-PF high-ups who want to move foreign exchange in or out of the
country.
In effect Zidco allowed the party to take a share in a whole
range of enterprises set up in Zimbabwe. This also allowed key members of the
political elite access to its profits, though how much goes to whom is not a
public fact. Attempts at Zanu-PF congresses to get the party's treasurer,
Emmerson Mnangagwa, to divulge the accounts of Zidco and M & S have always
failed; though he did reveal in 1992 that Zanu-PF's assets were then worth Z$486
million.
The key to Zidco is the Joshi family. The Joshis are part of the
Asian diaspora scattered across east and southern Africa, a community that,
thanks to the chronic insecurity it has had to face in recent years, now
frequently has a footing in Britain too. The Joshis, a family of Malawian Asians
with a house in Romford, Essex, have played a key role under the Mugabe regime.
Jayan Joshi, who was based in Britain in the 1970s, extended considerable
assistance to Zanu activists sent on scholarships to Britain from the guerrilla
camps in Mozambique.
After independence Mugabe invited Jayan and his
brother Manoo to run Zidco. Through their offices Rambhai Patel, a Kenyan Asian
who now lives near Chislehurst in Kent, put up the equity capital for Zidco, of
which he still owns 45 per cent. Patel, now in his 80s, is a legend in the Asian
community, having greatly increased the fortune his merchant father left him. He
is famous not just for his wealth and business acumen but as an eminence grise.
He is the owner of Unicorn Export-Import, based in London, which owns his share
of Zidco. In 1984 he visited Zimbabwe and cemented his relationship with Mugabe
by making a $50,000 contribution to Zanu-PF funds. The Joshis retain strong
personal links to the Mugabes - Jayan's daughter Heena, for example, is a close
friend of the president's wife, Grace, and sits on the board of Grace's pet
charity, the Children's Rehabilitation Trust. Having played a key part in the
contract for the new Harare international airport Heena now has a leading role
in Oryx Diamonds.
Zidco's directors are the two Joshi brothers, and
Emmerson Mnangagwa and Sidney Sekeramayi - the two men who have controlled the
Central Intelligence Organisation ever since independence. Both are extremely
close to Mugabe. The president has tried to push Mnangagwa forward as his
possible successor but the former minister of justice is too unpopular for that
to succeed. Despite his defeat in the June election, Mugabe has made Mnangagwa
speaker of parliament with a brief to keep the Movement for Democratic Change
under control. Sekeremayi, clung on to his seat in the June election by just 63
votes, a result which the MDC is challenging in the courts. Mugabe has abolished
his ministry of security abolished and moved him into the presidential office
instead, thus increasing the president's personal control over the
CIO.
Thus Mnangagwa and Sekeramayi not only know, both literally and
figuratively, where all the political bodies are buried but are also privy to
all the party's financial secrets - which they control. Mnangagwa was chairman
of M & S for many years. He is also a director of Oporto Investments, Galant
Distribution, Galhold Investments, Woolworth Trading, Treasure Holdings and
National Blankets.
Mnangagwa is also chairman of Fibrolite, a joint
venture with a Portuguese businessman, Armando Godinko. Fibrolite exports over
US$1 million of asbestos a year. The interaction between Mnangagwa's political,
financial and intelligence roles - CIO operatives still call him "the son of
God" because of his close ties to Mugabe - was revealed in 1995. Godinko's son,
Luis, the owner of the Mirage nightclub, was arrested for the abduction and rape
of a 17-year-old girl. When the immigration authorities sought to cancel Luis's
residence permit Mnangagwa got the CIO to swear that Luis was one of their key
operatives and a vital source of information, so that the charges were dropped
in the national interest. The principal immigration officer, Elias Mbedze, did
not have such a high opinion of Luis, calling him "a dangerous guy" and "a
graduate in crime" - Luis was at the time appealing against a conviction for
bribing a police officer.
Mnangagwa has also played a key role in the
expansion of Zanu-PF's financial interests into the Democratic Republic of the
Congo. In May 1999 he admitted that he had introduced a Chinese arms company,
two transport companies, a banking group and a power company to Laurent Kabila
and that they had all established businesses there. One of Zidco's subsidiaries,
the First Bank Corporation, then set up in Kinshasa. In addition two other
business associates of Mnangagwa went into business ferrying arms and supplies
between Zimbabwe and the DRC, Billy Rautenbach's Wheels of Africa company and
the head of the Zimbabwean army, General Vitalis Zvinavashe, with his company,
Zvinavashe Transport. Mnangagwa then helped to broker an arms deal for Kabila of
21,000 AK-47s and US$53 million of heavy arms, all from China. Mnangagwa also
works closely with John Bredenkamp, who boasts of being the biggest single
supplier of arms to the Congo.
In late 1998 Zimbabwean forces in the DRC
suffered heavy casualties and lost several helicopter gunships. Mugabe sent
Mnangagwa and Sekeramayi to the DRC to assess the situation - thus provoking the
near resignation of the defence minister, Moven Mahachi, who found that they
actually had far greater control over the army than he did. For the army top
brass report directly to Mnangagwa, who is so heavily involved that he actually
sustained a hand wound at the war front. Mugabe has instructed him to oversee
his Congo military operations, giving him unparalleled military clout - which he
has used to help Billy Rautenbach gain a long list of mining concessions in the
Congo.
The press reported that Rautenbach has rewarded various Congolese
and Zimbabwean politicians with large ex gratia payments for favours received,
though this did not prevent the DRC's minister of mines from cancelling all
deals with him in March 1999 and effectively throwing him out of the DRC. No
such accidents happen to Mnangagwa. When Roger Boka's United Merchant Bank went
bust in 1998, it was found to have lent Mnangagwa large sums. Despite that he
seems to have some difficulty in paying his rates: in June 1999 Harare city
council revealed that Mnangagwa was Z$410,231 in arrears on his rate
payments.
Zimbabwe's involvement in the DRC goes back much further than
the current war. When Zimbabwean troops were pulled out of Mozambique in 1988,
South African businessmen - to Harare's fury - were quick to scoop up the most
lucrative deals there in the wake of the civil war. Mugabe vowed this would not
happen twice. In 1996 Mugabe gave Kabila US$5 million to finance his rebellion
against Mobutu. Just before Kinshasa fell to Kabila, Zimbabwe Defence Industries
(owned by the government) concluded a S$53m deal to supply Kabila with
everything from food to uniforms and mortar bombs. ZDI was then used to
spearhead Zimbabwe's economic penetration of the DRC. The company is extremely
secretive but in 1993, the last year when it gave out such information, its
directors included Zvinavashe and another Mugabe intimate, Perence Shiri, the
former head of the terrifying 5 Brigade.
Gradually the efforts of Shiri,
Zvinavashe and Mnangagwa have led to a network of interests in the DRC.
Zvinavashe and his brother are also directors of Osleg (Operation Sovereign
legitimacy) which, following the Chinese model, is seen as the economic wing of
the Zimbabwean armed forces. Osleg wanted, above all, to get its hands on the
mining concessions that Kabila had promised. The first such venture was with
Comiex-Congo, producing a new joint company, Cosleg. There followed a joint
venture with the Omani-owned Oryx Natural Resources to form Oryx-Zimcon. In
January 2000 Oryx Natural Resources bought Petra diamonds and rechristened it
Oryx Diamonds - in which Zidco holds 237,000 shares.
Despite the rows
which have enveloped Oryx Diamonds since - its flotation on the London stock
exchange was blocked and its director, Moses Anafu, forced to resign from the
Commonwealth Observer Group sent to monitor Zimbabwe's election in June - all
these interests are intact. All the indications are that Zimbabwe's political
and military elites continue to draw large profits from their incursion into the
DRC. It is just as well for Zidco has fallen on evil days within Zimbabwe - as
any enterprise must given the parlous state of the economy. Jayan Joshi now
spends much of his days playing solitaire on his computer for, thanks to the
disastrous policies of his long-time associate, Robert Mugabe, there is precious
little else for him to do.