Mandebvhu Talks “Zimbabwe”…

The aphorism coined by Harold Wilson, the former British premier who held office in the 1960s and 1970s, “a week is a long time in politics”, needs to be revised in light of recent events in Zimbabwe. The announcement by Simba Makoni, a stalwart of the ruling Zanu PF and a former minister of finance, of his intention to stand in the presidential election next month, is a reminder that a day can be long enough to signal a major change is in the offing. Until Makoni’s February 5 announcement, Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s octogenarian president, looked certain to be re-elected in the pending election; thereafter Mugabe’s chances of re-election were questionable, particularly as Makoni’s declaration appeared to portend the start of a revolt against Mugabe in his own party.

To appreciate the full significance of Makoni’s decision to stand against Mugabe, contemplate a hypothetical situation in South Africa in which: The national president is elected in a separate presidential poll instead of by members of the National Assembly, which effectively means by the majority party; Jacob Zuma, the ANC president, is nominated by the ANC as its presidential candidate in a pending presidential election that will occur in tandem with the actual scheduled parliamentary election next year; Cyril Ramaphosa, a former secretary-general of the ANC and a long-standing member of the ANC national executive committee, is persuaded to stand for election as president in the national interest by representatives of the business community and civil society, including the South African Council of Churches.

The probabilities are high that the theoretical Ramaphosa foray into the political arena, like the actual Makoni initiative in Zimbabwe, would attract votes across a wide socio-political spectrum. It should be borne in mind that nearly 40 percent of the delegates at the ANC’s national conference last December voted against Zuma and that various opinion polls have identified Ramaphosa as the person favoured by a large proportion of the citizenry to succeed President Thabo Mbeki. Another factor should be taken into account in the hypothetical scenario: unlike the ANC members of the national assembly, the voters in the direct, popular presidential election will not find themselves under the scrutiny of Baleka Mbete, the speaker and the national chairwoman of the Zuma-led ANC.

To quote Frederik van Zyl Slabbert, who headed a government-appointed commission on electoral reform in 2002, public representatives who are “locked into caucus politics” are inclined to docile obedience to the party line. A last point on the South African analogy: while Zuma undoubtedly had the support of the majority of delegates at the ANC’s national conference at Polokwane, it does not follow that he would win a national presidential election. There is a simple reason for that. The ANC’s national membership is 600 000, whereas the electorate for a presidential election would be between 15-million and 20-million, depending on the proportion of the 28-million to 30-million South Africans of voting age who registered to vote. To offer a hypothetical South African equivalent of Makoni’s bold gamut is not, of course, to equate the situations in the two countries.

Zimbabwe is on the brink of an abyss; South Africa, though not free of problems, is not. Zimbabwe’s desperate plight is encapsulated in its astronomical inflation rate of 2 500 percent, its status as the world’s fasting shrinking economy and its all but valueless currency, as well as its huge and mounting international debt. Those who have benefited from Mugabe’s policy of indigenisation of the economy are beginning to fear that unless he is prevented from extending his presidential tenure for another seven years, they will become paupers or suffer an even worse fate at the hands of Mugabe’s ubiquitous enemies. Though important in its own right, the significance of Makoni’s decision to stand against Mugabe in next month’s election is magnified by a number of factors.

One is that he is unlikely to have taken the decision without consulting the barons at Mugabe’s court and receiving pledges of support. It is a fair bet that he talked to Solomon Mujuru, the former commander of Zanu PF’s guerrilla army and of Zimbabwe’s post-liberation national defence force. His military credentials aside, Mujuru - whose wife, Joyce, is one of Zimbabwe’s two vice presidents - is a fabulously rich businessmen; if Mugabe is allowed to prolong his disastrous rule at the age of 83, Mujuru is a candidate for impoverishment and even retribution. As Martin Meredith notes in the expanded and updated edition of his acclaimed book Mugabe, Power, Plunder and the Struggle for Zimbabwe (Jonathan Ball, 2007), Mujuru was instrumental in blocking Mugabe’s bid last year to defer the 2008 presidential election until 2010 in order to secure his tenure as president for another two years. It would be consistent for Mujuru to follow that up by backing Makoni’s attempt to defeat Mugabe in next month’s presidential election and thereby deny him occupancy of the presidency for another seven years, or until he is 90.

At the very least, Makoni will split the Zanu PF vote and thereby negate the advantage that Mugabe gained when the feuding factions of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) failed to resolve their differences or even to forge an election pact to prevent dividing the MDC vote. If Makoni fails to win the pending presidential election himself, he may have opened the door to Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the dominant MDC faction. Given the centrality of the presidential elections to the analysis so far, it is relevant to note that research conducted by the commission headed by Slabbert showed that a majority of South Africans of all races are in favour of the introduction of direct presidential elections.

Their preference has since been endorsed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu: he wants the government to give South Africans a direct role in the election of the national president instead of having the choice made for them by the majority party in the National Assembly. If Zimbabweans were not afforded the opportunity of directly electing the president, Makoni would not have been able to raise his standard against Mugabe and Mugabe’s election by a Zanu PF-dominated parliament would, in all probability, have been destined to become a disastrous fait accompli next month.

(Source)

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On the road from Epworth to Harare - A slender moon shadow stretches out on the road before Willard Chitau as he takes his first quick, purposeful steps toward his workplace. It is 4:27 a.m. Nine miles to go. Buses have begun to stir, spewing their smoky diesel fumes into the darkness. But like many Zimbabweans, Chitau can no longer afford the ever-rising fares in a country where hyperinflation, estimated at more than 26,000 percent, is the world’s worst. A single round trip to his job at a lumber yard costs 10 million Zimbabwean dollars, nearly a week’s salary. “Five million this way,” Chitau says as he points his slim left arm forward, toward Harare, the crumbling economic heart of Zimbabwe. “Five million this way,” he says as he points backward, toward his one-room home in Epworth, a sandy slum far beyond the city’s tree-lined suburbs. So Chitau, 33, desperate to support his wife and two young children, has joined Zimbabwe’s growing legions of foot commuters. They make journeys that almost anywhere else would be epic. Here they are routine.

Along the way they trace the decline of a nation, passing clinics short of drugs, schools short of teachers, stores short of food. They walk on crumbling roads whose darkened streetlights are remnants of an era, just a decade ago, when Zimbabwe was one of Africa’s most prosperous nations instead of one of its most troubled. Chitau did not always live so far from work. During Operation Murambatsvina - President Robert Mugabe’s 2005 slum clearance campaign, which left 700,000 people homeless, jobless or both - police forced Chitau to tear down his house in a dense Harare neighborhood much closer to the lumber yard, he said. So he sent most of his belongings to his family’s rural village and settled into the small, dark room in Epworth. There he sleeps with his wife, 4-year-old son and 3-month-old daughter on a concrete floor, a single wool blanket beneath them. A warm morning bath, which would consume precious firewood, is beyond their means. So is breakfast or even a cup of tea to cut the early morning chill.

The economy has been in free fall since Mugabe encouraged the invasion of white-owned commercial farms by landless black peasants in 2000. Although many Zimbabweans say land redistribution was needed to right historic wrongs, the way it happened was chaotic and often violent; it devastated successful businesses while triggering hyperinflation and leaving many poor blacks - the supposed beneficiaries of the program - without steady paychecks. An estimated 3 million people have since fled the country. Sometimes Chitau finds odd jobs for extra cash, or his wife helps by selling vegetables. When there’s enough money, he even takes the bus some mornings. But today the monthly rent is due. Because prices go up here unevenly, it’s only 9 million Zimbabwean dollars, about $1.50 in U.S. currency, but that still means a struggle for a man paid in local bills worth less than $9 a month. “I need to search for money very hard so that I will survive,” Chitau says, his swift, smooth stride unbroken. Cars pass. Buses pass. Cyclists wearing suits and ties pass. A barefoot man who has broken into a jog passes, too. But mainly it is Chitau who overtakes other pedestrians as the miles slip by.

The only thing that can slow him down is rain, he says. The shoes he wears most days look as though they have sloshed through a hundred storms. The brown leather is softened, largely detached from the rubber soles. The laces are gone. But this morning is dry and clear, with a fat crescent moon and a spray of stars twinkling overhead. After nearly half an hour of walking, as the faintest light begins to warm the eastern horizon, Chitau steps past Sophia Manjiva, 45, a single mother clutching a closed umbrella who says she is pleased to have company. She has heard many tales of robberies along this dark road. Manjiva says her monthly pay as a maid in a private home is 20 million Zimbabwean dollars — less than $4 in U.S. currency. With that she feeds, clothes and schools her two youngest children, ages 10 and 13. As hyperinflation erodes her pay, making even staples like cooking oil and cornmeal difficult to buy, Zimbabwe’s deteriorating infrastructure complicates her work. Chronic power blackouts and water shortages mean that several times a day she must fetch water from a well near the house she cleans, then carry full buckets back upstairs, she says. That’s after walking 2 1/2 hours to work and before walking 2 1/2 hours back home.

“I get tired, but there is nothing to do,” Manjiva says as Chitau begins to open up the distance between them. At 5, the sky turns a soft blue, streaked by pinkish clouds, as a diffuse pre-dawn glow lights the faces of rows of sunflowers gazing east. White-robed members of Zimbabwe’s popular Apostolic churches kneel in prayer on the dewy grass. Birds begin chirping tunes that, under the circumstances, sound improbably upbeat. Yet the growing light reveals unmistakable signs of frustration with Zimbabwe’s decay. Epworth’s most singular natural feature - stacks of rounded, beige boulders - bear snatches of spray-painted graffiti: “Vote MDC.” The initials refer to the Movement for Democratic Change, the fractured opposition party that in March will seek, for the fourth time, to defeat Mugabe’s ruling party after 28 years of unbroken control. But Chitau doesn’t want to talk about politics when the feared Central Intelligence Organization remains a well-funded marvel of efficiency amid collapsing government services. Arrests, beatings and humiliating sting operations are common tactics against those who complain too loudly. “It’s my country, but I’m afraid” to talk about Zimbabwe, he says. Shortly before 6, Chitau reaches Harare’s outskirts, where the names of the suburbs - Chadcombe, Cranborne, Queensdale - echo the country’s British colonial past. Sand gives way to dark soil, shacks to large, tile-roofed homes.

Chitau closes in on a group of women carrying empty bags and baskets. They, too, are coming from Epworth, but their destination, the bustling Mbare market near downtown Harare, is even farther than Chitau’s lumber yard. They earn the equivalent of two or three U.S. dollars a day, the women explain, by buying vegetables at Mbare, then carrying them back to Epworth to sell. The bus would cut their profits by half or more. A few minutes later, Chitau indulges his one daily luxury, buying a cigarette from a street vendor squatting by the side of the street. The cost is 400,000 Zimbabwean dollars, or about 7 cents. “By smoking, I can’t feel as hungry,” Chitau explains as he inhales deeply from the cigarette and briefly slackens his pace. A few steps later, he tosses the burned-out butt. Tea is still four hours away. It will be seven hours until lunch, when a plate of sadza - the snow-white cornmeal mush that is southern Africa’s staple food — will be his first meal since last night, he says. His pace quickens again.

The sun is up now, casting long shadows as Chitau passes the two-hour mark in his journey. He crosses an intersection where the traffic light, like most in Harare, is not working. A passing van - such vehicles are used almost universally as taxis here - slows to let out a passenger. Its radio is tuned to the 7 a.m. newscast, which like all radio and television reports in Zimbabwe carries only government propaganda. The announcer complains that sanctions imposed on Mugabe’s government by the United States and European countries are undermining Zimbabwe. As the van pulls off, Chitau bears left from Chiremba Road onto Robert Mugabe Road, a commercial strip where businesses are struggling to stay open. Among the estimated 20 percent of Zimbabweans who have jobs, many have simply stopped coming to work now that the value of their salaries has fallen below the cost of commuting. Chitau arrives at his lumber yard at 7:13 a.m., after 166 minutes of nearly continuous walking. As often happens on rainless mornings such as this, he is early. Chitau can savor the next 47 minutes until his workday begins. He says, “Now I must rest.”

(Source)

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I suspect I am not alone in being surprised at the backbone and hitherto invisible reservoir of political principle Simba Makoni has discovered as he tries to unseat Zimbabwe’s malevolent old dictator Robert Mugabe.

For some months the spotlights of hope have focused on Makoni as the most attractive potential candidate from within the ruling ZANU PF party to unseat Mugabe, now 83 years old, in power since 1980 and bucking to remain president for the rest of his life.

The fracturing of the main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, under the relentless assault of Mugabe’s secret police and political militias has left many to conclude the only hope for salvation in Zimbabwe is if Mugabe is ousted by a challenger from within ZANU PF.

So far Mugabe has arranged the political castration of all ZANU PF grandees who have hinted they are candidates for the succession.

But with yet another renewal of Mugabe’s tenure in what in Zimbabwe are laughingly called “elections” due next month, Makoni, 57, a former finance minister forced out of office in 2002 when he tried to devalue the Zimbabwean currency, took the courageous step this week of announcing he will run for the presidency.

The response of Mugabe’s coterie of razor-toothed catamites to Makoni’s announcement has been swift and violent. The entire machinery of Mugabe’s putrid regime has been set in motion against Makoni, starting with his expulsion from ZANU PF.

Makoni has been a sometimes overly loyal member of ZANU PF since the 1970s when, as a student in Britain, he was its representative in Europe in the war to end white minority rule in Zimbabwe.

State-controlled media have been all over Makoni in a style that makes Britney Spears’ relationship with the paparazzi look calm and courteous.

The Harare Herald newspaper poured contemptuous scorn on the attention given the Makoni candidacy by independent and international media. In reality, the Herald suggested, Makoni is a political embarrassment and his candidacy for president “the loud fart all silently agree never happened.”

More threatening was the reaction of the so-called veterans of Zimbabwe’s war against the white regime of Ian Smith in the 1970s. Most of these thugs are too young to have fought in the war and are in reality a murderous political militia used by Mugabe against his opponents.

The “veterans” have branded Makoni a traitor in line with propaganda on state-controlled radio insinuating that he is an agent of the British government. Mugabe claims Zimbabwe’s problems (inflation is at 150,000 per cent and unemployment over 70 per cent) stem from a secret British government campaign to make Zimbabwe a colony again.

I first came across Makoni about 20 years ago when he was one of the chosen elite riding the gravy train of foreign donor money aimed at undermining apartheid in South Africa.

It could be a lucrative business, fighting apartheid.

Makoni’s corner of this windfall was as the executive secretary of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), an alliance of the nine so-called “frontline states” adjacent to South Africa and dedicated to overthrowing the apartheid regime there.

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Zimbabwe’s ruling ZANU PF party cut former finance minister Simba Makoni adrift on Wednesday over his electoral bid to topple Robert Mugabe, saying he had “expelled himself” by taking on the veteran president.

As state media dismissed Makoni as a stooge of ex-colonial power Britain, Emmerson Mnangagwa, the Zimbabwe African National Union - Patriotic Front secretary for legal affairs declared him persona non grata within the party.

“From yesterday afternoon when he made the press conference, he left the party,” Mnangagwa, who is also the rural housing minister, told Zimbabwe Television (ZTV).

“The position of president, the position of a councillor, MP or senator… once the process has been carried out and you want to stand for the same position where the process of selection has been completed, you expel yourself.”

Makoni announced at a press conference in the capital Harare on Tuesday that he would stand against Mugabe at joint presidential and parliamentary elections set for March 29 when the 83-year-old president will seek a sixth term.

The former minister said while he was running as an independent, he remained loyal to ZANU PF and would have liked to run under its colours.

Mugabe was confirmed as ZANU PF’s candidate at a conference in December when talk of a challenge from within party ranks failed to materialise.

With the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change deeply divided, Makoni is hoping he will be the beneficiary of disillusionment over the economic meltdown in Zimbabwe. Official inflation is the highest in the world at more than 26000%, while unemployment is around 80%.

The state-run Herald newspaper meanwhile claimed Makoni was part of a ploy by Britain to split the ruling party’s vote and open the door to main opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai.

“It is Britain’s way of trying to ‘level’ the playing field,” said the paper.

“As they say, when two dogs fight for a bone, it is the third dog which wins the fight and that dog in Whitehall’s (Britain’s) view is Tsvangirai who fled the liberation struggle.”

The decision by Makoni to stand comes after Tsvangirai failed to reach agreement with rivals within his MDC over who should contest the polls.

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Howzit

I normally wouldn’t use this page for comment, but feel obligated to do so today.

I receive a weekly newsletter from Bulawayo that updates people on events there.

Is there any other country in the world that the people have set up a “pot hole” watch, where the President helps himself to the coffers of the Reserve Bank, where bread costs ZW$1.7 million (which is virtually nothing really - but if you don’t have the ZW$1.7 million…), where first aid and medical assistance in any description is out of reach of all but the rich and well-heeled?

Where the country is more often than not blanketted in darkness as the government hasn’t bothered to do planned maintenance on the Hwange power tations, where Kariba Dam wall is in danger of collapsing for the same reason?

Where running water and electricity are just memories of a distance past?

Where every activity you may attend is viewed with suspicion and a watchful eye by Mugabe secret police… where going to church is in danger of becoming a thing of the past as Police raid the services to weed out those who are not pro-Mugabe?

Where the few people that do work (under 20% of the population) walk to work as they cannot afford the bus fares, fuel for their cars, or cannot afford the servicing or repair bills?

Where children do not go to school because their parents cannot afford the fees (when I went to school in Rhodesia school fees were unheard of - and I received a government education) - where the simple, but necessary items - like ladies’ tampons - are just plain not available, unless you have a back account full of money that reads like the account number?

Telephones sometimes work, and computers, if there is power, struggle under dial-up access to the internet, and a few have a very slow broadband connection, but all these activities are reportedly monitored by Mugabe scum… although I don’t believe that.

It is everything and more - akin to the stories we read when I was quite a bit younger from behind the iron curtain.

This is the 21st century for Pete’s sake! When is the international community going to actually do something progressive - something that will actually result in some good coming to the wonderful people of Zimbabwe - instead of sitting on their hands and moaning about things that matter not in the grand scheme of things?

I hang my head in shame…

At least I try to do something by writing my thoughts on the internet! More than many of the leaders of some Western democracies have done…

Rant over.

Take care.

‘debvhu

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Police in Mutare and Rusape stopped the MDC ‘freedom’ marches, in which the opposition is demanding a new constitution and free and fair elections. On Thursday police chiefs in Mutare issued a prohibition order barring the party from marching. That same day the MDC filed a court challenge which was only heard the next day on Friday. A magistrate ruled that protesters could not march into the city centre but should move to a venue outside town where their leaders could address them. Protesters gathered at the Beit Hall in Sakubva Township with the intention of marching through the city centre on their way to Meikles Park. But police blocked the procession into town and MDC MP Giles Mutsekwa later addressed supporters at the Beit Hall.

The march in Rusape and another one pencilled in for Makoni Central did not happen, as a result of the last minute cancellation by police. Speaking to Newsreel party spokesman for Manicaland Pishai Muchauraya said the decision by the magistrate to side with the police was political. Only last week Wednesday a similar march planned for Harare by the MDC was brutally disrupted by police who beat up and tear-gassed protesters. A judge in Harare then ruled that protesters could not move through the city centre but should head for the Glamis stadium outside the town centre. The judgements all seem to be designed to dilute planned protests into mere rallies, where leaders can only address their supporters.

Police had earlier on granted permission for the marches in Mutare and Rusape and are obviously playing a game with the opposition. Under new amendments to security laws published in January the police are required to produce affidavits as evidence, if they should decide to ban a meeting for any reason. This has not happened in Mutare where again the police have only said they received intelligence the marches would be disrupted and turn violent. Asked if the MDC remained confident of winning a free and fair election under these conditions Muchauraya said it was clear the election would be rigged.

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Friends of Simon Mann, the Old Etonian former SAS officer who was jailed for his part in a failed African coup, last night urged him to betray the financiers behind the plot after he was deported to Equatorial Guinea. Mann is believed to be in the notorious Black Beach jail in Equatorial Guinea’s capital, Malabo, where he is expected to face a show trial for plotting a coup against Teodoro Obiang Nguema, dictator of the oil-rich state. Mann was deported after completing a four-year sentence at Chikurubi jail in Zimbabwe, where the coup plot was discovered. He was arrested along with 67 mainly South African mercenaries in a Boeing as they waited to collect weapons for their mission. One close friend and former business partner said the Equatorial Guinea government had indicated that it was prepared to do a deal to free Mann if he confessed to his role and gave a detailed account of what had been planned and who had supported it.

He said Mann no longer owed his backers any allegiance and he hoped he would now give the Equatorial Guineans what they wanted. “I don’t understand why he’s been holding out,” he said. “If it can buy him his freedom, why not? It’s not as if they’ve stood by him. He has a child he has never seen. He has a son he last saw when he was four and who misses him terribly.” If convicted in Equatorial Guinea he faces a minimum 30-year jail term. Last night the Equatorial Guinea government’s lawyer in the case, Paris-based Henry Page, said: “If he cooperates he could expect to be treated better than if he does not.” The affair became known as “the wonga coup” after Mann smuggled a note to friends urging them to contact the plot’s backers and persuade them to pay a large “splodge of wonga” to get him out of jail. They included Lady Thatcher’s son Mark, who later pleaded guilty in South Africa to helping to finance the plot.

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Anna Chagaro three months ago bought a loaf of bread for 300,000 Zimbabwe dollars - a sum that today would be a bargain in this landlocked nation in southeast Africa. After a three-hour wait at her neighbourhood store, the office worker paid 1.7 million for a loaf but, like most people, does not believe official estimates released Friday that put inflation at 24,470 percent. People living here know it is far, far worse. Independent estimates put real inflation closer to 150,000 percent in Zimbabwe’s worst economic crisis since independence in 1980. “Ah, they lie. Prices are going through the roof every day and everyone knows it,” Chagaro said. If she spent her entire monthly income of 40 million Zimbabwe dollars at the dominant black market exchange rate, about $10, she could buy a pound of pork and a small pack of onions.

Like thousands of others, it will be bread for Chagaro. “We can’t afford that,” she said. “The prices are unbearable. We’ll make do with what we’ve got.” Scarce corn meal has risen 20 fold in the past year. About $6 buys a month’s supply on the black market for a small family. Official inflation numbers are based on prices fixed by the government. Those prices are rarely observed. When thousands of business managers and store owners were arrested last year for failing to adhere to artificial government pricing, basic goods disappeared. The last official inflation figure, released in early October by the state central statistical office, was 8,000 percent. The government then suspended monthly updates because there were not enough goods in barren shops to calculate the cost of a regular basket of goods.

Reserve Bank governor Gideon Gono called independent inflation calculations “distorted and imprecise wild guesses” that hurt the nation’s credibility. He said the official figures reflected “actual information.” Ordinary Zimbabweans do their own calculations using supermarket receipts. The price for two pounds of chicken rose more than 236,000 percent over the past year, to 15 million Zimbabwe dollars, or about $3; eggs rose by 153,000 percent; and bread by at least 100,000 percent. One of the most modest increases, of about 64,000 percent, was for sugar, bringing independent estimates for overall food inflation to about 164,000 percent. School fees increased last month by 600 percent, and the price of scarce gasoline trebled in the past week. Rent is astronomical. Regardless of who is counting, inflation in Zimbabwe is the highest in the world.

“How do we cope? We don’t. It’s terrible,” Chagaro said. “If we have a meal a day we are lucky.” That meal usually consists of the corn meal staple with a vegetable sauce. Acknowledging nationwide hardship, bank governor Gono said that, with immediate effect, individuals and companies will be allowed to write cheques of up to 10 billion Zimbabwe dollars. The previous limit was 500 million. Gono appealed to his countrymen to exercise economic patriotism and help end daily power and water outages, food shortages, multiple exchange rates, interest rates and “rampant corruption, indiscipline and mistrust across the board.” The 2010 World Cup soccer tournament begins in 2010 in neighbouring South Africa, a nation suffering its own spate of rolling power outages. “As a country we cannot afford the world to congregate in southern Africa with our economy being an eyesore” in the region and in the whole of Africa, he said.

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Most of us here in Zimbabwe live in, or on the verge of, bitter poverty. We strive to exist on worthless wages, and the little we do earn we can’t spend because there’s nothing in the shops. Each day is a crisis. We struggle to survive - and some of us don’t succeed.

But there are exceptions. There are those who don’t struggle. There are still some Zimbabweans who glide over our potholes in Mercedes comfort, who live in elegant homes tended by armies of servants, who feed themselves from well-stocked freezers, and who comfort themselves in times of stress by reciting the numbers of their Swiss bank accounts.

They are the Zim Mafia. They are members of a special clique - all of them politicians and officials from our ruling ZANU PF party - who take advantage of their positions of power to rake in millions of US dollars.

Follow the money in Zimbabwe, and you find the guilty men. I’ve spent the last three months following the money. Here is my far-from-comprehensive run-down on the graft, corruption, double-dealing and sheer theft that is the mark of our rulers…

The Sweet Smell of Success

Ever wondered why there’s so little sugar in our shops when we still make so much? Step forward Vice President Joyce Mujuru and Minister of Policy Implementation Webster Shamu. Under their guidance, Scania truck-loads of sugar daily leave the premises of Starafricacorporation en route for Malawi. Some 150,000 tons of sugar exit Zimbabwe that way every week, passing through the Nyamapanda border post with Mozambique, on their way to Malawi.

My source at the border told me: “Those trucks are untouchable. We know not to stop them.” So the trucks roll out and the money rolls in. And it ends in the pockets - or the handbags - of Joyce and Webster. A sweet little scam, safely operated by the very people who are supposed to look after our interests. Thank you, Ministers both.

Where Have All the Flowers Gone?

The answer to that question is, Malaysia, thanks to the good offices of our old friend, Governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, Gideon Gono. Gideon doesn’t like it to be known that he has a valuable farm in Mazowe, east of Harare, from where he quietly ships out flowers to Malaysia, earning an estimated US$3m a week - an incredible figure, but apparently accurate.

Of course, Gideon, as our top banker, is better known for his skill in money management, both on the official markets and the unofficial. He has been known to manipulate the bank rate to his own and other ministers’ advantage.

This week he issued three well-known foreign currency dealers with $Z20 trillion to buy foreign exchange on the black market, which will be used to purchase Nissan 4×4 vehicles for use by ZANU PF, and only ZANU PF, in the elections next year. Follow this trail, and it leads us to…

The Man at the Wheel

His name is Moses Chingwena, and he is the owner of a car dealership known as Croco Motors. Moses has close ties with ZANU PF, and for some reason that won’t escape any of us, he always wins the tenders to supply government vehicles. Moses is another with more than one string to his bow. His company is a major player in the illicit trade of Marange diamonds, currently being obtained from a mine seized illegally from African Consolidated Resources.

And before we move on from Moses we should mention his close associate Mirirai Chiremba, who makes up an unholy trio with Moses and Gideon Gono. Mirirai buys gold from illegal gold-panners, through a company called Carslone, formed by the RBZ for exactly that purpose. He also acts as a front for Gono’s currency deals, and is the man who actually goes out onto the streets to distribute bags of cash to dealers.

Oranges and Lemons

Last year our grandly named Deputy Minister of Information and Publicity, Bright Matonga, did something he’d rather not distribute any information or publicity about. He invaded an orange farm in Chegutu, 100 kilometres from Harare, called Chigwell, and owned by a white farmer called Beatie. Today those oranges are regularly exported by Bright to Zambia, along with tons of fertiliser - and then both products are imported back into Zimbabwe by the government. Bright takes a slice of the action in both directions of course.

He is also in an unholy partnership with another expansively named minister, the Deputy Minister of Youth Development and Employment Creation, Savior Kasukuwere. Savior owns several fuel stations in the name of his company Comoil, and together he and Bright sell fuel on the black market. And by the way, Savior has a younger brother…

Brothers in Arms

…and that brother is Stan Kasukuwere, a member of Mugabe’s secret police, who must be a favourite of RBZ governor Gideon Gono - we keep coming back to Gideon - because Gideon has just given him the contract to distribute 3,000 tractors and 5,000 ox-drawn ploughs throughout the country. I say “given” but one suspects a certain amount of money changed hands along with the contract. Stan is also in the black market fuel business, and another of his little wheezes is to buy cars from Singapore, and supply them to top government men, somehow escaping payment of any duty.

Cementing a Friendship

Cement is probably the world’s most boring commodity, but in Zimbabwe it can be as good as gold, and twice as valuable. Step forward please, Vice President Joseph Msika and former Army top man and politburo member Vitalis Zvinavashe. Cement is now only available here on the black market, but Joseph and Vitalis top up their incomes by selling it, together with milk, to Botswana and Zambia. As a result they’ve earned so much that they have bought several houses in the best of our suburbs, and now control a large part of the property business.

But cement pays best, and they are currently major suppliers of cement for Operation Garikai, which is the re-building of homes for those dispossessed in Mugabe’s brutal slum clearance scheme known as Operation Murambatsvina. Also big in that particular business is our old friend Joyce Mujuru, with whom, you will remember, we began.

Diamonds Are for Ever

While I mentioned above that Moses Chingwena dabbles in diamonds, the real big names in this highly dodgy trade are two more ZANU PF politicians, the Minister of Interactive Affairs, Chen Chimutengwende, and the MP Christopher Chigumba. This charming pair are believed to have robbed Zimbabwe of millions of US dollars by trading illicitly in the Marange diamonds in Manicaland, in the eastern part of Zimbabwe.

The Gold Rush

Political rivals they may be, but when it comes to the subject of gold, they are brothers in arms. I’m talking about retired General Solomon Mujuru, husband of Joyce, see above, and presidential hopeful and political strongman Emmerson Mnangagwa.

Emmerson is said to possess more gold than Gideon’s Reserve Bank. He controls the gold-rich Kwekwe area, while he shares the spoils with Solomon in Kadoma and other gold producing areas. Solomon Mujuru, who leads the only opposition to Mugabe within ZANU PF, is also big in diamonds. He is a shareholder in River Ranch Mine, a Beitbridge diamond mine which he took at gunpoint from the owners, Adele and Mike Farquhars. The Farquhars are fighting back legally, but not getting very far. And no wonder - the Attorney General, Sobusa Gula-Ndebele, is a close relative of Mujuru.

And so it goes. What I’ve presented here is doubtless only a small part of the tangled web of corruption, chicanery and graft as practised by our leaders. I’ve probably only scratched the surface. If you can add to our knowledge of the Zim Mafia, we need to hear from you. One day, perhaps in the not-so-distant future, there will be a reckoning; a day when we confront Mugabe and his assorted crooks, and make them an offer they can’t refuse.

(Source: Received by email from a fellow African Crisis columnist. For some reason, I think this was written by a John Winter, but once I receive confirmation, I will endeavour to place a link in the posting… RE)

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