Throughout mankind’s history, the most effective means of justifying an ideology has been by offering its fair distribution amongst those promised to realise it!
In theology, Biblical Scriptures such as Galatians 3:8 speak: “And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, in thee shall all nations be blessed.”
Fast forward to 19th century nation-building, ideology such as the “American dream” found popular traction on the belief that as long as an individual became American, equal opportunity for success would be dispersed.
Now, it is suggested by some that the formation of the European Union is one of humankind’s greater achievements in the present era of modernity.
From its inception, the EU has been hailed for creating a socio-economic union that ideally functions to disperse fair potential for economic prosperity and civic harmony.
Yes, the aesthetics look good. The legislative framework in theory is sound. The representative composition, while skewed, is somewhat balanced in a manner cognisant of relative economic stature. Thus, impartial observation could accept the ideology of a European Union to be a universal light for all it promised to include.
However, a couple of decades in, the EU is crumbling.
It is particularly the imbalanced realisation of its founding ideology that has caused strife for many constituents, leaving them with a growing resentment and animosity towards union.
These imbalances exist at many levels. At the macro-economic level, the currency union has proven more beneficial to the industrial might of Germany, which has enjoyed an undervalued currency, giving it years of trade surplus.
Countries of lesser industrial prowess, but remaining members of the currency union face persistent trade deficits and resultantly lowering internal demand.
This sequence ends with stifled wage growth and stagnant living standards for these marginalised countries in the EU. At the socio-economic level, disparities became more pronounced during what I call the “austerities” —the years in which austerity was the mainstream fad.
At the insistence of a handful of creditor nations, Greek citizens dependent on state welfare, for instance, remain subjected to cuts in social spending and pensions over debt obligations that account for less than 1 percent of the EU’s annual GDP.
This is cruelly at a time the ECB is offering the rest of Europe “helicopter money” through its quantitative easing on social spending and pensions.
At the civic level, since the inception of the EU, Europe has never seemed more stratified along ethnic, religious, and nationalist lines!
While diversity was meant to be the emblem of union, marginalisation has become the eventual reality.
The growing popularity of far right political parties across the continent, consideration of succession from the union by member nations, and anxiety of violence are all reflective of a disintegrating ideology.
These occurrences have a sharp resemblance across the Atlantic where it is dawning to some that the aforementioned “American dream” is reserved from an ever shrinking minority, which now owns as much as the bottom 99 percent of citizens. Western ideology is losing its credibility.
It has never been more fragile in recent decades.
What we can learn from Europe and the United States is that to protect an ideology, governance must sanctify its fair distribution to those promised to realise it!
In Zimbabwe, sincere and socially aware politicians will acknowledge the imbalanced realisation of our ideology of empowerment and socio-economic transformation.
As our country matures, we are meant to be bonded by the ideology of equal opportunity as indigenous Zimbabweans to attain economic empowerment.
As such, governance must always evaluate how well it does in sanctifying this ideology.
Three years into Zim-Asset, the ideology has not yet struck an unquestioned impact on the majority. Instead, our ideology is increasingly vulnerable to perceptions that it only benefits a minority.
For instance, in many sectors of the economy, patronage and insider affiliations still resemble enclosed opportunities for prosperity. Since 2013, unfolding corporate scandals tell a tale of an economy that has been abused by structures of cronyism and preferential positioning.
This has diminished faith that cherished attributes like competence, creativity, and professional acumen can be enough to empower Zimbabweans to one day influence major corporations in our economy.
Also, while many indigenous Zimbabweans were given access to land, very few have been availed effective opportunity to meet the capital intensive livelihood that came with it!
The banking sector has stuttered to embrace small-scale indigenous farmers, and it has found convenient excuse in a minority which has had access to loans rampantly abusing such facilities.
Every so often, revelations occur that favoured individuals had access to loans running into millions of dollars, much of which defaulted; hence banks justify skepticism towards lending to the majority.
Moreover, whilst land was given to A1 farmers, Government is yet to follow through on creating structures that enhance the likelihood that small-scale farmers supersede subsistence and become prosperous agricultural producers.
Such structures include guaranteed markets, production infrastructure, and agricultural interest groups that specifically look out for the economic outcomes of otherwise business illiterate small-scale farmers.
A pillar of our ideology has been the notion that natural resources shall be exploited for the benefit of all Zimbabweans. Perhaps premature to pass conclusive opinion, but the unaccountability of up to US$15 billion from diamond revenue assumes lax vigilance to uphold this promise!
Coupled with our responsiveness, or lack thereof, towards the cancer of corruption has yet to convince the majority that fair and equal benefit from our ideology will be vigilantly protected.
We live in an age where humankind has become increasingly interrogative of ideological validity. Yet, it is at our stage of nation-building that we must be held together by ideology.
Lessons abound in the disintegration of Western ideology playing right in our very eyes.
A similar threat is not too distant in Zimbabwe.
We must make it a priority that the realisation of our ideology of empowerment and socio-economic transformation remains a fair opportunity to all.
When I joined the City of Harare in the early 1980s, Council had seven administrative departments, all co-ordinated centrally by the late Advocate Edward Kanengoni who was the first black town clerk.
Adv Kanengoni had had a stint with one of the boroughs (local authority districts) in London (UK), and was then reporting, answerable and accountable to the first black-dominated council.
Town House was and remains akin to the board of directors in private entities/State enterprises/statutory bodies, though under the ambit of the Urban Councils Act.
This elected board of directors is supposed to be led by a non-executive chair (or non-executive mayor as they are called) in the case of urban councils.
The town clerk then comes in as the most senior professional person or technocrat to serve, guide and implement resolutions of elected politicians (councillors).
In other jurisdictions, for instance the United States, the town clerk is referred to as the city manager, CEO or MD.
Therefore, the town clerk of a big city is much like the group CEO or group MD.
When I joined local government, the City of Harare had four main committees that exercised oversight on the six functional departments of council.
Ad hoc or formal sub-committees were also constituted – where necessary – to assist committees in addressing urgent and specific issues.
In my view, this made for a functional and robust set-up.
The main committees of council were finance, health, housing and social services, town planning and works and general purposes.
In a number of instances, the committe chairs deliberated on important matters and were regarded as the “executive” committee, with powers and responsibilities just below those of the full council itself.
The top technocrat, the town clerk, co-ordinated the operational activities of the six departmental heads as well as his own. For most intents and purposes, the town clerk was regarded as the “first among equals” in the city’s top management structure.
The city was basically administrated along racial lines at the time.
The affluent – predominately whites only suburbs (low-density) – were to the north and east of the city, and the black townships (high-density) were to the west and south.
Other minorities found themselves mainly accommodated in medium-density housing sections dotted in between.
Municipal services and facilities in whites only suburbs were of First World standards, funded by rates, high service charges and generous grants from central Government, among other revenue sources.
Conversly, the same services and facilities in black suburbs were generally of low standards, funded in the main by beer sales from the numerous outlets built in townships.
It was with the realisation of this clearly iniquitous situation that the first black-dominated council adopted the “One City Concept” – a serious attempt to serve all of Harare’s residents fairly.
Our overall budget was comparable to the national budgets of Botswana and Malawi at the time. In fact, Malawi’s was lower.
When I joined the City of Harare, I had already qualified as a chartered accountant, and went on to become the first black city treasurer, having also qualified as a certified public accountant.
The city health department was headed by a still practicing medical practitioner, Dr Lovemore Mbengeranwa.
Other department heads, who unfortunately are now all late, were Engineer Tongai Mahachi (works), Dr Muvengwa Mukarati (general manager city marketing ) and Mr Alban Musekiwa (housing and community services).
We had all replaced experienced staff that had joined the exodus of whites at Independence, save for Dr Timothy Stamps, the previous medical officer.
He continued to serve council well as a councillor and then alderman before joining central Government.
The few remaining blacks in the top echelons had relatively short work experience, generally gained at relatively low levels of the hierarchy.
Massive changes have taken place in council since I left their employ to rejoin the private sector.
The number of council departments has increased to about 12.
Coupled with increased committees, the organisational structure has become wieldy and top heavy, thereby compromising efficiency.
The mayor’s position became executive at some point, and this had potential to create duplication of functions and conflict with those of an executive town clerk.
Service provision and facilities, like in other cities and towns, have deteriorated remarkably.
For instance, we now have the worst road network that we have had in the past four, if not five, decades – poorly maintained and littered with potholes. Garbage collection has become erratic. Water provision is now most unsatisfactory. Street lights have become a luxury; there is serious need to get solar-powered lights.
Numerous unplanned, illegal structures have also sprouted citywide, and vendors and “pirate” taxis are now a menace.
Further, corruption by both councillors and the so-called professional staff continues to be reported, while the by-laws we once held as sacrosanct are now treated with disdain, ignored completely or wantonly violated.
The calibre of councillors and their intellectual capacity leave a lot to be desired.
There is urgent need for corrective measures.
For starters, the City’s vision, “World Class City Status by 2030 (or is it 2025)”, needs to be harmonised with running national programmes like Zim-Asset.
It is both naïve and foolhardy, in my view, to run a developmental programme, moreso that of a capital city, without linking it with the national programme of action.
Zim-Asset, Sadc’s Industrialisation Strategy, the African Union’s Agenda 2063 and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals all basically speak to the same socio-economic issues.
At Independence, we suffered serious shortages of professional white staff that joined the exodus to South Africa and Western nations. Later, black professionals were to follow the beaten track following Zimbabwe’s land reforms, which triggered Western sanctions that have ravaged the economy.
However, the situation is slowly changing for the better.
We should thus take advantage of returning professionals who may have gained useful experience abroad.
Given such a background, my pick of an ideal candidate to fill the position of town clerk should be one with the following attributes:
(1) A strategist with original and innovative ideas, thought diversity, clarity of mind, energetic and displays high competency levels, a game-changer with good communication skills (oral and written);
(2) An accountable team leader with a clear and clean conscience; whose integrity is beyond reproach. He/she must have strong interpersonal, analytical and professional ethical credentials, must be knowledgeable and respect good corporate governance principles;
(3) A respected and trusted character. Such respect is normally earned over time and does not come up naturally or spontaneously. He/she should, therefore, develop good strategic relationships with key stakeholders in Government, parastatals, other local authorities and the private sector;
(4) Remarkable professional and academic qualifications. The long-standing practice in Harare has been to appoint someone with a strong legal background. However, post-Independence experience is that some of our best town clerks (they are few, I might add) did not have such backgrounds;
(5) ICT and financial literacy are, in my view, prerequisites and indispensable; and
(6) The Town Clerk, just like everyone else, has a constitutional entitlement to belong to a political party of his/her choice. During his/her tenure, however, they should remain apolitical;
Such a town clerk needs the support and co-operation of a council that is equipped with the necessary skills mix and credentials in business, academia, law, engineering, town planning, finance and health, among others.
He/she should also be supported by a mayor with sufficient intellectual capacity, substance and zeal, and desirous of leaving an everlasting legacy.
Edmore A.M Ndudzo is the first black City Treasurer of Harare
In an August 2010 analysis, Imara Asset Management Zimbabwe’s Mr John Legat compared our consumerism and economic activity with Zambia.
Mr Legat said Zambia’s two largest breweries sold US$230 million worth of beverages in 2009, compared to US$324 million by Delta Beverages alone in Zimbabwe.
At that time, he forecast Zimbabwe’s largest mobile phone service provider, Econet, to reach sales of about US$500 million by year-end, in comparison to Zain which expected Zambians to spend about US$280 million on their services.
Mr Legat said Zimbabweans spent about U$1,1 billion on fast food from the Innscor chain, Colcom (meat products), National Foods and Spar.
Granted, currency issues and a horrible pricing model in Zimbabwe could be the reason why we spend more money on fast foods and booze than our Zambian brothers and sisters. But there is no denying that the figures also point to a consumerist culture that present economic output simply cannot afford.
We report in The Sunday Mail this week that Zimbabweans spend over US$500 million on prepaid cellular phone airtime yearly via 12,4 million registered cellphone lines.
South Africa — whose population is nearly four times bigger than Zimbabwe’s — spends about US$600 million on airtime annually. Zambia has around 11 million cellphone users and they spend about US$430 million every year. Last year, we imported cars worth more than US$500 million. At the same time we exported goods and services worth just US$3,4 billion against imports of US$6,3 billion representing a trade deficit of US$2,9 billion. For 2016, the projection is exports will rise to US$3,7 billion while imports will fall to US$6,2 billion. This is a slight improvement on the deficit to US$2,5 billion — but surely we can do better. We love spending and are lukewarm on production. And the money leaks like water running through a sieve. Consider the frightening statistics presented a few weeks ago by Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe Governor Dr John Mangudya.
Dr Mangudya said last year, individuals externalised US$684 million as donations, investments and bank account transfers. He also told us that companies externalised US$1,2 billion in 2015 as export sales proceeds and highly inflated management, technical and performance fees. We are bleeding our economy, spending lavishly on airtime, chicken and chips and booze, as well as shipping out billions on cars and as illicit financial flows to offshore accounts. Let’s also consider this: we have more than 60 ministers and deputy ministers for a population of some 14 million people.
These all require cars, which are imported even as local assemblers cry out for investment. Our good friends in China, that country of 1,4 billion people — which is 100 times our population — are governed by a State Council that has less than 40 members. We have 80 senators and 350 House of Assembly representatives for our 14 million people. (And we haven’t started the provincial councils yet.) They too want cars —but not the types produced by Willowvale Mazda Motor Industries and friends. The inescapable conclusion is that we have a very poor attitude towards money. Which is why we periodically get stories of the Cuthbert Dube variety, tales of pension funds being loaned out to lovers of NSSA bosses, and US$11 million insider loans at places like NetOne.
As we splurge US dollars as if we print them, we are also appealing for US$1,6 billion to feed the nation!
We should take a leaf from South Korea. As South Korea faced an economic crisis, BBC News on January 14, 1998 reported: “South Korea has exported the first shipment of 300kg of gold collected in a public campaign to help the country out of its economic crisis.
“The nationwide campaign … began on January 5, and involved ordinary Koreans donating personal gold treasures, which have been melted down into ingots ready for sale on the international markets …
“It’s an extraordinary sight: South Koreans queuing for hours to donate their best-loved treasures in a gesture of support for their beleaguered economy. Housewives gave up their wedding rings; athletes donated medals and trophies; many gave away gold ‘luck’ keys, a traditional present on the opening of a new business or a 60th birthday. The campaign has exceeded the organisers’ expectations, with people from all walks of life rallying around in a spirit of self-sacrifice. According to the organisers ten tonnes of gold were collected in the first two days of the campaign.
“But perhaps the most extraordinary aspect of the campaign is not the sums involved, but the willingness of the Korean people to make personal sacrifices to help save their economy.”
Will we ever see such commitment to Zimbabwe’s economy by Zimbabweans? Or shall we continue yapping unproductively on imported cellphones as we drive imported cars while sipping imported whiskey as we head to a fast food outlet?
By now, we are all aware that new political entrant Zimbabwe People First (ZPF) party is full of apologists in its top echelons.
They have apologised for everything.
They apologised for being part of Zanu PF, claiming they were unwilling members. They apologised to victims of political violence and abductions which they themselves allegedly masterminded. They apologised for the economic demise which again was their brainchild.
That has been their shameless campaign manifesto – apologise and the people will vote for you. It is that simplistic and they expect to do epic things with such a basic mindset.
As for the ZPF ideology, well, that one is a total order. Even its leader, the disgraced former Vice President is dismally failing to articulate what the party stands for. At every attempt it is as if she wants to sell ice to Eskimos.
In an interview with a South African radio station recently, Dr Joice Mujuru burdened the programme with unbelievable stutter and stammer that is unconventional of a recent PhD graduate, clearly exposing her newly-founded party’s survival chances to the likelihood of an ice ball’s existence in hell.
The anti-climax of ZPF is its leadership’s failure to explain their party’s ideology without sounding like the MDC. The more they painstakingly try to do so, the more constipated their ideology sounds.
The result is that it betrays itself as an ideology that is way too shallow for a party that was launched as “tsunami” at a colonial five-star hotel built by the loot of hundreds of thousands of plundered cattle from Matabeleland.
From the leadership’s failure to be original about what their party stands for, everything else became topsy-turvy. They have the tendency of trying to imitate President Mugabe who has always talked of the people being the most important component of the party. Then they are always battling to remember what Morgan Tsvangirai has been taught by his Western backers about working with the “international community” or Britain and America if you like. These are often intertwined into the clumsy ideology of ZPF.
The higgity-piddity manner of this failure to articulate clear polices reminds us of what their own protégé Didymus Mutasa once warned while quoting Mark Twain that “it is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.”
Anyone, anyone at all, who ever doubted that Dr Mujuru is a very dangerous entrant to the opposition politics of this country should rewind and review the arrogance and misplaced self-importance with which she responded to questions from listeners who phoned into the South African radio programme.
Almost all the callers asked her to first apologise for bringing the country to its current quagmire but instead, she tried to shift the blame to President Mugabe and condescendingly dwelled on thanking the South African government for taking Zimbabwe’s economic refugees.
In summary, most callers wanted her to apologise, in her personal capacity, for the role that she has played in the current predicament of this country. Instead of answering plainly, she scornfully said she had since apologised in a statement and she would republish it for those that missed it to see that she was “sorry”.
The short and long of it is that ZPF suffers from a public relations disasters of monumental propositions, especially when its leadership is put on air. The pathetic handlers of ZPF leadership just hang them out there to dry and every voter worth half a grain of salt would never elect such a parched rags into the office of a mere village head.
For all intents and purposes, under the leadership of Dr Mujuru, ZPF will continue to be a hard sell that alienates the electorate because it is as off-putting as it is disgusting.
What is worse is that Dr Mujuru still speaks as if she is in power. The tone of her rhetoric is overloaded with a severe and acute identity crisis. She speaks as if she is still Vice President of Zimbabwe and second secretary of the ruling party Zanu PF.
She is of the erroneous belief that since she once held these powerful appointed positions, she can commandeer the entire nation to vote for her at the snap of her fingers and the region will sympathise with her while the international community will fund her.
Clearly, those who hold her hand have selfishly omitted advising her that she is on her own now and that big Zanu PF tent which used to protect her even though she bungled with mind-boggling propensity, is no longer there. She has to find her own material to build her tent otherwise she will soon perish because of exposure to the unforgiving political environment ridden with a brutal and sceptical electorate out there.
Her attack of a single centre of power within a political party such as Zanu PF will also do her more harm than good. Of all people, having been in Government for 34 years, Dr Mujuru should have known that before ZPF, there have been several opposition political parties and their opposition has always been to the centre of power. When the Unity Accord was signed in 1988, both Zanu PF and PF Zapu had realised that more than one centre of power in African politics is not only fatal but retrogressive.
Unfortunately, the Unity Accord and its centralism of power was immediately destabilised within a year by the formation of a short-lived political outfit called the Zimbabwe Unity Movement (ZUM), led by the late prodigal Cde Edgar Tekere who at first was violently opposed to the idea of one centre of power but years later warmed up to the idea after a forgettable spat in the political wilderness.
There have been several outfits and cabals such as Enock Dumbutshena’s Forum Party, Shakespeare Maya’s National Alliance for Good Governance, Daniel Shumba’s United People’s Party, Egypt Dzinemunhenzva’s African National Party, Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change, Job Sikhala’s Movement for Democratic Change 99, Welshman Ncube’s Movement for Democratic Change, Tendai Biti’s People’s Democratic Party, Elton Mangoma’s Renewal Democrats of Zimbabwe, Simbarashe Makoni’s Mavambo, just to mention a few. And now we have Dr Mujuru’s Zimbabwe People First.
Just like the other parties, they were all formed because of greed, pride, egotism, power-hunger, selfishness and ironically, for a quest of their very own centre of power. Some are now defunct, some irrelevant, some inconsequential and that is the same fate that will befall Dr Mujuru.
Without a doubt, ZPF will survive for as long as Humpty Dumpty survived. They do not know how they have scaled a political wall and will soon have a great fall such that all the pawns on their political chessboard will not know how to put their eggy party back together again.
THE sad story of war veterans, the vanguards of the country’s liberation struggle, has been with us for quite some time now.
I have decided to chew the bullet ahead of their meeting with President Mugabe on April 7, 2016. There is some truth that these comrades should be told, it’s high time.
You see, these comrades have been letting people confuse their niceness for a weakness for too long and now some people are really taking them for granted. Vamwe kusvika pakutovarova and using canisters – the ones that were used by the Smith regime to terrorize them during the colonial days.
The New International Version of the Holy Book in Proverbs 1vs 22 asks: “How long will you who are simple love your simple ways? How long will mockers delight in mockery and fools hate knowledge?”
How long will the war veterans continue playing the nice guys? How long will they allow those who mock them to continue and how long will they allow fools to continue hating knowledge?
Don’t get me wrong dear reader, I am not trying to incite war veterans to turn violent or anything of that sort. No.
My beef with the war veterans is that for far too long, they have let pretenders lead their association and these pretenders are now soiling the good name of the Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans’ Association.
Just look at how Jabulani Sibanda is messing up things for the war veterans. Just look at how Christopher Mutsvangwa has been conducting himself. And don’t laugh at this because it’s not a laughing matter, just look at how Mandiitawepi Chimene, of all the people, is messing up things for the war veterans. There are quite a few other carton characters who have been making noise in the name of the war veterans.
Again, don’t get me wrong dear reader, I am not saying these comrades are not war veterans but the truth is that when we talk about commanders from the liberation struggle, these little boys and girls are your pre-school class monitors.
Where are the trainers of these comrades who are busy making noise? The ones who gave birth to the liberation struggle.
The ones who got real political orientation straight from the Chinese instructors who spoke about chairman Mao’s rich ideology. Not some of these pretenders who got political orientation through song and dance.
I am talking of the pioneers at Mgagao, I am talking of those who went for military training in Nanking province in China, not pretenders who crossed into Mozambique and never saw action at the war front.
I am talking of the Group of 45 that went for military training in Ghana in 1964, not pretenders who crossed into Mozambique after it had become fashionable to join the struggle.
I am talking of the first group of female combatants that crossed into Zambia around 1973. The group that stopped going for their menstrual cycles after carrying heavy weapons on countless trips of more than 50 km to the Zambezi River from inland Zambia, not pretenders who followed their boyfriends to Mozambique because they had been made pregnant at the war front.
I am talking about the instructors and the commanders who joined the liberation struggle in its infancy who know the importance of respecting their commanders. I am talking about all the senior commanders at the different levels, who know the importance of respecting ranks and hierarchy.
I am not talking about pretenders who think just because they crossed into Mozambique after dozing themselves with Marxism, they are special.
Where are these veterans of the war veterans?
No names for now, but the war veterans know what I am talking about. Why are these veterans letting small boys and small girls appear as if they are the ones who executed the war?
Now see what the small boys and small girls are doing to both the liberation struggle and the war veterans themselves? Kuita mahumbwe chaiwo!
After attending a high-powered meeting that was also attended by several Government ministers together with Zimbabwe Defence Forces Commander Dr Constantine Chiwenga, Air Force of Zimbabwe Commander, Air Marshal Perrance Shiri, Zimbabwe National Army Commander Lieutenant-General Philip Valerio Sibanda and Commissioner-General of Police Dr Augustine Chihuri, Central Intelligence Organisation Deputy Director-General Aaron Daniel Tonde Nhepera and Zimbabwe Prisons and Correctional Services Deputy Commissioner-General Fadzai Mupfure who represented their bosses Retired Major-Generals Paradzai Zimondi and Happyton Bonyongwe respectively, poor Chimene thought she could play a fast one.
She sent one George Mlala to some press conference where he said war veterans were not happy that the association’s national chairperson Christopher Mutsvangwa had attended the meeting in preparation for the big meeting with President Mugabe.
By the way, this Chimene had been told by the High Court that she should stop masquerading as the interim chairperson of the war veterans after claiming to have passed a vote of no confidence in Cde Mutsvangwa.
Reports say Chimene vowed that she would defy the court ruling. Ndiko kudhakwa kwacho nepower here uku or this is just some reckless woman amplifying another man’s tomfoolery?
Well, Bishop Lazarus says maybe we should not blame Chimene. Let’s blame the veterans of the war veterans who are letting twanana tuchimhanya mudziva nemoto.
Isaiah 32 vs 6 says: “Fools speak foolishness and make evil plans.” Are we not watching as fools speak foolishness and make evil plans?
From tomorrow, its exactly 10 days to April 7 when war veterans are supposed to meet President Mugabe. Who exactly is the President going to meet, pretenders or the real owners of the liberation struggle?
Reports say the April 7 meeting will strictly be by invite, who exactly is going to be invited? How will pretenders be separated from the real owners of the struggle? How about the gate-crashers?
Some will try to play it clever and say, Bishop, the people are the real owners of the struggle and I say if that’s the case, then its case closed because on July 31, 2013; the people of Zimbabwe met their commander and showed how happy they were with him.
BORN in Damba (now Mhangura) in 1940, Cde John Makwasha whose Chimurenga name was Cde Bayayi Mabhunu joined politics during the early 1960s during the days of the National Democratic Party after listening to powerful speeches by people like Michel and Nelson Mawema.
In 1963, he joined Zanu, becoming the party’s secretary for youth in Sinoa (now Chinhoyi) and went on to work full time in the party office after finishing Standard Six.
He worked at the party office from December 1963 until 23 August 1964 when he was terrorised by a black CID Rhodesian officer called Chimanga who he says now owns a farm around the Mazvikadei area.
In this interview with our team comprising Munyaradzi Huni and Tendai Manzvanzvike, Cde Makwasha talks about his journey going for military training in Ghana after getting assistance from the late Vice President Muzenda, how the Rhodesian Special Branch smuggled one of its spies into their group in Ghana and for the first time reveals that one of the Zanu leaders actually sold them out to the colonial regime. Read on …
Cde Makwasha (right) speaks to Sunday Mail deputy editor Munyaradzi Huni during the interview recently
***
SM: Comrade Makwasha, let’s pick up your story while you were working in the Zanu office in Sinoa. Narrate to us your journey from there.
Cde Makwasha: I worked at the Zanu offices from December 1963 to August 23 1964. People coming from Zambia would first stop at our offices to hear how the situation was in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) and because of that, I was harassed by the CID. There was a CID guy called Chimanga, now he has a farm in Mazvikadei, uuuhhh munhu anga ane hutsinye iyeye. He was ruthless, but interestingly after independence he became a member of our CID.
This was the provincial office – people from all over including areas such as Zvimba, Guruve and so on would come to buy party cards here.
During this time, Zanu split from Zapu. Zapu had been banned so it was now operating as People’s Caretaker Council (PCC). So competition for members was quite stiff during this time.
Fortunately for us, when Zanu was formed, we had what we called Zanu line up in the office. So for people to join the party, they would ask who were among the leaders.
People would ask mainly kuti ko VaChitepo vari kupi, ko vaMugabe vari kupi toti vari kwedu wainzwa munhu oti ndipei card kuno ndiko kwandiri kuda.
The Zanu line up comprised the chairman Ndabaningi Sithole, secretary general vaMugabe, then Muzenda, Morton Malianga, Washington Malianga, Michel Mawema, Eddison Zvobgo, Eddison Sithole, vaChitepo and others.
During this time, people in the urban areas understood politics more than the people in the rural areas because of the several rallies that were held. During these days the rallies were really well attended.
Also during these days, Zanu and PCC supporters would clash frequently and the party had to arrange that I walk around with bodyguards because of my role as youth secretary and my job in the party office. One of my bodyguards was David Guzuzu, one of the Seven Comrades who perished at the famous Chinhoyi Battle in 1966. Guzuzu was my sekuru.
SM: Why clashing with PCC?
Cde Makwasha: PCC was saying matora vanhu vedu and as Zanu we were seen as rebels. The clashes were very violent during those days.
SM: From Zanu offices in Chinhoyi, how then did you go for military training?
Cde Makwasha: On 23 August 1964, Zanu was to be banned the next day. I wasn’t aware that the party was to be banned. I went home and I was staying close to Bridgette Mugabe’s house, about three houses from her house. She would frequently visit me at the Zanu offices and we would talk about politics.
So in the evening of 23 August 1964, vaMuzenda came kumba kwaBridgette and asked her where I was staying.
Someone was sent to call me and I went to Bridgette’s house together with David Guzuzu. We were aware that the party was now moving from platform politics and sending comrades for military training in preparation for armed struggle.
VaMuzenda told us that the party was to be banned and chances were that we were going to be arrested. He asked us kuti do you want to remain here and be arrested or you go for military training. We agreed to go for military training.
As I made the decision to go for military training, my thinking was, kana ndadzoka pane varungu vaiti shungurudza so ndaida kudzoka nepfuti ndichivarakasha.
So that evening, I told my sister nemukuwasha vandaigara navo kuti tava kuenda. VaMuzenda drove us to Harare that night. We were taken kumba kwaSabina Mugabe.
SM: Describe what kind of a person was vaMuzenda during these days?
Cde Makwasha: He was a very straightforward person who was determined to free his country. Very soft-spoken but full of wisdom. He was also very brave.
We spent a whole week kumba kwaSabina tichibuda panze husiku chete. After a week, vaMuzenda came back and gave us some money. He said you are now going outside the country for military training. Around 5am, he took us to the airport. During this time, Federation yanga isati yanyatso pazika, so we didn’t need a visa or to book a plane. We got to the airport and bought tickets 5 pounds to fly to Malawi, Blantyre using Central African Airways (CAA).
In Blantyre, the Zanu representative Mawere was waiting for us. He took us to his house in Soche high density suburb.
There were other comrades who were already there at this time. We were told that some comrades would join us coming from Zambia. After about two weeks, several other comrades came and we were told that our tickets to Ghana had been sorted. We flew to Tanzania using East African Airways. We were about 15 comrades.
SM: Do you still remember the names of the other comrades who joined you as you flew to Tanzania?
Cde Makwasha: Yes. Sekuru Guzuzu was still there. Others who joined us the ones I can still remember are Christopher Sakala, Lainos Mukaro, Shadreck Rambanepasi, Watson Chihota, Shame Zvikaramba, Stephen Musungwa Zvinavashe (big brother to the late General Zvinavashe) Wisdom Chimanga, Cephas Musakasa, Gilbert Majiri, Emmanuel Masanga, Kenneth Chisango, John Changa, Exavier Virukai and Titus Chakavanga.
We got to Tanzania and stayed for two weeks. There were other comrades in Tanzania, who included Rugare Gumbo. We later discovered that hatisi tose tiri parwendo rumwe chete. Vamwe vakanga vaine rwendo rwekuti vari kuenda kuchikoro.
SM: How come others were going to school while others were going for military training?
Cde Makwasha: There was no clear policy. There were comrades who had relatives outside the country, vakuru vakuru. So these comrades vaiti vakasvika like kuTanzania, their relatives vakuru vakuru vaivarambidza kuti aiwa usaende kuhondo enda kuchikoro.
Others who went to school at that time include people like Salatiel Hamadziripi, Rugare Gumbo who told us point blank kuti imi musina kudzidza, ndimi muri kuenda kunodzidza zvepfuti. Kana matora nyika, isusu tiri kuenda kuchikoro touya tokutongai.
SM: Did he say that, did this happen or you are saying this because of current politics? We need to be very clear here, these interviews are never supposed to be influenced by current politics. We want to record the correct history here.
Cde Makwasha: Zvandiri kutaura izvi, kana mukabvunza vamwe vandaiva navo, ndakanga ndisiri ndega, zvinhu zvakazoita tide kurwa. Some comrades had to be removed from this big house where we were staying. There were two gangs now – vaye vari kunzi vari kuenda kuchikoro and vaiva vashoma and isusu taienda kuhondo. Zvine chokwadi, kwete kuti ipolitics dzanhasi.
Kana dai akamira apa nhasi, I will tell him kuti this is what you said. And Rugare Gumbo anga asinganzi Rugare, ainzi Alex Gumbo. Takatozoziva nyika yasununguka kuti anonzi Rugare.
Before leaving for Ghana, we were screened again. We were told that in Ghana we were not going to be trained as regular army. We were told that our training would be on guerrilla warfare. We were going to be taught how to manufacture and operate explosives.
So this required someone ane kachikoro. Minimum requirement was Standard Six. This is how I got separated from sekuru wangu David Guzuzu. He had standard 3. He was sent kuchikoro chema refugees kuti vawedzere chikoro.
Takawonekana zvakanaka but sevanhu who were close, tumisodzi twakabuda. Takavimbisana kuti tichasangana kana vambodzidza because we thought vachazotevera kwataienda kuGhana.
In September 1964, we got to Ghana. We were welcomed by the Zanu representative in Ghana at that time, Stanley Parirewa. We were taken to a province called Kumasi which borders Ghana with Ivory Coast. There were comrades from other east and west African countries. There were also some comrades from South Africa.
SM: You spoke about regular and guerrilla warfare – what’s the difference?
Cde Makwasha: Regular army is taught drills, that is marching, left and right turn and so on. From there you go for training kuranch where you are taught how to shoot. From there you are taught resistance. The main focus of the training in regular is that when you meet the enemy, you don’t run away. You fight till you have run out of ammunition.
On the other hand, guerrilla warfare, is being taught hit and run tactics. You hit your enemy where the enemy is weakest and preserve yourself. The main idea is to destroy the enemy and preserve yourself.
So our training was in guerrilla warfare and because of this only the cream of youths were recruited during these early days. After training, we were supposed to come back and destroy the infrastructure of the Rhodesian system so that the colonial government would be forced to sit down and talk about independence.
The thinking during these early days was that vanhu vakaita kana 100 nyika taikwanisa kuitora. And I am sure if the comrades who went for this training succeeded in their missions, the colonial regime was going to be forced to talk.
We were supposed to cause maximum damage targeting bridges, electricity pylons, service stations, fuel tanks, farm houses and so on.
SM: So when you got to Kumasi in Ghana what happened?
Cde Makwasha: We were mixed with recruits from these other countries I told you about and our training was the same. So in the beginning, we were taught regular warfare – how to march, how to strip and assemble a gun. The training was going on well, until one day when one of our comrades discovered that the area we were staying yakanga ine makurwe aya ekudya. So we went with our plates tikabata makurwe akawanda. We came back ndokubika makurwe aya. Now we were using the same kitchen with comrades from West Africa and to them makurwe chinhu chinosemesa. Uummm, when they discovered we had used the same pots to cook makurwe aya, pakaita hondo chaiyo. We clashed big time like we almost shot each other as they were saying mabikira mapoto zvinhu zvisingadyiwe.
We tried to explain, but it didn’t work. These comrades from West Africa vaiendawo kunobata hozhwa vachibika and we protest kuti isu hatidye this. So after these clashes, we started using separate kitchens.
SM: You said you were also taught politics. What exactly were you being taught?
Cde Makwasha: We were taught politics about courage and how to mobilise masses. We were taught how to conduct ourselves before the masses and we were taught how to explain to the masses who the enemy was and why? And also explaining what a free Zimbabwe would mean for the general populace.
SM: So how was your day like during training?
Cde Makwasha: We would wake up and go for jogging. The trainers would decide the kilometres, like 20 km. After jogging, we would go bathing then eat breakfast. From there we went for parade around past nine where there was an inspection to see how smart we were.
After this we would follow that day’s programme, let’s say if it was drills, we would go marching for about an hour then go jogging again for kilometres. We would come back and be taught hide and escape tactics, especially crawling. From there we would go kuranch to learn how to shoot and aim. Our main instructor was called Archempong from Ghana. He was a veteran from the Second World War. When we arrived from Zimbabwe, we were about 20 but more and more comrades came from home.
Our training went for three months at Kumasi and this camp we were at was called Half Asini. After these three months, we were moved to another camp still in Kumasi province, but now away from the border with Ivory Coast. At this new camp, that’s when we got instructors from China who taught us real guerrilla warfare – how to manufacture bombs and so on.
SM: So after training, where did you go?
Cde Makwasha: About two months before we finished our training, the last person to arrive was a guy called Simon Bhene. When he arrived, akaratidza kungwara kusingaite. Aida kuita shamwari nemunhu wese who was at training and we started having questions kuti haaa, this guy dzakati kwesere here? You can’t get to a place woita close to everyone? That’s very suspicious.
People like Shadreck Chipanga who had earlier joined us at Half Asini knew about Bhene and they knew him as someone who was involved in politics at lower level. So while we got suspicious, we never thought Bhene had been sent by the Rhodesian Special Branch.
We later discovered that Bhene had a spy camera that was like a matchbox that he was using to take pictures during training.
SM: How had Bhene been recruited to come this far?
Cde Makwasha: Our recruiting system was very weak in terms of security during these early days. Bhene came all the way to Accra in Ghana alone and the party representative, Parirewa and Simpson Mutambanengwe brought him to this training camp. I think they didn’t know he was on a spying mission.
On our way back, we stopped in Kenya and Bhene disappeared at the airport. He had his own ticket and we later learnt that he had boarded Air Rhodesia. We asked Bernard Chidzero who had come to see us at the airport in Kenya why they had let Bhene board Air Rhodesia, but no one gave us a satisfactory response.
From Nairobi we flew to Dar es Salaam in Tanzania and we were welcomed by Augustine Mombeshora. After two days, we got into a bus and we were driven to Mbeya. Mbeya is in Tanzania but close to the Zambian border. Here our representative was comrade Chihota. We stayed at Mbeya for about a month.
While at Mbeya, that was the last time and place I saw Sekeru vangu Guzuzu. While waiting to go back to Rhodesia, we met anaGuzuzu as they were preparing to go to Cuba for training, but I didn’t have the opportunity to talk to him. Security arrangements didn’t allow that. I just saw him and in no time they were moved away from the house where we were staying.
SM: Now from Mbeya, take us through what happened leading to your deployment into Rhodesia?
Cde Makwasha: Before being deployed, we were put into groups and allocated provinces in Rhodesia where we were supposed to go and operate. We were told that we were to meet some contacts in Rhodesia who were supposed to assist us.
I was made commander of the group that was going to Fort Victoria (now Masvingo). My group was called Hyena Group and it included comrades like Shadreck Rambanepasi, Wisdom Chimanga, Watson Chihota, Christopher Sakala, Langton Kufa Banda and John Changa.
We were taken to the Zambian border with Tanzania, at Tunduma by Noel Mukono. We were given some money to spend at Tunduma as we were waiting to cross into Zambia in the evening. We later crossed into Zambia but we were arrested because we had used an illegal point to enter into Zambia. The Zambian Special Branch said why can’t your leaders talk to our leaders so that we know exactly who you are. We were taken back to Tunduma border post and we got into a bus back to Mbeya. When we got there, we told Mukono what had happened and they agreed that they had indeed made a mistake.
We then went back to Dar es Salaam by bus. I am talking about my group here. Other groups, I don’t know what happened.
In Dar es Salaam, we were taken to the railways by Henry Hamadziripi and we were put in goods train like parcels. While hiding in the goods train, we crossed into Zambia and then Rhodesia via Mutare all the way to Salisbury (now Harare).
When we got into Salisbury, we gave each other one week to see our relatives. After this, we would re-group and continue our journey to Fort Victoria to meet our contact. This contact was supposed to give us money to buy chemicals to manufacture explosives.
I went to Kadoma to see my big brother who the next day organised a job for me because he didn’t know what I was up to. On the day we were supposed to re-group with my comrades in Fort Victoria, I told my brother that I was sick. After he had gone to work, I got into a train to Gwelo (now Gweru) then took another train to Fort Victoria.
In English there is something called premonition. Kakungonzwa kuti something is wrong somewhere and something is going to happen. When we got to Lalapanzi, I looked outside the window and saw lots of soldiers milling around. I then ignored thinking they were looking for something else.
The train stopped and the soldiers gave instruction that no one in the train should make any move. I discovered that some of the people in the train were actually soldiers in plain clothes as they started giving orders to the passengers. Still I ignored all this.
While seated, who did I see? I see Bhene coming straight to me. He said, “Hesi John!”
In no time, I was arrested and was put under leg irons. I was completely confused. Some people actually said, “Saka tanga takagara negandanga?”
Bhene actually said to me, “Mwana wamai ndizvo zvazvinoita.” I was too tongue-tied to say anything.
The white soldiers called me all sorts of names from terrorist to communist as they took me away. I was driven in a police car with an escort back to Gweru. I was thrown into Gweru prison. The next day, I was taken to a prison at Selous and up to this time, no one had said anything to me. This was in May 1965.
I was in the cell alone and the next day, police came and just pushed another person into the cell. I later discovered it was Langton Kufa Banda.
When he saw me, he said, “Shef Simon Bhene zvaandiita!” I told him my story also. We actually laughed.
Two days later, some CID officers vainzi vana Beans and Mugnus came to take us to Salisbury. These two CID officers were Scotland trained and their speciality was interrogation.
In Salisbury, that’s when I discovered that all the comrades in my group had been arrested and everyone was saying Bhene was to blame. What was even more suspicious was that it seemed as if someone outside the country, in Tanzania, had given him the list of who was going where. Takanongwa sehuku dzawira mumvura.
SM: How did you feel, a fellow black man doing this to you?
Cde Makwasha: It really affected us, but we said this should not break our spirits. What we later discovered is that it wasn’t Bhene only. Zvaiva nema senior mukati. We looked at how he came for training, how he refused to give his ticket to the leader of our group and vakuru vakamurega achikwira Air Rhodesia in Kenya. It was all planned.
SM: When you say you think it was planned with the blessings of some seniors, who are these seniors?
Cde Makwasha: I won’t mention names, but the leadership that was outside the country Noel Mukono, Henry Hamadziripi and John Mataure, they are the ones who knew all our movements.
SM: Are you saying between these three someone sold you out?
Cde Makwasha: My biggest suspect was Henry Hamadziripi.
SM: Why him?
Cde Makwasha: He was a weak person politically. Akanga aine ka tribalism. That’s why he took his relatives from amongst us, like Rugare Gumbo, and send them to school while we went for military training.
I wasn’t surprised that when he died he wasn’t made even a provincial hero. Senior leaders in Zanu knew all this. We told them and they later discovered many other things. Some people didn’t believe that one day we would be independent.
Next week, Cde Makwasha will continue his story narrating the torture in prison, how some of his fellow comrades turned against the struggle while in prison and his time in prison with the now Vice President Mnangagwa. This is not the story for the faint-hearted. Get a copy of The Sunday Mail next week.
One can understand John Robertson’s disgruntled rantings against indigenisation at whatever opportune platform he is afforded.
His tantrums arise from the pain of indigenous remedy to the historically privileged, discriminatory and exclusive foreign and non-indigenous capital from which Robertson and his kin have long suckled.
Robertson we can get, really, because he reacts naturally to a fading legacy of racial economic privilege.
His nature must be to rabidly attack any expression of indigenous aspirations, whether in the form of land reform or indigenisation and economic empowerment.
What baffles reason and must be of serious concern to our national interest is when indigenous Zimbabweans and so-called economists and industrialists suddenly think the enforcement of the Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Act (Chapter 14:33) is sudden and shocking.
This is in spite of a whole eight years of the Act being known to investors and non-indigenous businesses.
So-called experts like VaCallisto Jokonya now want to tell us the enforcement of indigenisation is a sudden and emotional exercise by a Government that waited a whole five years to allow businesses to come forward and comply.
It is a very sober Government that now enforces its laws, Sir.
Then there is Chris Mugaga, the chief executive officer of the Zimbabwe National Chamber of Commerce, who says that there must be negotiation, forgetting to take responsibility for ZNCC’s failure to advise its members to engage and negotiate compliance during the 2010-15 window period that the law allowed before it decided to enforce its contemptuously ignored provisions.
This is the same ZNCC which Youth, Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Minister Patrick Zhuwao took time to meet with on four occasions over the past six months.
The minister explained the law and engaged ZNCC on compliance.
He went further to invite ZNCC and the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries to submit their views and recommendations on how best their members could comply.
ZNCC has not submitted such a paper, neither has CZI.
Mugaga now goes on national television to tell Zimbabweans that enforcement of indigenisation laws amounts to “kung fu economics”.
He acts shocked when the law must now be enforced, eight years into its existence, and even arrogantly insinuates to businesses not to comply as, in his opinion, Government does not have the capacity to enforce the law.
These so-called representatives of business and industry continue to collect membership fees and other donations; to do what, really?
Any member with business sense will see that they are being taken for a ride and misinformed by institutions pursing an activist agenda that has nothing to do with ensuring members comply with the law in an amicable manner.
The irony of these indigenous turncoats’ crusade against indigenisation is that they are oblivious to the reality on the ground, that non-indigenous businesses have been frantically submitting their plans.
The National Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Board has been inundated with businesses that have paid heed to the law.
The narrative of the past few days has gone on to allude that Government’s enforcement of the indigenisation law somehow undermines President Mugabe’s engagement with foreign investors as he recently did in Japan.
Do they insinuate that President Mugabe goes back on his principled position that stubbornness by businesses must end come 2016?
Something is wrong, seriously wrong here.
If we cannot see it as a people, then certainly this generation may well not deserve the coming total independence.
Let such a lost generation be purged in its self-imposed wilderness so that a new and more enlightened generation rises to claim our birthright zvisina nhetemwa.
What is more, grown men with all their so-called expertise secretly covet imminent benefits of indigenisation.
Like thieves in the night, they try to acquire such benefits, whispering complaints of how their private business aspirations are being hampered by the unfair advantage of non-indigenous business interests.
They are conflicted double agents.
On the one hand, they secretly express anger over a long-standing and racially-designed foreign economic advantage that continues to erode their aspirations at indigenous enterprise.
Conversly, the same “experts” still want to earn a quick buck and live in the here-and-now by earning consultancy fees and per-diems for speaking publicly in favour of their foreign bosses and clientele.
They will advocate foreign and non-indigenous capital to build their CVs.
One only needs to observe indigenous CEOs and managing directors who have been allowed to sit at boardroom tables as caretakers of non-indigenous capital.
For eight years, they have sat at those tables, telling the master that indigenisation will come to nothing.
What now when the law bares its teeth and comes to bite?
Their dilemma is whether to close or not to.
Shall they comply or opt to lose salaries and perks by advising against compliance?
To be indigenous or not to be indigenous?
That is the question.
I’m reminded of South Africa’s iconic anti-apartheid hero, Steve Biko, who said, “Being black is not a matter of pigmentation but a reflection of the mind.”
Rangu Nyamurundira is a lawyer and indigenisation and economic empowerment consultant. His views are his own, and do not reflect or represent the views of any institution with which he is associated.
Equality is one thing we have to discuss in our motherland. Equality, whither equality?
I remember when I was taking my first-year classes at college we were taught about a concept called Pareto optimality. It’s one thing that still sticks at the back of my mind.
You all folks know that I hate to be academic.
But let’s just dissect Pareto optimality a bit as this concept is of particular interest to me.
This concept talks about a state of allocation of resources in which it is impossible to make any one individual better off without making at least one individual worse off.
Italian economist and engineer Vilfredo Pareto propounded the concept in his studies of economic efficiency and income distribution.
In the Bible, l heard about the ideal scenario of Pareto optimality.
Those who have been to Acts 2 verses 44 and 45 have read that, “Now all who believed were together, and had all things in common, and sold their possessions and goods, and divided them among all, as anyone had need.”
And nowhere else have I heard about this happening.
Out of interest sake, you may want to ask whether this won’t work in the Republic, given how not less than 80 percent of us are said to be Christians.
But the interesting irony is that the majority of billionaires in the world are actually Christians.
Would it not be good, folks, if, for instance, Bill Gates were to equally share his US$75 billion with the entire province of Bulawayo, with a population of 653 337?
Each person would get a cool US$114 795.
And guess what would happen if all the13,1 million people who are millionaires in the world were to find some village to do the same trick?
Even in the science discipline, they have that process called osmosis where particles move from a region of higher concentration to a region of lower concentration.
That ought to be extrapolated in the economic context of our Republic.
Yes, a strict practise of this will only encourage laziness.
Who doesn’t want to be paid for doing nothing?
But there are justifiable scenarios in our economy where we ought to really zoom in on and come up with solutions.
Folks, while initiatives like the land reform programme and indigenisation seek to redress the inequality anomaly that has existed since pre-independence times, there are flaws that call for equality measures to ensure that Pareto’s parity is attained.
Section 56 (6) of our Constitution tells us that the State must take reasonable legislative and other measures to promote equality and to protect or advance people or classes of people who have been disadvantaged by unfair discrimination.
One of the means to attain that is by enforcing Section 298 (d) which says that public funds must be expended transparently, prudently, economically and effectively.
The situation I see in the country is just sickening.
I remember overhearing someone boasting that he had over a thousand hectares of land on which he was growing weeds.
This is prime land that he is just sitting on.
And elsewhere, we have energetic but idle youths.
All they are praying for is a small piece of land; hectare imwe chete zvayo to do a bit of market gardening and sustain their livelihoods.
Then you tell me that we don’t need Pareto here!
Folks, I don’t remember how many times I have quoted the 2014 Finscope Consumer Survey Report.
I don’t hesitate to quote it again.
So, it has told us that 76 percent of the adult population earns US$200 per month or less; a figure that includes 7 percent who do not have an income at all.
It further says that 60 percent have gone without income and have to make a plan for daily needs.
This is up from 51 percent in 2011.
Then the Poverty and Poverty Datum Analysis in Zimbabwe, conducted by the Zimbabwe Statistics Agency in 2012 also established appalling dynamics that point to the fact that we have been registering positive growth rates, ruthless growth — so to speak.
If you still think that I am just babbling, then wait until you hear how our inequality levels are absurd.
The same Zimstat study established that our Gini co-efficient in 2012 was “within the range of countries considered to be highly unequal” and that the majority of the population is living in poverty.
The Gini co-efficient indicates the level at which income is equally or unequally distributed throughout a population.
At 0,423; Zimstat said our Gini co-efficient shows “relative inequality in well-being”.
A Gini co-efficient of one is an indication of complete income inequality, with one person having all the income, while a Gini co-efficient of zero is indicative of complete equality, with everybody earning an equal income.
In light of the above, it is my humble view that we really need to rethink our status quo and come up with measures that ensure something for everyone.
On the pages of The Sunday Mail this week we carry several stories concerning the country’s indigenisation programme with particular emphasis on the March 31 deadline for foreign-owned firms to submit proposals on how they expect to comply with the law.
As a starting point, we report that around 1 000 of 1 200 companies have complied with this stage of implementation of the programme.
We must commend them for moving to work within the laws of the land inasmuch as we must question the other 200 who for whatever reason remain in defiance of a Constitutional Act of Parliament and a standing Statutory Instrument.
We also carry no less than four opinion articles from various contributors making it clear that the law must remain sacrosanct, that Government must not waiver in implementing it, that no one should think themselves about it.
All very true. And we shall continue to call for spirit-and-letter implementation of the law. There can be no sacred cows when it comes to respecting the rule of law.
At the same time, we should all remain cognisant of a simple fact: laws are made for people, people are not made for laws.
It is only Moses and Hammurabi who cast the law in stone. Laws can be and should be changed to suit the economic, social and political aspirations of a society, which is why Southern Rhodesia’s constitution was discarded for the Lancaster document, and that in turn — after some 19 amendments — was also thrown out for the 2013 national charter.
Laws can and should be amended to reflect changing thinking and awareness of new realities. Which is why our Acts of Parliament have been steadily chipping away at outmoded patriarchal constructs that treated grandmothers as minors.
Laws can be refined as a response to the practicalities of implementing them so that they are more progressive and better able to achieve their original objectives.
Which is why the indigenisation regulations have been tweaked before to ensure Zimbabweans derive better value from their resources.
Hence, what we are advocating for here is a refinement.
The Indigenisation law and its regulations were not written by the finger of God on two tablets of stone a la Moses on Mt Sinai. Neither were they etched onto a seven-and-half foot pillar by Babylon’s King Hammurabi.
Are we saying the law and regulations should be changed so that foreign companies continue to live off the fat of our land while our people struggle? Lord forbid!
As we stated on this very same page on March 20, 2016, what we need to do is to indigenise companies — not shut them down.
The spirit of the indigenisation policy is self-evident: it is to create a new economy in which indigenous Zimbabweans, ie those historically marginalised by race-based policies, are the majority drivers of said new economy. How does shutting down a company advance that cause? Are we saying we can merely shrink the cake so that we have a bigger piece of a smaller economy?
That surely cannot reflect the spirit of economic transformation that indigenisation entails.
Zimbabwe cannot have a national economic programme premised on banning, outlawing, demolishing and shutting down.
What we need to see are mechanisms for indigenisation of foreign-owned companies that either fail or refuse to comply with the law and regulations.
Zimbabwe’s policymakers should be seized with structuring innovative and sustainable models that ensure all non-compliant companies are indigenised and continue to provide employment, goods and services.
We cannot create 2,2 million jobs by shutting down companies. We cannot transform the economy by shutting down companies. We cannot grow the tax base by shutting down companies. We cannot attract significant and genuine foreign investment by shutting down companies.
These companies must be indigenised. There has been a suggestion that the directors and owners of companies that refuse to comply with the regulations will be pursued so that their assets are attached and the proceeds go to former workers.
Yes, there should be a consequence for wilful defiance of the law. But after we seize and sell assets and give ex-workers some cash, then what?
Not everyone is an entrepreneur so a lot of this money will simply go to consumption and then run out. These people will still need jobs.
What we need is a broad, far reaching and visionary response to non-compliant companies that ensures jobs are not lost and goods and services continue being provided. We repeat, indigenise these companies, period!
Sven Mary, the Belgian attorney representing Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam, has a nickname: avocat des crapules. Translation: “villain’s lawyer”.
On Thursday, his current client formally agreed to be extradited to France to face more questioning — all in a day’s work for an attorney who regularly defends alleged jihadi recruiters and accomplices of pedophiles, clients many would consider the worst of the worst.
Defence lawyers like Mary face challenges most attorneys never experience, including heightened attention from the media and criticism for acting as an advocate for someone accused of heinous crimes.
“Everybody hates you,” says Ron Kuby, who defended Omar Abdel-Rahman, the “blind sheikh” convicted of plotting to bomb New York City landmarks.
“Your family is pissed off at you. The women in your life think you’re an asshole for representing these people. The government is out to get you. It’s not fun.”
Mary is the lead attorney defending Abdeslam, who was arrested this month in connection with November’s Paris attacks that killed 130 people. His March 18 arrest may have even put in motion the bombings last week in Brussels that killed dozens and injured more than 300 people.
Prior to defending Abdeslam, Mary’s most prominent clients included Fouad Belkacem, a spokesperson for Sharia4Belgium, a radical Salafist group, and Michel Lelievre, who was involved in a sex-slave ring involving young women. Belkacem was sentenced to 12 years in prison; Lelievre was sentenced to 25.
Mary is just one of many lawyers who return time and again to defend the seemingly indefensible. Judy Clarke is perhaps the most famous, having helped defend Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, Tucson mass shooter Jared Lee Loughner and Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
Neither Mary nor Clarke could be reached for comment, but lawyers with experience defending clients like Abdeslam say it requires a mental leap to overcome the near-universal presumption of guilt for the defendant.
“You have to put behind the idea that everyone wants this person convicted,” says Chris Tritico, a Houston attorney who defended Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.
“Our job is to protect this person’s right to a fair trial and to defend him to the best of our ability.”
John Henry Browne, who defended serial killer Ted Bundy, says if he were defending Abdeslam, he would argue that he was brainwashed and didn’t have the ability to form criminal intent. “I think that’s the only thing the defense lawyer could do,” Browne said.
While it’s uncertain what Mary’s legal strategy will be, he has made clear that he takes on clients like Abdeslam so they’re able to stand up to what he often sees as governmental abuses of power. Before defending Abdeslam, Mary had publicly said he would take him on as a client if asked. “If someone is described as public enemy number one, I want to fight that abuse of authority,” Mary told the Belgian edition of Metro.
That’s a desire shared by many lawyers who have defended similar clients. “When the government is after genuine bad guys, it tends to overreach, which creates precedents of diminutions of civil rights,” Kuby says, adding that he often takes on cases where he feels there are overzealous prosecutions.
Most lawyers who defend individuals like Abdeslam say they’re often not trying to argue that their client had nothing to do with the crimes to which they’re accused; instead, they’re just trying to ensure they receive a fair trial.
“You don’t justify the act,” Tritico says. “We didn’t go in and say that McVeigh was justified in killing 168 people. But there are other ways to mitigate the case. The system works when everyone gets a fair trial, including the people that we hate.”
And Mary himself has said as much. He told French newspaper L’Express that he wouldn’t have defended Abdeslam if he had said he had nothing to do with the Paris attacks. “That would bore me and I wouldn’t defend him,” he said. – TIME.
The greatest misconception in the global economy today is that business and politics must be separated.
Unfortunately, this separation often finds intellectual obedience in countries where the alignment of enterprise and political ideology is needed the most.
The last couple of months have offered intriguing case studies within this context in the United Sates.
As the American fiscal year draws to a close on April 15, heated argument in US Congress centred on the topic of corporate inversions; US companies threatening to change their domicile due to dissatisfaction with a comparatively unfavourable tax regime.
Simultaneously, the popular Apple brand of consumer electronics had been at odds with the military branch of the US government over unlocking an identified iPhone used in a terrorist assault.
Apple argued that its corporate practice of privacy protection did not allow for the company to offer the military access into what was a private consumer device.
All these instances raised an often overlooked question of whether there is such a thing as corporate patriotism.
While all these cases ended in different ways as directed by their respective fundamental issues, what came out to be universal in all resolutions was that at the moment of enterprise versus political ideology, the US shines as an example of a bonded nation where enterprise and politics converge through corporate patriotism.
Corporate patriotism is not an element monopolised by the US; many developed nations along with successful emerging nations have benefited by steering their economies on the strength of corporate patriotism.
For developing nations, particularly in South America and Africa, the two continents with the highest poverty rates and lowest indigenous economic influence, corporate patriotism is overshadowed by the intellectual misguidance that business and politics should not converge.
Last Friday was the deadline for compliance with the Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Act.
My chosen perspective was to use this day to evaluate the extent to which foreign-owned enterprise would show their corporate patriotism to Zimbabwe.
I was disappointed.
Regrettably, my disappointment was not in foreign-owned companies as much as it was in fellow indigenous Zimbabweans who seemed to have missed our very own interest in assessing to what extent foreign companies pledge allegiance, not to our country, but to the socio-economic ideals that we stand for in Zimbabwe!
Perhaps this is due to a misinterpretation of what the IEE Act aims to achieve on our part.
The Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Act is an instrument of socio-economic direction.
Governments do not allocate the distribution of capital in an economy (even their budgets are secondary).
They can only influence where capital goes through incentives and appeasing enterprise impulses.
Governments do not necessarily give people jobs or assimilate people into economic value chains.
They can only influence how work is to be done and how enterprises perceive the value contribution of other economic agents.
The most common instruments through which governments do this is through fiscal and monetary policy.
Cognisant of Zimbabwe’s present limitations in both policy instruments, astute economic observers would find greater utility in the IEE law.
This is why simply placing emphasis on the equity ownership element of the IEE Act, especially without looking at specific sectors, misses the point of the law!
The IEE Act is an instrument that works to direct capital towards otherwise excluded economic agents.
For instance, the 2016 Monetary Policy Statement avails indigenisation credits to banks that invest in sectors with marginalised citizens, especially small-scale agricultural producers.
Contrary to superficial notions that indigenisation and economic empowerment are bad for the economy, indigenisation credits for financial inclusion are a significantly more effective means of fixing our liquidity shortfall than the exhaustive search for FDI.
If more than 70 percent of our labour force is in agriculture, and more than half of it is financially excluded, how are we surprised that we have shrinking formal liquidity in the economy?
If more than 80 percent of our economy lives on less than US$400 a month, can we not comprehend that thousands of small-scale farmers sitting on assets that potentially produce US$80 000 a month are the main cause for the depressed aggregate demand in our economy?
Similar dynamics are working in the mining sector where value chains and corporate profits could do more to be inclusive of indigenous economic agents.
Opponents of indigenisation and economic empowerment fail to admit that liquidity shortfalls are being exacerbated by purposefully excluded indigenous economic agents from production value chains such as agriculture and mining.
I have chosen to direct my disappointment to indigenous economic agents — ourselves — because we have allowed polarised narratives and a few rotten apples that have abused the IEE Act to cloud and influence our perception of the law’s intent.
Yet we stand the greatest benefit by its proper and most effective implementation — all this without pressing on the predominant equity context.
Ultimately, compliance with the IEE Act is a measure of corporate patriotism because while, concededly, most Zimbabweans do not have capital to invest in equity, foreign companies have been offered accommodative time to structure their operations in a manner that satisfies our socio-economic ideals of empowerment and socio-economic transformation.
Moreover, they have been offered incentives to do so through credits and rebates!
Yet, all along, up to eight years now, they did not submit or go through with indigenisation implementation plans of which they have been given full discretion to design by Government!
The question then should not be whether Government is being business friendly or not.
It has been.
The question Zimbabweans should be asking is whether foreign companies have proven to be socio-economically friendly or not.
The ones that have clearly have nothing to worry about and should be well on their way into implementation plans.
The ones that haven’t, well, maybe shut them down, Honourable Minister!
Over the past two weeks, the education sector has been abuzz with news of the proposed dissolution of the School Development Association system and an audit that revealed that headmasters, bursars and other SDA officials were dipping into development levies.
The Sunday Mail invited Primary and Secondary Education Minister Dr Lazarus Dokora to write on the matter.
Read on as Dr Dokora gives the lowdown on management and auditing of school funds.
Internal auditing
Internal auditing is an independent, objective assurance and consulting activity designed to add value and improve an organisation’s operations.
It helps an organisation accomplish its objectives by bringing a systematic, rule-based approach to evaluate and improve the effectiveness of risk management, internal control, and governance processes.
Internal auditors are different to external auditors because they do not focus only on financial statements or financial risks. Much of their work is looking at reputational, operational or strategic risks.
They provide reasonable assurance that risks are appropriately mitigated. Internal auditors also review systems under development to ensure that good controls are built in, and may offer consultancy services or special reviews at the behest of management. Contrary to the common belief that internal auditors only look for mistakes, it is important to note that they identify potential problem areas and recommend ways of improving risk management, internal controls and governance processes.
In short, internal auditors are charged with monitoring organisational risks and ensuring that the internal controls in place are adequate to mitigate those risks.
They provide management with information about whether risks have been identified, and how well they are being managed.
It must always be borne in mind that the responsibility to manage risk always resides with management.
The school audits that have been conducted by Primary and Secondary Education Ministry auditors since 2015 focused on improving internal management systems.
School Development Plans
These are medium term plans prepared by heads of institutions and their stakeholders, which state the goals, objectives, outputs and outcomes to be achieved within five or one-year periods.
Each school should have a school development plan that must be approved at district level by the District Education Inspector.
This plan is designed to fulfill funding requirements necessary to foster school development as well as provide learners and teachers the requisite teaching and learning materials.
Schools are urged to strictly adhere to SDP guidelines when they have been provided with funding budgeted for on the strength of these SDPs.
SDPs are funded through school services funds, school development committee funds and school improvement grants.
School Services Fund
This is a Fund provided for in the Education Amendment Act (2006) and should be established at all registered schools where all money paid as fees and levies shall be deposited.
This follows that every school should have its own SSF account opened in its name.
School Development Committee Fund
School Development Committees that are properly constituted in terms of the Education Act (2006) as amended are to be established at every learning institution.
The committees shall assist – through their funds – in the operation and development of schools by providing material and financial support generated from own efforts for the benefit of present and future learners.
The SDC Fund is a funding tool for the School Development Plan.
School Improvement Grants
The purpose of the School Improvement Grant is to provide adequate and well-targeted levels of funding to finance schools to cover non-personnel at the school to enable it to meet optimal standards.
SIG is another funding tool in the implementation of SDPs.
Annual financial budgets
Every school is required to formulate a budget at the beginning of the year that outlines the expected cash inflows against the expected expenditure for the ensuing year.
Budgets will enable schools to properly plan their incomes and expenditure patterns, and they also guide the schools on their spending patterns.
The major thrust here is to benefit learners and develop schools in terms of providing conducive learning environments and acquisition of teaching and learning materials.
School financial records/Statements
Financial records must be in place at all schools. It is the responsibility of school heads to ensure that financial records such as cash-books and receipt books are in place so that they are verified by auditors.
These records should be updated regularly in conformity with the Public Finance Management Act.
Further, audited financial statements should be presented at the Annual General Meeting of the respective school.
Before communities rush to elect new committees, they should have the audited financial statements presented.
School information pack
The following financial accounting and administration manuals, Acts and circulars should be available at every learning institution to guide management of school funds:
Education Act Cap. 25:04
School Services Fund/School Development Committee Fund Constitution
Statutory Instrument
Public Finance Management Act Cap. 22:19
Treasury Instruction
Procurement Act
Accounting Officer’s Instructions
Finance and Administration Circular no 6 of 1994.
These instruments are available at every Government information outlet.
Don’t let his flowing hair and Asian looks fool you.
He is like any other Zimbabwean, like the plateau peoples of the Rozvi and descendants of the great Mzilikazi and Lobengula.
Mr Khuram Majid speaks fluent Shona to prove it, too.
Of Pakistani extraction but born in the then Southern Rhodesia, Mr Majid experienced Ian Smith’s fascist oppression alongside indigenes.
He remains a member of the Zimbabwe family and relates how his forebears’ struggles and those of their black compatriots triggered a common objective of chasing colonialists out of the country.
His uncle, Mr Abdul Waheed Khan, became a member of Zapu’s Central Committee at the height of the liberation struggle.
“Our colours might be different, but we are the same as we have shared the pain of colonialism over the years,” he tells The Sunday Mail on the sidelines of the Pakistan Harare Embassy’s 76th National Day anniversary celebrations.
“Now we are sharing the smiles of Independence. I am celebrating 108 years in Zimbabwe; I know everything that needs to be known by a Zimbabwean citizen.
“My father and grandfather are buried at Pioneer Cemetery in Harare. Kuno ndiko kumusha kwedu. Pandinoenda kuPakistan ndinenge ndichishanya (This is our home and Pakistan is only a place I visit now.)”
Mr Majid’s grandfather, Mr Abdul Majid Khan, and his family lived in India and sailed to Africa in 1908, searching for better economic fortunes.
At the time, Southern Africa was the world’s cynosure, being home to vast mineral resources and trade.
Mr Khan settled in Chinhoyi while Mr Majid’s maternal grandfather, Mr Sirdar Mohammed, opted for Chipinge. Three generations of the Majids have lived in Zimbabwe, suffering racial discrimination during colonial times.
“We were marginalised during the colonial era. My father struggled to get a trading licence as we were not allowed to trade freely. Baba vangu vairara mumiti nguva yekuvakwa kweKariba Dam kuitira kuti vatengesere vaivaka zvokudya nezvikupfeka,” says the 44-year-old.
“He had to fight to get a trading licence and as kids, we could not attend the good schools (which were reserved for whites). One could not travel without the requisite pass.
If you didn’t have one, the agents would bash you.”
He goes on: “A fellow Indian man who used to help us with grain deliveries was shot dead by Ian Smith’s agents while on an errand.
The circumstances surrounding the incident were never explained. The oppression shook us, and that is why we felt the need to fight.
“My uncle, Mr Abdul Waheed Khan, participated in the liberation struggle alongside Dr Joshua Nkomo. He lived in Chinhoyi and was at one point incarcerated along with other nationalists. He died last year and was buried at Warren Hills Cemetery in Harare. There were suggestions that he be buried at the National Heroes’ Acre, but our customs require an early burial. So, that did not happen.”
At Independence in 1980, the Majids welcomed the dawn of a new era.
Mr Majid was one of the first non-whites to enrol at St George’s College, a boys high school previously exclusive to whites.
“We are now doing business freely and practising our religion as we wish under the democratic Government of President Robert Mugabe.
“As I mentioned earlier, one could not move about willy-nilly during the liberation struggle, but everyone now drives, walks or cycles wherever and whenever they wish. This is freedom.”
Last week, Cde John Makwasha whose Chimurenga name was Cde Bayayi Mabhunu narrated how he joined politics in Sinoa (Chinhoyi) and later became the Zanu secretary for youth in Sinoa in the early 1960s. He narrated his journey from Sinoa up to Ghana where he together with other 44 comrades became the first recruits from Zanu to receive military training.
He ended his story last week after he had been sold out by a Rhodesian spy, Simon Bhene and was arrested after being deployed into Rhodesia in 1965.
In this interview with our team comprising Munyaradzi Huni and Tendai Manzvanzvike, Cde Makwasha continues his story, narrating the inhuman treatment under the Smith regime, how some comrades turned against the liberation struggle while in prison, his years in prison while working as a tailor together with Vice President Mnangagwa, his three months with President Mugabe and how he almost married a London lady straight from prison.
Cde John Makwasha
Read on . . .
SM: Let’s continue your story Cde Makwasha. After you were arrested, what happened from there?
Cde Makwasha: We were put under remand and the next day we were asked to give statements to the CID. We all had agreed that in all our statements we would say we had gone outside the country to further our education. We did that but the CID were laughing at us saying you can say all this but we have pictures of you undergoing military training. So we all gave the same statement about having gone to school.
After this our case was put before the courts. From June, July, August and September, we were going to the courts. We were known as the group of 28. Initially we were 36.
SM: So how come from 36 you were now 28? What had happened?
Cde Makwasha: Some of us were persuaded to turn against us. They became what was known then as Crown Witnesses, revealing everything that had happened from training until deployment.
SM: Who are some of these comrades who became Crown Witnesses?
Cde Makwasha: There was Mwaraza. He is still alive. The last I heard he was working for POSB. Then Sidney Mutungwazi, Emmanuel Munakamwe, I can’t remember the other comrades. These comrades stood in court and testified against us. There is another comrade who sold us out and the police pretended as if he had escaped from prison – Asani Chimutengwende – now known as Chen Chimutengwende. We later heard that he was now in Nairobi studying journalism. When we gained independence in 1980, he didn’t come back home. I remember I was the chief security officer at the Harare Airport. He came a bit late after the attainment of independence.
I actually greeted him when I saw him kuma arrivals. Akanga ava kunyara-nyara. I even went to tell vaMnangagwa who was kuState Security that he was back. He later went to vaMsika and asked kuti ndiendereiwo kuCentral Committee munondipirawo apology about what I did selling out my fellow comrades during the liberation struggle.
The party said kana takaregerera Smith, why not one of us? That’s how he was forgiven.
SM: As someone who had sold you out, how did you feel when the party decided to forgive him?
Cde Makwasha: Personally, I am a Christian, so I forgave him. But wherever we meet as comrades, we exclude him and he doesn’t question that because he knows what he did.
SM: Tell us of the situation at the courts. How did things go?
Cde Makwasha: We were not asked to defend ourselves individually. We were tried as a group. In court, the police produced pictures of us during training in Ghana. After being shown the pictures we just kept quiet. We had some white lawyers who had been given to us for free but to be honest with you, I don’t think those lawyers had our interests at heart.
We were all given a 10-year prison sentence. After this we were taken to remand prison where we were given uniform for prisoners. The 28 of us, we were staying separately from all the other prisoners who were on remand.
SM: After being sentenced to 10 years, what were you talking about? What was going through your mind?
Cde Makwasha: Among the 28 of us, we would tell each other kuti don’t worry macomrades tinobuda chete. Zvinopera izvi. There was no time to show any fear. Fortunately, many of us went out of Rhodesia as young boys so we didn’t have children or wives to cry about. We would only think of baba namai but we had been away from them for long so we had gotten used to it.
By the way, we were the first group that was arrested after receiving military training. Others were arrested after us. We were the first trained group to be deployed into Rhodesia by Zanu.
After we had been deployed by Zanu and after our arrest, that’s when Zapu followed suit because at the OAU, they were now saying Zanu is already fighting the Smith regime.
So because of this, the Smith regime was afraid of mixing our group with other prisoners. They thought we could train these prisoners and influence them to fight the government. The Smith regime was so afraid of us because they thought we had been trained by the Chinese kunyangarika.
So after three days, we were joined by Cde Mnangagwa (now Vice President) and few other murderers who had been sentenced to either death or life in prison.
SM: Why was Cde Mnangagwa in prison?
Cde Makwasha: He had blown up a train in Fort Victoria (now Masvingo) as part of sabotage activities by the party. He was supposed to be sentenced to death but he was saved by his age. When he committed that crime he was still under 20 so he could not be sentenced to death.
We were later sent with him to Khami Prison where while in prison we worked together as tailors tichisona hembe dzema prisoners. I worked closely with Cde Mnangagwa as tailors in prison for about 10 years.
Cde Mnangagwa served 10 years in prison and he together with his lawyers later discovered that there was a loophole in the law. He was now studying law while in prison. He discovered that if he claimed to be a Zambian, he would be deported.
After 10 years at Khami, he came to Harare where he was detained together with people like vaMugabe (now President). He stayed for some months waiting for his papers to be processed. After this that’s when he was deported to Zambia.
SM: Ok, now after remand prison where you said you spent three days, is that when you were now taken to Khami Prison in Bulawayo?
Cde Makwasha: Yes. We were bundled into a Dakota plane and taken to Khami Prison. This is still in 1965. At Khami we were then put in single cells that were very tiny. No blankets, no nothing. We went for about six months with no clothes, staying naked. Pure naked. Takatanga tichinyara but we later got used to staying naked. The only thing that was in this tiny cell was a chamber pot to relieve yourself. Sadza raiita rekurohwa nebhutsu nepasi pedoor. Kana rikadeukira pasi ndizvozvo.
SM: As you were put under such torturous conditions, what was going through your mind?
Cde Makwasha: One thing that I still tell my friends today is that when God wants to mould you into something, he first burns you in a furnace in order to bring the best out of you.
Do you know that had we not been arrested, we wouldn’t be alive today? Do you know it? I am saying this because many of our fellow comrades went on to die during the liberation struggle. So many things happened and from 1965, most of us would have died. There are very few who joined the liberation struggle from these early 1960s who survived to see an independent Zimbabwe.
As a Christian I say God made me a Joseph. I suffered in prison. It’s ok, but here I am. I have a family and I have a house. I must be grateful to God.
SM: So while at Khami, how were you and Cde Mnangagwa chosen to be tailors?
Cde Makwasha: Most of our clothes as prisoners were torn and tattered. We never got new clothes. After about four years of hard labour, Red Cross visited us and we told them of our living conditions.
While in prison, kasadza kataiwana kainzi spirit diet. Kasadza kekuraramisa mweya chete, just to keep you alive. It was musuva mumwe chete, womwa mvura.
We were given only 15 minutes to go and empty our chambers dzetsvina nekugeza. After cleaning these chambers ndimo mataiisa mvura yekunwa. So you really had to control yourself kuti usangoita tsvina pese pese.
Red Cross complained to the government saying they were ill-treating us as political prisoners. We complained to the Red Cross that we were not allowed time to go out of the cells. We had spent all these years without any exposure to the sun.
When people visited us, they could not tell whether we were whites or coloureds. Takanga takachena kuti mbuu. Waiti if you look closely waiona tsinga ropa richifamba. We had become just too skinny. During these days waiti if by some chance you come into contact with the sun, you would faint because our bodies were not used to exposure to the sun. It was that bad.
When Red Cross came, they found us in this pathetic condition and they went to voice their concern with the government. They told the government that as prisoners of war we had certain rights and one of the rights was access to education, exposure to sunlight and we were supposed to be allowed a certain number of visitors. For the four years, we were not allowed any visitors.
So after this, the regime started loosening up their conditions. That is when they dug this big pit in the middle of the prison yard. We went down this pit using ladders and once inside we were supposed to crush stones kusvika aita kunge jecha.
It was during this time because takanga tava kuswera tiri panze doing hard labour that they started looking for tailors. I opted to be a tailor but I had no idea how to use those big sewing machines.
Cde Mnangagwa vaigona kusona. He actually taught me how to use the sewing machines. Our job rakanga riri rekuisa zvigamba pauniform dzedu.
SM: So while at work with Cde Mnangagwa, what are some of the issues that you spoke about?
Cde Makwasha: We spoke about furthering our education. We started studying. Ukanzwa chirungu chandinotaura now, its not Standard Six English. I got my degree in commerce and accountancy while in prison.
After about two years, we were told to join the other prisoners in doing hard labour.
I remember one day while we were in that pit, the prison guards got rumours that we wanted to escape, uuummm, hey, hey, takaona chitsvuku musi uyu. Takarohwa misana kusvika yapisa. But there was no plan to escape. Someone had lied to the prison guards. They later told us.
Some of the prison guards told us how the war was going on. They would whisper saying ‘don’t worry, kunze kwaita hondo isingaite. Mabhunu ari kurohwa kwete mbichana.’
SM: In 1966, there was the famous Chinhoyi Battle where one of your relatives, Cde Guzuzu died. How did you feel when you heard about this?
Cde Makwasha: I was in prison, but I cried for days. He was my sekuru. I felt guilty because when he came to Sinoa (Chinhoyi) he was not into politics. He came looking for a job and I introduced him to politics. I felt powerless hearing this from prison.
SM: While in prison, did you meet some comrades from Zapu?
Cde Makwasha: Oohh, yes. We met quite a number of comrades from Zapu. The only problem was that we would clash very often with these comrades from Zapu. Some still regarded us as rebels who left Zapu and they were not happy with the truth that we spoke about regarding the approach to the war.
Sometimes we would have brothers from the same family one in Zanu and the other in Zapu, but still we clashed.
These clashes started when Zanu was formed in 1963 and so they continued in prison. During this time, the clashes had nothing to do with someone being Shona and Ndebele. The clashes were purely because Zapu supporters accused Zanu of being a rebel party. There was ignorance of what politics was all about.
There was a belief that if we let this party to survive, ichapinda mu power leaving us out. That fear of being left out of power caused the clashes.
SM: You are talking about studying while in prison. Tell us how you would go about it? How would you access reading materials and so on?
Cde Makwasha: We had access to a library which was in Bulawayo. A very big library. We would be told that if you are studying economics, the books that are required are this and that. We were doing what is called distance learning.
So once we got the list of the books, we would write letters requesting the books from this library and the prison officers would bring us the books.
We were allowed to keep the books for a month, but there was an option to extend the time for another month.
There were two groups in prison at that time. One group had given up on education and the other group was interested in furthering their education. The majority of those who didn’t want to further their education were those who went for training while in Standard 2,3 and 4. So vamwe vainyara to start kudzidza such low standards while others were at advanced levels.
The good thing however is that as we continued studying, we started interacting with our Zapu comrades and as time went on we got to understand each other. We would borrow books from each other. We actually became very good friends.
SM: So after 10 years, were you released?
Cde Makwasha: After 10 years, the other comrades from my group were taken away and I remained at Khami because I had been caught smuggling letters out of prison. I was sentenced to two months of solitary confinement in a dark cell.
SM: These letters you are talking about, you were smuggling them to who?
Cde Makwasha: We would write letters to some organisations outside the country asking for assistance and this was not allowed.
The prison guards would give us the addresses of the organisations and we would use them to smuggle out the letters.
Also, Red Cross had given us a list of some of these organisations that could help us. We wanted assistance in terms of college fees and clothes.
The prison guard who was caught trying to smuggle these letters that led to my solitary confinement was actually fired from his job. In this dark cell, I was given food only once per day. For those two months, I was in total darkness and you would not know what time of the day it was.
SM: Under such traumatic conditions, what kept you going? Surely, some people would break down under such conditions?
Cde Makwasha: I really don’t know how we survived this. Only God knows. But we devised a strategy which we used to call “Dzemazuvano” where we would picture ourselves outside prison. We would imagine ourselves owning companies, we would imagine ourselves getting married and talk about this imagined wife – how she looks and how she should behave. We would imagine ourselves buying cars and sending our children to schools outside the country.
Some even imagined themselves as presidents and so on.
These imaginations would keep us going, they would keep us sane. This wishful thinking became our saviour. This kept us going until we got books to further our education.
After these two months, I was sent to Harare Remand Prison. When I got there I found all my comrades there.
This is where I met Cde Mugabe (now President), Morton Malianga, Enos Nkala, Edgar Tekere, and Didymus Mutasa while Edison Zvobgo had already left after he went before a tribunal and opted to leave prison by pledging never to involve himself in politics again. This tribunal would sit every year asking political detainees kuti if we release you from prison, are you still interested in politics? So Zvobgo went before this tribunal and said he was no longer interested in politics. That’s when he was released and he was sent to America.
Also when we got to the remand prison, vaMnangagwa had already been released and deported to Zambia. I think two or three weeks earlier.
SM: There is something we don’t understand here. You had served your time at Khami, why were you now at the remand prison?
Cde Makwasha: This was not a remand prison in the correct sense. This was just a prison for detainees but it was in the remand premises. The Smith regime was saying they could not release us because we still posed a threat to the government.
You know after our arrest and after discovering that 10 years, which was the longest sentence for such crimes at that time, the Smith regime went to Parliament to amend the laws. The maximum prison sentence for all who were caught after undergoing military training was changed from 10 years to 20 years, life in prison or death.
So some of the comrades who were arrested after us were given 20 years, life in prison or death sentences. The idea was to make sure the comrades die in prison because the number of comrades who were going for military training kept increasing.
At Khami we lost Cde Chigwada. He was a family man so he died because of torture and stress. Lloyd Gundu nearly died. Akatomboita seava kupenga nestress because he had been told several times kuti mangwana uri kufa gadzirira several times. Because of this, he had given up on life.
SM: Tell us of the life at this remand prison.
Cde Makwasha: At this remand prison, the treatment was much better. In the morning, we would be allowed to exercise and I tell you that’s when I discovered that President Mugabe and Enos Nkala were like addicted to exercising. They would wake up very early, exercise, take a shower and start reading newspapers.
Leaders like vaMugabe were in the same class as coloured people where during breakfast they were given bread while the rest of us were given porridge.
SM: So there were like classes here?
Cde Makwasha: Yes there were classes. Coloured people were in a different class from Africans – I mean we the blacks. They were given bread for breakfast and they would be given rice and chicken and so on.
For us, there was no bread and rice. We had last ate rice in 1962 and the next time I ate rice was in 1979. Our breakfast at this remand prison comprised black tea, porridge and sadza sometimes in the morning.
So all our leaders were put in the same class as coloureds because of their positions. For them to receive this treatment, it was because of Red Cross International which voiced concern with the Smith regime.
So after breakfast, we would sit down like we were in classrooms. President Mugabe was our English and Literature teacher. Malianga taught us commerce together with Edgar Tekere. Didymus Mutasa taught us Maths and I tell you murume uya anogona Maths. So he taught us Maths and Agriculture.
Among us, those who were good in certain subjects would assist those in lower classes. It was like a university behind the prison walls. Everything was properly structured.
SM: How would you describe President Mugabe’s character at that time?
Cde Makwasha: He was very intelligent, kind but very resilient. You know these other comrades, like Nkala, they were tribal but President Mugabe would say no to all that. There were times when some of these leaders would say, we have broken away from Zanu and all of them would say President Mugabe remains our secretary general.
Everyone who said he had formed his party during this time in prison would want to work with President Mugabe. Of course President Mugabe would dismiss all this saying he belonged to Zanu only. He was a straightforward person who listened to our problems and gave us proper advice.
SM: Who were some of the hot-heads?
Cde Makwasha: The hot-head was Nkala and Tekere. They would not see eye-to-eye. On many occasions they almost fought.
SM: So you were at this remand prison mixing with these leaders for how long?
Cde Makwasha: After about three months, we were taken to Gweru Prison. The Smith regime feared that we would connive with these leaders and escape from prison. The regime kept making many arrests and the comrades would be brought to Gweru Prison until the place was full.
So we were later taken to Hwahwa Prison. I think around 1975, while still in prison, some of the comrades decided to join the UANC led by Bishop Abel Muzorewa which was entering into negotiations with the Smith regime. These comrades were released from prison. But I refused to join Muzorewa and remained in prison until the Lancaster House talks in 1979.
At Gweru Prison, everything else was fine except for the prison guards. They were very very cruel and they treated us very badly. At Hwahwa, its like we were home. The only thing that was lacking were women. We even had a garden and we were allowed to play games. We were allowed visitors and we had the choice of putting on prison garbs or putting on our own clothes.
The conditions were so relaxed that most of us had now found friends outside Rhodesia. Most of us bought cars two days after being released from prison.
SM: How did you do this?
Cde Makwasha: There was the Defence and Aid Fund in London where the list of political prisoners, not only in Zambia but all African countries that were at war, were put on walls. Now individuals and organisations in the UK and other countries would go there and chose the political prisoners they would want to assist.
These individuals and organisations would then write letters to the prisoners telling them that they would be assisting them with whatever they wanted. They would ask the prisoners to write a list of the things they required, including assisting the relatives of the prisoners.
I had a couple from Australia, another in Sweden, another in Norway and a lady who ended up being my girlfriend from London. One prisoner could have four or five of these friends from outside Rhodesia.
These friends would send us clothes, money, books and so on. They would send us lots of money such that some of us ended up not knowing what to do with the money.
SM: Some people are of the view that these so-called friends were another way by the colonial regime to distract you from thinking of the liberation struggle. They showered you with everything such that you became just too comfortable to think of the struggle. What is your comment?
Cde Makwasha: We didn’t think of that because at that time we knew that people like the late Sally Mugabe and Karimanzira were sourcing materials for the struggle from well-wishers. We saw these people as kind people assisting us.
SM: In your case, these friends were assisting you but you turned one of the well-wishers into a girlfriend. How did this happen?
Cde Makwasha: She would write to me saying ‘I am thinking of you. I dreamt about you. If only I could see you.’ I would write back saying ‘I am also thinking about you. I wish I could see you.’ This girlfriend of mine was saying she was a princess. She said her parents had died leaving her lots of properties and money.
SM: So why didn’t you marry her?
Cde Makwasha: (laughs) Its a long story. When I was released in 1979, I went to stay in Kadoma. So while there I met this beautiful girl. My wife is beautiful I tell you.
But still my London girlfriend kept sending money and clothes on a weekly basis. This money would be sent through lawyers. This girlfriend was now saying come over to London and she even bought me an air ticket.
I then married my local girlfriend and we held a lavish wedding yakaita mukurumbira in Kadoma. My lawyers then sent my London girlfriend pictures from my wedding. She was really, really heart-broken. She went into a depression.
She flew to Mozambique to report me to the Zanu leadership which was there, including Didymus Mutasa. She complained bitterly that I was her boyfriend and I had now dumped her. One of the comrades who was in Mozambique is the one who later told me this story.
Amai Makwasha knows this story. I told her. Some of the blankets aitumirwa those days tichiri kuafuga nanhasi. These other couples continued assisting me. They even gave me money to marry and organise the wedding.
SM: So after being released, did you rejoin politics in Kadoma?
Cde Makwasha: Yes. During the time I was released, the ban on political parties was lifted and we started campaigning for Zanu with people like Robson Manyika. After independence, vaMnangagwa called me to Harare and he told me to go join the army in Bulawayo. I refused.
The person who took that position yangu iyo was the now Commander Defence Forces, Cde Chiwenga. He was standing right behind me. VaMnangagwa just said “Dominick huya uyende where this comrade was supposed to go.” That’s how I got to know CDF Chiwenga and up to this day when we meet its “hesi Makwasha!” Even when I meet Zim One (President Mugabe) he says, “Hesi John. Are you happy where you are?”
I was then made the chief security officer at the Harare Airport under the department of Civil Aviation.
Over the past few months, we have been carrying out interviews from war veterans who joined the liberation struggle in the early 1960s. Some of these comrades were deployed into Rhodesia without receiving military training as both Zapu and Zanu rushed to give the impression to the OAU that their forces were already fighting the colonial regime in Rhodesia. The majority of these comrades were arrested as soon as they got into Rhodesia because there was no proper planning in their deployment.
We also carried interviews from some comrades who went for military training in Ghana in 1964 who were arrested soon after being deployed into Rhodesia. Due to the fact that these comrades were arrested soon after being deployed into Rhodesia, some were beginning to ask “so who fought the struggle when all these comrades were behind bars?”
Well, like we have said before, the Second Chimurenga was in phases. The majority of the interviews we have been carrying over the past few months were from this first phase of the Second Chimurenga. Of course, due to time and space we couldn’t interview all the comrades from this first phase but the few we spoke to summed up what transpired during this phase.
Starting next week, we will be carrying interviews from the second phase. After realising that most of the comrades were being arrested upon deployment, both Zapu and Zanu went back to the drawing board to re-strategise and indeed, the liberation struggle then exploded in earnest.
Just like the first phase, this second phase will re-define Zimbabwe’s history – because for the first time we will unravel what exactly happened before the guns started roaring. We will reveal how the commanders of commanders were born. These will be frank interviews so expect so many uncomfortable truths.
Don’t miss your favourite Sunday paper, The Sunday Mail as history is being put into proper context by those who were in the thick of things).
One rainy Friday afternoon, a road traffic accident occurred involving two motor vehicles. The first was being driven by a certain Christiano Messi while the second, by a Wayne Ozil.
The two blamed each other for the accident.
The matter ended up in court with Christiano Messi suing Wayne Ozil for recovery of damages sustained during the collision.
Wayne Ozil counter-claimed for more or less the same amount as he pleaded that Christiano Messi caused the crash.
Both parties were represented by lawyers and the presiding magistrate happened to be a certain Mr Jose Wenger.
It so happened that the two lawyers, as well as the magistrate, had studied law at the same university although the magistrate had been much more senior while the lawyers were actually in the same class.
It goes without saying that the three of them knew each other well. The matter went all the way to trial with this fact unbeknown to the two litigants, Christiano Messi and Wayne Ozil.
After arguments and counter-arguments, judgement was reserved and was to be delivered in about a month’s time.
In the intervening period, on a Monday afternoon while Christiano Messi was enjoying his lunch at a restaurant in the city, he caught a glimpse of his lawyer also having lunch in the company of Wayne Ozil’s lawyer.
He was surprised and not amused.
In fact, he was so incensed that the very next day he proceeded to his lawyer’s office, fired him on the spot and demanded his file back as he thought the guy had sold him out. He even complained to the Law Society over what he called his lawyer’s “unbecoming of indecorous behaviour”. He no longer felt “safe” to continue to be represented by that lawyer.
Incidentally, the following Wednesday, Wayne Ozil came across Christiano Messi’s lawyer having what he concluded was a heart-to-heart talk at a car wash with Mr Jose Wenger, the magistrate who had presided over his trial with Christiano Messi.
It would be stating the obvious what went through his mind.
The above scenario is not uncommon in the life of lawyers, prosecutors, magistrates and judges in the course of their work.
A number of questions arise: How should lawyers conduct themselves in the presence of their clients if the lawyers know each other as so often is the case? If lawyers handling the same case from opposite sides meet in public, how are they to behave?
Are they to pretend that they don’t know each other until after judgment is passed in that case?
If they exhibit familiarity with each other in the presence of their clients, how are the clients supposed to feel?
Are judges, magistrates and prosecutors to ignore lawyers when they meet them in public places lest they be accused of dabbling in corruption?
I will attempt answers to some of these questions.
I wish, however, to stress that this discussion is not connected to or concerned with those alleged underhand dealings or corrupt activities that certain members of the justice delivery system have sometimes been accused of.
To start with, it is well known that the legal profession is a restricted community. By this is meant that only those who have the requisite minimum entry qualifications qualify to be its members.
Accordingly, chances are very high that those in the profession end up knowing each other.
In any event, many would have gone to the same university and shared accommodation and notes during the struggle for the law degree.
They naturally become acquainted to each other for many years. Needless to say, some would have become much more than just classmates.
Furthermore, the longer a lawyer stays in practice, the more he or she gets to know other lawyers.
Annual events such as the winter or summer schools mean lawyers end up knowing each other better. There are many workshops and mini-conferences where lawyers always meet and mingle as happens in other sectors.
During the course of their work, lawyers exchange documents and hold meetings to resolve their clients’ disputes. For instance, if a lawyer has 20 files on his desk, it means he interacts with probably a minimum of 15 lawyers.
With respect to judges and magistrates, it is common cause that these are far fewer than lawyers.
Naturally, virtually all lawyers know all judges and/or magistrates in their city. The situation may be even “worse” in small places such as Guruve, Murambinda, Gwanda or Zvishavane where there may only be two magistrates and perhaps a handful of lawyers.
These people end up being drinking or church mates.
The long and short of my argument is that the public should not worry when lawyers representing opposing clients talk to each other.
All lawyers are officers of the court and, therefore, their first duty is to the court. In all their dealings, they have to be candid not only with their clients but also with the court.
If, upon discovering any information or evidence that tends to show that the client’s case is likely weak or unsustainable, a good lawyer has a duty to make this fact known to the client and even advise that it may be prudent to withdraw the claim or defence.
That way, the client is saved both money and precious time.
So, apart from the duty to the court, the lawyer also has a duty to his client. It matters not that the lawyer will give such advice merely because he is “friends” with the lawyer on the opposite side.
No.
Indeed, it would be a scandal of unimaginable proportions if a lawyer were to compromise his client’s case for the sake of a lawyer friend on the opposite side. I contend that such a thing has never and can never happen.
In fact, that two opposing lawyers know each other well often works to the advantage of litigants. It means negotiations will be easier to conduct and matters quicker to resolve.
It is always an advantage to go to the negotiating table knowing in advance who is on the other side.
Then there are those situations involving advocates. As a rule, advocates do not take instructions directly from clients. They interact with the instructing lawyer.
It may, therefore, be said that the lawyer is the advocate’s client.
Now, imagine a situation in which the instructing lawyer has two cases to be heard by the same judge on the same day, one after the other.
In the first case, the lawyer will be instructing the advocate and in the second matter, he will be arguing against the same advocate.
This occurs quite frequently in our courts and legal services users should not be unduly perturbed merely because the advocate and the lawyer know each other well and are in fact “friends”.
With respect to judges and magistrates, they will never recuse themselves from a case simply because they know one of the lawyers in the matter.
Judges or magistrates normally only remove themselves from a case when they are personally known to one of the litigants.
Sometimes instead of walking out on a case for the reason that they know one of the parties, the judges will announce in open court that they are acquainted with one of the litigants and that they can only proceed with the case upon the other party confirming they are comfortable with this.
I reiterate that there is absolutely nothing wrong with lawyers socially interacting with each other.
If such conduct were outlawed, lawyers’ lives would be very difficult and I can bet my last bond coin that there would be a great shortage of lawyers throughout the world as only a handful of people would opt pursue the career.
The above notwithstanding, lawyers on opposite sides should conduct themselves with restraint when they are in the presence of their clients, particularly in sensitive and emotional cases like divorce.
In criminal trials, the situation is much the same.
Prosecutors, especially in murder trials where the deceased’s relatives may be in attendance, are hardly ever seen “cuddling” with the accused’s lawyer. The same goes in all other criminal cases where the victim of the offence will be praying that the accused be convicted.
They remain professional at all times as the matter will really be between the State and the accused person and not between the defence lawyer and the prosecutor.
It is my contention that prosecutors in Zimbabwe always go about their work with due regard.
All in all, lawyers, advocates, prosecutors, magistrates and judges are just different parts of the same engine that must necessarily work together to deliver justice.
Tichawana Nyahuma is a legal practitioner who writes in his personal capacity. Feedback: nyahuma.t@gmail.com
A million excuses can be found, but what happened in Manicaland last Thursday should never happen again.
While there may be accusations about Lacoste and the honest truth is that nothing much has been done to clarify things, Vice President Mnangagwa remains the country’s VP after being appointed by President Mugabe and we should all respect that.
Reports that VP Mnangagwa cut a lone figure during his visit to Mutare as no Government or Zanu-PF officials were around to welcome him at the Golden Peacock and Amber hotels are a cause for concern. Pane kakufarisa kava kuitika somewhere.
Minister of State for Manicaland Province, Cde Mandi Chimene said she was in Harare attending a war veterans’ preparatory meeting while Finance Minister Cde Patrick Chinamasa said he was not aware of the meeting in Mutare because “I was never invited to any meeting.”
Don’t get me wrong dear reader, I am one person who is against unnecessary and bloated entourages to meetings, but as the country’s VP, Cde Mnangagwa deserves our respect.
I know there are deafening murmurs in many circles that VP Mnangagwa has not done much to dispel the Lacoste allegations and because of that, some officials in Government are not sure how they should deal with him. Some are now even afraid to be seen anywhere near VP Mnangagwa because of the toxic nature of factionalism.
To some people, VP Mnangagwa has become a leper — someone affected by leprosy. Remember the story about leprosy from the Bible. Leviticus 13 says: Anyone suspected of having this disease had to go to a priest for examination because he or she was considered unclean physically and spiritually. Such affected people were to be separated from the rest of the people.
In fact, those with leprosy were so despised and loathed that they were not allowed to live in any community with their own people. Lepers lived in a community with other lepers until they either got better or died. This was the only way the people knew to contain the spread of the contagious forms of leprosy.
Now, is VP Mnangagwa slowly developing leprosy or what? Are some people beginning to crucify him because of the Lacoste allegations? As your Bishop, I just thought we should deal with this cancer before it has spread all over the body.
Let me make one point bold and clear here — in Government there is nothing called Lacoste or G40. Lacoste and G40 belong to petty Zanu-PF politics. So those seeing a leper in VP Mnangagwa should remove those lying lenses once he puts on the Government jacket.
I know that naturally, some mischievous people will start saying Bishop Lazarus is Lacoste and so on, but shoko hatiregi kukusha nekuti pane vaya vanoona factionalism even in their teacups.
Bishop Lazarus was the first person to warn VP Mnangagwa against holding Government meetings at his farm soon after his appointment to the post. So allegations that I am Lacoste can fly but the sermons will continue.
Enough about VP Mnangagwa.
Now what is happening between Ministers Chinamasa and Patrick Zhuwao together with the Reserve Bank Governor Dr John Mangudya? Why are these fine gentlemen feeding the excitable private media with cheap stories on indigenisation?
Last Thursday, Dr Mangudya told the media that banks were complying with the indigenisation laws and that as the central bank, they were satisfied with the level of compliance.
Just yesterday, Cde Chinamasa placed adverts supporting Dr Mangudya saying “I am pleased to advice that all the affected foreign owned financial institutions operating in Zimbabwe, namely Barclays Bank, Stanbic, Old Mutual and CABS, Standard Chartered Bank, Ecobank, BancABC, MBCA have submitted credible Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Plans before the deadline of 31st March 2016 in line with policy and notice gazetted by the Minister of Indigenisation, Youth and Economic Empowerment . . .”
The combative Cde Zhuwao did not waste time responding saying he had written an extensive letter to the RBZ boss.
“I have indicated to my colleagues, and that includes the Governor, that they must be very careful of making pronouncements that are incorrect around indigenisation because I will correct those pronouncements publicly . . .
“Those companies (financial sector) are not compliant and those companies have not shown any intention to comply,” said Cde Zhuwao.
Now what on earth is going on here? Don’t these comrades have offices where they can meet and discuss this issue before embarrassing themselves before the whole nation?
Maybe these gentlemen can’t stand each other, can’t they take their issues to Cabinet for proper discussions instead of scoring cheap points in the media?
Should we blame outsiders when they hide behind these shameless clashes and say there is policy inconsistency in the implementation of the indigenisation laws? Why are we creating excuses for the prophets of doom?
To me, the issue is not about who is right and who is wrong because everything is now so confused. The issue is that these comrades should be honourable enough to use the right platforms to iron out their differences.
A little bit of maturity and respect will be welcome!
Illicit financial flows and liquidity constraints are among the foremost encumbrances standing between Zimbabwe and its economic dream.
Exporting liquidity through leakages suffocates the economy by reducing aggregate demand thus causing deflation.
It also stifles positive multiplier effects derived from money circulating in the economy and stunts economic growth.
Operating in a multi-currency environment means Government — through the instrumentality of the Reserve Bank Zimbabwe — is unable to manage liquidity by printing new money.
From a fiscal perspective, financial resource leakage exists with negative effect on national liquidity.
Therefore, there is need for transparency, accountability and self-discipline in the utilisation and management of financial resources within a multi-currency system.
This will ensure money circulates within the domestic economy.
Illicit financial flows should be viewed in the broadest sense, encompassing smuggling (precious minerals, wildlife trophies, etc), non-remittance of export proceeds, unwarranted remittances and offshore investments.
Also in this bracket are tax evasion/avoidance, porous borders, misappropriation of foreign loan receipts, irregular and/or wasteful expenditure.
The January 2016 Monetary Policy Statement presented by RBZ Governor Dr John Mangudya states that Zimbabwe was prejudiced of US$1,8 million in the year ending December 31, 2015. Corporates accounted for US$1,2 billion of those externalised funds and individuals US$600 million.
US$1,8 billion could be an understatement.
In 2014, former South African President Thabo Mbeki tackled illicit financial outflows and inequality in Africa at a meeting in Abuja, Nigeria.
He said Africa loses US$50 billion to US$60 billion to illicit financial flows annually, with the loss over the past 30 years topping US$1,4 trillion.
I maintain that the US$1,8 billion mentioned by the RBZ is way below what we could be losing.
Further, the Monetary Policy Statement was silent on the justified and possible lawsuit that can be instituted against those who exported more than 100 000 tonnes of our diamond ore from the Chiadzwa diamond fields on the pretext of taking samples for testing.
Rigorous measures need to be instituted if we are to stem this diamond and gold smuggling through our porous borders and/or by air mainly from the 500-plus airstrips in farming areas previously occupied by whites.
The long-standing issue of reparations to Africa by Europe and the United States over the evil, barbaric and historic system of slavery should also be pursued with vigour. Other matters worth pursuing are crimes against humanity perpetrated in the First and Second Chimurenga by an illegal colonial regime and inhabitants of British extraction and the adverse effects of the illegal sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe by the West.
Skulls of some of our ancestors beheaded during the First Chimurenga and kept at some London museum should be shipped back home, too.
Atrocities perpetrated in camps in and outside Zimbabwe during the Second Chimurenga were horrendous, impossible to forget. The net effect of legal action against such illegality is that the resultant compensation will make a world of good to our liquidity position.
We should be motivated by the recent successes of the victims of the Mau Mau uprisings that took place in Kenya before our Second Chimurenga.
The lifting of US sanctions on Cuba after 50 years is another factor to consider. On fiscal policy, the lack of space resulting from high expenditure dominated by civil servants’ salaries and dwindling tax revenues deserves urgent attention.
Such low revenues are linked to many company’s closures, leading to a decline in company tax and Paye receipts to the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority and emergence of an informal economy.
Many SMEs, through genuine ignorance of tax laws or deliberate tax evasion/avoidance or both, are not meeting tax their obligations. This means Zimra must re-strategise in the short term and reconsider tax heads like VAT and excise duty or other taxes on fuel.
Taxes on fuel are now lucrative and acceptable given the drop in petroleum prices on the international market, and this provides leeway to raise taxes way above the current estimated 35 percent of retail prices without causing a steep fuel price hike.
The same action has the positive effect of partly ameliorating problems associated with deflation.
Similarly, the VAT rate can be raised to the same effect on deflation.
However, it must be realised that given our low disposable incomes, this tax head may not perform to expected levels.
An accurate estimation of duty leakages on second-hand vehicle imports would turn out to be huge if accurately computed.
I reckon it should be sufficient to at least finance the nation’s annual budget of US$4 billion.
There is, nevertheless, nothing that can be done about this revenue collection; it is akin to crying over spilt milk.
The very best that can be done in the circumstances is to recover any known duty arrears and collect and monitor vehicles coming out of bonded warehouses more closely to better collect taxes on vehicle sales.
On the positive side, this surge in vehicle numbers could be a good indication of the revenue generation potential of an increase in taxes on fuel consumption.
The tax amnesty that expired on September 30, 2015 should have enabled us to come up with a reliable and robust tax payers’ data base, which, together with other appropriate measures, should have facilitated better Paye and company tax collection from SMEs.
This warrants a downward review of VAT and taxes on fuel rates in the medium to long term.
Such measures should work hand and glove with cost-cutting measures, particularly the long-standing civil service staff rationalisation exercise.
On Zimbabwe’s external debt, we should urgently re-prioritise our proposed debt settlement plan as follows:
1. Settling the US$50 million arrears owed to Chinese entities so that Sinosure will be able to provide credit guarantee insurance to financial institutions that are giving us funding for the mega deals already signed with China. Such insurance guarantees may also be called for if we are to benefit from the US$60 billion package for Africa, signed at the Sino-Africa Summit in South Africa in December 2015.
If this US$50 million is not available now, there is a compelling case to use part of the bridge loan arranged with the African Export-Import Bank;
2. Repaying the US$110 million owed to the IMF from the country’s Special Drawing Rights. This money is already in hand and there is no need to keep international reserves given that we are already operating a multi-currency system at home. Terms such as free funds and import cover are now inappropriate, obsolete and superfluous in our multi-currency environment;
3. The third priority would be paying the US$601 million we owe the African Development Bank using the bridge loan from Afreximbank;
4. Settling arrears to the World Bank (US$218 million to the World International Development Association and US$891 million to the International Bank of Reconstruction and Development). One major reason why the World Bank arrears should be given least priority is that their settlement is unlikely to lead us getting new and fresh IMF or World Bank financial resources since Zidera is still in force.
The recent letter by Mr Corker, the chair of the US senate foreign affairs committee, to US treasury secretary Mr Lew and the fining of Barclays to the tune of US$2,5 million for facilitating payments of designated entities by the Office of Foreign Assets should be clear testimony that Zidera is very much alive and kicking.
In terms of Zidera and how the IMF and World Bank are constituted, the US enjoys veto powers on any new funding to Zimbabwe and nothing has happened to suggest those powers will not be invoked. We should, however, settle our arrears to the IMF and World Bank as per agreement reached last year in Lima.
Zimbabwe should even borrow from the East to settle these arrears and debts outstanding to Western creditors as borrowings from the East usually come relatively cheaper and without unreasonable conditionalities.
Mr Edmore AM Ndudzo was the lead consultant on the Public Finance Management Act and the first clack City Treasurer of Harare. This is the first instalment of a two-part series on illicit financial flows and liquidity
Perennial opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai last Thursday unveiled yet another recycled shadow cabinet as his obsession to be the President of Zimbabwe gripped him yet again in another show of trying to remain relevant in the face of glaring oblivion.
The shadow cabinet includes shadows such as Nelson Chamisa, who has often been accused of trying to usurp power from the MDC-T leader.
Chamisa has insinuated that Tsvangirai sees shadows. And we can see he is even creating shadows.
His announcement of the shadow cabinet was not a coincidence as he and his backers had hoped that the war veterans would demand President Mugabe step down at the Thursday indaba and that would present a rare opportunity for MDC-T to ready itself for an election victory against a divided revolutionary party.
But with Zanu-PF holding steady and President Mugabe firmly in control, the announcement of a shadow cabinet is nothing but a shadow.
When any leader continues to cling to shadows, it certainly is time for him to let the sun set so that the shadows may disappear and he may take leave and have a rest.
Surely, after 16 years of living in the shadows, Tsvangirai must just call it a day.
A lot has happened in 16 years. Children were born and are getting ready to write Ordinary Level exams. All this while MDC-T shadow minister of education, tertiary and vocational training Heneri Dzinotyiwei still dreams of being sworn in.
What really is this obsession that Tsvangirai has with shadows? What is this obsession that he has with power (and women of course)?
What is this obsession with spent forces such as Eddie Cross of all people?
He uses the shadow cabinet announcement as a tool to try and keep together a deadbeat party that is obviously fragmented and disintegrating.
The shadows continue to be an illusion of imaginary political power that he is desperately trying to clutch at.
MDC-T is really struggling with relevance.
They have suddenly become insignificant in the wake of perceived Zanu-PF factional wars and in the wake of Mujuru’s ZimPF huffing and puffing that it is the next best of the worst opposition party.
MDC-T is recycling old strategies and they have announced a shadow cabinet at the twilight of their existence.
I can understand the pressure that Tsvangirai must be under with his party having split some five times over the last decade.
No one takes him or what is left of his party seriously.
Over the years it has been deserted by the little brains it had and now it is under real threat of really going under because the party is broke, tired, fatigued, fragmented and inconsequential.
Not even the members of the shadow cabinet still support their own party.
Most of them must have been surprised by the shadow cabinet announcement.
Even more, they must be wondering if Tsvangirai is still fit to be their leader because he just wakes up one day and announces a thumb-suck shadow cabinet full of clueless and disillusioned spent-forces.
How else can anyone describe a fellow like Job Sikhala apart from clueless and desperate for relevance?
And Tsvangirai thinks this guy can head the Zimbabwe Media Commission. Where we used to say jobs for the boys, we can now say a job for Job.
The elections are two years away and Tsvangirai is trying to put his people on a leash in the hope that they don’t desert him just before 2018.
The shadow cabinet and the shadow executives have now been pinned down so that they do not defect — but the writing is legibly on the wall.
Meanwhile, Zanu PF is elated that the headache that was once the MDC has fizzled out.
Things have fallen apart in the opposition and they have nothing left to do except to chase shadows by announcing shadow cabinets and shadow parastatal executives until the sun finally sets on them just as it did with Mavambo which quickly became Magumo after the 2008 elections.
One by one the enemies are falling by the way side. One by one they are licking their wounds. One by one they are relegating themselves to shadows.
Dubulaizitha!
Almost every single thing that we come across in life has two distinct possibilities — either it makes or breaks us.
Fortunately, the Almighty God blessed us with immense wisdom, a gift that empowers us with the ability to see with critical eyes and the ability to manipulate outcomes to our advantage.
The advent of information communication technologies and the World Wide Web ushered in a completely new dispensation for the human race; one that set the wheels of development into faster motion.
There is no denying that ICTs and the Internet are great breakthroughs for man from man.
Today it is almost impossible to function either socially or economically without resorting to use of ICTs and the Internet.
In this global village, geographical boundaries are increasingly getting blurred by ICTs and people can get real time updates on news from different parts of the world right on their cellphones.
However, not all is rosy in this global village.
Increasingly it is becoming a global jungle because of the predators that lurk in the dark waiting to pounce at the slightest opportunity.
The problem emanates when the very tools that are supposed to be used to make us a better society. Instead, some people are increasingly using these tools to break society.
Concerns to do with hacking into personal data, hate speech, bullying, incitement and copyright issues have been raised, especially where social media are concerned.
While self-regulation is the most ideal model to curb such ills, this more often than not does not work.
Our own country is the latest among many to raise alarm and indicate the need for legal regulation.
Zimbabwe is no cry baby; even the more technologically advanced countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States have also been experiencing growing pains through internet abuse.
President Mugabe’s recommendation is for the country to adopt hi-tech systems that engender development instead of abuse. He couldn’t have said it better. This is a serious matter of protecting the country’s citizens from cyber criminals and cyber bullies.
The Internet has virtually revolutionised character assassination and slander, giving those who engage in it the power to attack others with virtual impunity.
The allure of the Internet’s capacity to disseminate information has attracted all the wrong culprits. In essence, the convenience of the Internet has been twisted by people with narrow and seditious agendas.
While freedom of use of the Internet as a tool for the dissemination of information is very welcome, Government has to level the playing field for the safety of the general citizenry.
After all, it is the Government’s primary mandate to protect its citizens. Efforts should be undertaken to expeditiously nip social media abuse in the bud before it gets out of hand.
Therefore, the ball is in the court of Information, Communication, Technology, Postal and Courier Services Minister Supa Mandiwanzira.
It is quite encouraging that the minister is aware that his work is cut out and he is moving with speed to address the issue of regulation.
As we report elsewhere in this publication, Minister Mandiwanzira has said his office is already seized with the matter. Understandably, some sections of society feel that the regulation will wipe out their freedom on the Internet. Those are natural instincts considering that social media use is growing in popularity in Zimbabwe.
However, Minister Mandiwanzira has spoken clearly on that. “We have no interests in snooping on people’s communication. That is not our business; our interest is in protecting people.”
Zimbabwe is not the first country to go down this route.
China has gone indigenous when it comes to social media with platforms like Baidu, Sina Weibo and Renren, which have similar services to their American counterparts, and are regulated by their government.
Such platforms have not only created order within Chinese society, but have also created employment.
What we need to keep in mind is that 15 years ago, social networking sites Facebook and Twitter did not exist and therefore current legislation does not account for such technological realities.
It is hoped that Government will consult widely with the citizenry as it goes about coming up with proposals on how best to regulate the sector.
It was a heart-warming sight on Thursday morning as we watched war veterans gather at the City Sports Centre in Harare.
It presented an imagery of commitment to a vision, particularly one of achieving independence and leaving future generations, like us, with more options of choice presented by self-governance.
Choice is a gift that future generations have been given by our war vets. However, it is also a great responsibility.
When future generations have discretion of making independent decisions as a nation, those decisions can either produce prosperity or despair.
A few months ago, this column dedicated ample time on asking what economic system Zimbabweans perceived as being desirable to the country’s virtuous continuity.
Such an economic system would be premised on achieving guided socio-economic ideals of empowerment and socio-economic transformation that bind us as a nation.
Discourse of that kind has struggled to surpass our very much polarised and highly politicised internal manner of deliberation as a country.
Incumbent governance should realise that any space for polarity is only created by a failure to reserve the credibility of ideology.
This happens when the promises enshrined in an ideology have not achieved a broad impact on people for that ideology to supersede polarised critique.
Moreover, unattended matters of rampant corruption, legislative and institutional abuse and extractive political interactions all discount the sanctity of ideology.
Government has not been adequately attentive to these matters, especially in enforcement and punitive action.
In effect, Government has not done a good job protecting our ideology.
Swift to capitalise on this, external entities of opposing ideals easily gain greater credence amongst our very own constituents.
Unfortunately, in Zimbabwe’s case, external perspectives have effectively influenced a view that our ideology is somewhat deficient and economically impractical.
The Economist magazine, of extreme capitalist conviction, has been on an onslaught to discount our aspirations, further adding to perceptions that we are an intolerant and exclusive nation worthy of being a pariah state.
This is ideologically far from the truth.
Zimbabwe strives to be a civilisation and not a tribe.
Gianpiero Petriglieri, a Professor at INSEAD, once reflected on the differences between a civilisation and a tribe. A civilisation is an open society grounded on a chosen way of life set on progressive ideology.
A tribe, on the other hand, is an enclosed intolerant society of radical, yet retrogressive ideology.
That is not us!
We are a civilisation aware that through the commitment of our war veterans’ vision, we are able to choose our own economic system guided by a progressive ideology of empowerment and socio-economic transformation — if only Government starts to act in a manner that protects our ideological credibility.
While I cannot choose for the nation in its entirety, I would suggest that we pursue a moderate form of capitalism, especially as it relates to the reward of impulses that motivate innovation, creativity and socio-economic improvement.
These are impulses we should value, and they must be rewarded with the opportunity of wealth accumulation — whether personal, corporate or institutional.
It baffles a lot of people to imagine differentiating capitalism as an economic system.
Perhaps the predominance of superficial understanding that capitalism is simply about profit-seeking clouds any imagination of it as a system.
Ironically, it is the nations that have benefited from conventional capitalism that are beginning to question its sustainability as an unfettered economic system.
For instance, a few months ago, French President Francois Hollande declared an economic state of emergency and ordered the rethinking of France’s whole economic management.
In the United States, a record debt of $1,2 trillion in student loans is outstanding and worryingly, 43 percent of graduates cannot even start to make payments.
Employment opportunities for youth have dwindled to a new sharing economy where skilled people are reduced to being cab drivers and apartment leasers.
In Japan, an entire generation of retirees faces the prospect of shrinking pensions because of lower real wages earned by active labour.
Closer to home, the Africa Rising narrative reached a horrific crash when the commodity boom phased out, leaving many of us in debt and socio-economic despair.
World over, conventional capitalism has failed. Every month, the IMF revises its global growth projections downwards.
It was rather telling that recently leaked Panama Papers showed that the world’s richest people are hiding their wealth in shadowy corners of the world.
Setting aside the criminal aspect of it, perhaps the story tells of winners of an unfair economic system that is not only unsustainable, but the benefactors feel compelled to store their gains away from everybody else.
As Zimbabweans, we must shift from polarised and politicised discourse to realise that our present duty, especially as a generation, is to at least focus our arguments on an improved economic system of capitalism.
For instance, we should search for our own definition of what a business enterprise is, and what expectations it should have in our economy.
Furthermore, we should evaluate the institutional representation of enterprises. At numerous Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries and Zimbabwe National Chamber of Commerce conferences, I find young entrepreneurs excluded, yet they lead enterprises of the future.
Likewise, we should choose how we define corporate leadership as a whole. What is a leader and what expectations of reward warrants leadership?
As a generation, we should define what innovation is, how it can contribute to our betterment and ultimately match its reward to its socio-economic contribution.
Our economy is seriously lacking social safety nets, and that is a decision based on how a country chooses to design its economy.
Careful attention to many of the war veterans on Thursday would pick up that social safety nets should be a significant focus on how we decide to advance our economic management.
This coincides with the idea of wealth distribution.
As years go by, Zimbabwe will begin to have individuals amassing great wealth.
That is not wrong, however, we need to decide on guidance which will mould our perceptions of wealth and its societal influence in our socio-economic existence.
My personal conviction is that by emphasising the humanistic impulses within capitalism, we can make it better for ourselves.
However, concededly, I am speaking from a point of a chosen ideology.
Thus, on that premise, Government must act convincingly to protect the purity of that ideology.
Perhaps then Zimbabweans can move forward and debate on the choices availed to us by the war veterans!
