Dexter Chagwena
In the 1980s and 1990s, there was a rampant condition called goitre.

It was prevalent among children and adults from both rural and urban Zimbabwean communities. But it is almost rare to come across someone with a goitre today.

Goitre is a manifestation of iodine deficiency.

So how did Zimbabwe efficiently reduce and control iodine deficiency?

It was through the mandatory salt iodisation that was introduced, a food fortification strategy similar to what has recently been adopted with maize-meal, wheat flour, sugar and cooking oil to fight deficiencies of Vitamin A, Iron, Vitamin D, Zinc, and Folate among other micronutrients.

Hidden hunger

Known as “hidden hunger,” micronutrient deficiencies are an insidious form of malnutrition that affects over two billion people worldwide.

It is the cause of stunted growth of an estimated 195 million children under five years in the world, weakened immune systems, poor cognitive and learning capacity.

This hidden hunger contributes to more than a third of deaths in children under five years per year and is also the main cause of productivity and earning potential losses.

Micronutrient deficiency is a problem of public health significance in Zimbabwe.

The latest Zimbabwe Demographic and Health Surveys and the Micronutrient Survey shows that many Zimbabweans, especially children and women suffer from micronutrient deficiencies especially Iron and Vitamin A as outlined below:

◆ Vitamin A deficiency affects about a fifth (19 percent) of children below the age of five;

◆ 62 percent of women of child bearing age (15-49) suffer from iron deficiency while 26 percent have anaemia; and

◆ 72 percent of children below the age of five are iron deficient and 31 percent suffer from anaemia;

As a consequence of these and other micronutrient deficiencies, more than five million Zimbabweans are prevented from realising their full potential as students, workers, parents and citizens.

Food Fortification Strategy

Responding to this serious micronutrient deficiency burden Zimbabwe, led by the Health and Child Care Ministry, has developed a Food Fortification Strategy as an immediate measure to address micronutrient deficiencies.

The strategy provides a comprehensive initiative in which several staple food products — maize flour, wheat flour, cooking oil, and sugar — are fortified with key micronutrients necessary for adequate health and proper growth.

The National Food Fortification Strategy is one of the key instruments in the fight against malnutrition and was developed in line with the comprehensive National Food and Nutrition Security Policy.

How it works

Food fortification is the process of adding small amounts of micronutrients — for example vitamin A, iron, and iodine — to food during processing.

The taste, appearance, colour and texture do not change. All food compositions do not change except the increased levels of the micronutrient added.

This can be done both by large-scale industries and small-scale producers.

For instance a large milling company like National Foods or Victoria Foods can produce fortified maize-meal similar to fortified maize-meal that can be produced by a small-scale hammer-mill in Nembudziya.

So now in addition to the fortified salt being sold as iodised salt in supermarkets and shops in Zimbabwe, four additional foods that include sugar, cooking oil, maize-meal and wheat flour are now being fortified.

Monitoring and regulation

Government has developed regulations and legislation as we move from voluntary to mandatory food fortification.

Mandatory food fortification, which started during in July, is guided by the Food Standards (Fortification) Regulations Statutory Instrument 120 of 2016.

Every producer or importer of cooking oil, wheat flour, sugar and maize meal is required to fortify these products found on the commercial market.

Health inspectors will continue working closely with food producers to ensure food producers will fortify these food products.

The concentration on food fortification was born out of the realisation that it is one of the most effective and sustainable ways to eliminate dietary micronutrient deficiencies using multiple micronutrients (eg vitamin A, vitamin D, vitamin B1, vitamin B2, vitamin B6, vitamin B12, niacin, folate, iron and zinc).

Also, food fortification is socially acceptable, does not change the food’s characteristics, does not require change in dietary habits, has quick and visible benefits, relatively easy to monitor while being cost effective for government with greater sustainability.

For instance, it costs less than US$1 per year to protect an individual against deficiencies of the stated micronutrients. To be specific, it costs US$0,67 to fortify all the four foods mentioned above per person per year based on average consumption levels.

If you compare this with the cost of US$9,87 you require to manage a single vitamin or mineral deficiency disorder per treatment cycle, you realise that food fortification is cheaper and necessary.

It should also be noted that introducing food fortification does not reverse nutrition recommendations from the Health and Child Care Ministry.

For instance, intake of sugar and salt should be controlled to prevent non-communicable diseases such as hypertension, diabetes mellitus type 2 and heart diseases.

Eating a diet consisting of a variety of foods is strongly encouraged to promote good health and optimal nutritional status.

The Health and Child Care Ministry will continue providing micronutrient supplements to children and women.

This shows that food fortification is only coming to complement other strategies that Government is implementing to ensure we eradicate these deficiencies.

Issues clarified

It should clarified to everyone that food fortification will not result in price hikes.

The Health Ministry established a Food Fortification Taskforce that has been working on this since 2012 following the Micronutrient Survey that showed the serious micronutrient burden Zimbabwe is facing.

Through various engagements with industry associations and those representing industry in the National Food Fortification Taskforce, a mechanism has been put in place to ensure prices will not go up because of food fortification.

These include facilitation by the Health Ministry to ensure industries are exempted from paying duty when importing fortificants and equipment. This means for a 2kg packet of sugar, the price will be affected by USc1 — if it really has to change at all.

Government is not forcing industries to fortify without a choice.

Those facing challenges can apply for a waiver to the Secretary of Health and Child Care so that they get support as they prepare to start fortifying.

The ministry is very considerate of small-scale companies that could be facing challenges and has put mechanisms to ensure they receive support from various partners supporting the Food Fortification Programme.

What companies simply have to do is to apply to the Secretary of Health and Child Care and get assistance just as other large-scale industries who have already started to fortify.

The Health and Child Care Ministry remains committed to the fight against micronutrient deficiencies in Zimbabwe and strongly appeals to all stakeholders to unite and support the Food Fortification Strategy to achieve a more significant and sustainable change in the health of our people and bring development to our communities.

As general advice, we recommend the public to consume fortified foods and they can recognise them by the logo on every food product as indicated below.

Dexter Chagwena is a nutritionist in the Ministry of Health and Child Care. He wrote this article for The Sunday Mail

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Dr Christine Peta
The aim of this article is to discuss some of the different types of disabilities, so as to enhance our knowledge about what each type of disability means.
The most common types of disability are: blindness, deafness, mental disability, intellectual disability, acquired brain injury, autism spectrum disorder and physical disability. The focus of this article is on blindness, deafness, mental disability and physical disability.

Blindness
Blindness is not the same for everybody: in simple terms, some people are partially blind and some people are totally blind. To be totally blind means that one does not see anything. Research has indicated that only about 5 percent to 15 percent of persons with visual impairment have total blindness and about 85 percent have some limited vision. Some people can see light only, others can see objects that are at a distance, but they cannot see from the sides of their eyes (peripheral vision), or some people can see from the sides of their eyes, but they cannot see objects that are at a distance.

Wearing spectacles has become so common that people who use them are rarely regarded as people with visual impairment
The causes of blindness are many and they include, stroke, diabetes, eye emergencies such as objects that enter the eye, head injuries, measles, cataracts and glaucoma. Do not self-diagnose visual impairment: consult an ophthalmologist (medical doctor who specialises in eye problems).

When talking to a blind person, you should always start by introducing yourself; tell them who you are, and who you are with. The fact that a person is blind does not mean that they automatically need your assistance. The courteous thing to do is to first ask if the person needs assistance. If you force help on a person because they are blind, you show disrespect of their ability to make their own decisions and your help may become unhelpful.

If you are guiding a blind person, let the person take your arm instead of you taking their arm. As you walk with a person who is blind, describe any changes in the terrain such as stones, wells, staircases, etc. If a blind person is using a guide dog, you should bear in mind that the dog is at work, hence there is no need for you to pat the dog, feed it or distract it in any way.

Deafness
The term deafness, hearing impairment or hearing loss are commonly used interchangeably to refer to the inability of a person to hear partially or totally. Deafness means that a person does not hear anything at all or a person hears things partially. People who are severely deaf depend on reading the lips of others when they are communicating or they depend on sign language.

Reading the lips of others is hard for people with congenital (from birth) deafness, but people who acquire deafness later on in life may find it easy to lip read. Apart from sign language, affected persons may use hearing aids or writing notes among other things.
Deafness is caused by a variety of factors among them being diabetes, Aids, meningitis, mumps, chicken pox, arthritis, some cancers, premature birth, lack of oxygen at birth or other birth traumas, jaundice, disorders of the brain or nervous system.

Hearing losses can be prevented through immunisation against infectious diseases, treating ear infections on time, protecting ears against excessive noise with ear plugs, reducing time that one spends listening to personal audio devices and getting regular hearing checks. So what do you do when you are talking to a person who is deaf? You should look at the person and speak directly to them, you should not ignore them by focusing on people who may be accompanying them such as sign language interpreters.

You should aim to speak with a normal voice tone, unless the person who is deaf asks you to do otherwise.
If you do not understand what the person is saying, you can give them a pen and paper to write or you can ask them to repeat what they are saying or to rephrase it.

If you are working with a person who has partial hearing impairment, ensure that their work station is not in a noisy place.

Mental disability
Mental disability usually affects the brain or the mind, and most families find it difficult to accept that one of their loved ones has a mental disability. Mental disability affects the way a person thinks, feels or acts and may include personality disorder, anxiety, schizophrenia and bipolar affective disorder.

Research indicates that mental disability usually arises from genes or environmental factors, or an intersection of both.
Mental disabilities may also arise among people when they have serious financial problems, or among people who live in areas that are characterised with a lot of violence and crime among other things.

The outward symptoms of mental disability often manifest in a person’s behaviour. The person may either be withdrawn or extremely quiet, the person may have great anxiety, burst into tears or have outbursts of anger. Persons with mental disability do not show symptoms all the time, but when episodes of mental relapse happen, disruptions may occur in school work or employment.

If people get help at an early stage, such people may either get over mental disability or they may learn constructive ways of living with the disability and be able to acquire education, and sustain employment, whilst they adhere to therapy and consistently take their medication.

Positive coping strategies include talking about problems and exercising, destructive strategies include drinking alcohol and taking drugs. A person with a mental disability may also struggle to concentrate, and such inability can be caused by the type of medication that the person takes.

The side effects of such medication may also include headaches, confusion and weight gain, which arises from the fact that some persons who have mental disability tend to eat a lot. That is so because the person may feel worthless and powerless, so eating may be a way of feeling in control.

Physical disability
Physical disability is an impairment which limits the function of part of a body’s physical function, resulting in a person being limited in carrying out the functions that they would otherwise have been able to do had they not been disabled.
Physical disability may present challenges with sitting or standing, walking or using one’s hands.
The causes of physical disability are many, some persons are born with physical disability through conditions that are present at birth such as spina bifida. Spina bifida is a birth defect which occurs when the bones of the spine do not form properly around part of a baby’s spinal cord.

Some people acquire physical disability later on in life through for example, accidents, diseases and violence.  The most common types of physical disability are spinal cord injury, cerebral palsy, acquired brain injury and sensory impairments. People with physical disability may use assistive devices such as wheelchairs, crutches, and scooters to enhance their mobility, hearing aids can improve hearing ability.

Way forward
No one is immune from disability and as Garland-Thompson says: “Most of us will move in and out of disability in our lifetimes, whether we do so through illness, an injury or merely the process of aging.” Yet even talking about disability may not be easy for some people. When disability occurs next door, people often think “it’s for them, not for us” but the earlier we start learning about disability the better; it can happen to anyone at any time.

Dr Christine Peta is a public healthcare practitioner who, among other qualifications, holds a PhD in Disability Studies. Be part of the international debate on how best to nurture a society which is more accessible, supportive and inclusive of disabled people. Partner with Disability Centre for Africa (DCFA) on dcfafrica@gmail.com.

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Portipha Chabvuta
Outstanding leaders are actuated by ambition.

They are people of distinction, energy and self-sacrifice. They are altruists who, for the sake of their nations, forgo many pleasures and subdue their own passions.

When one considers this, it then makes sense why we speak of President Mugabe as an outstanding leader.

It is not strange for a nonagenarian to be decrepit in body and deficient mentally. But not President Mugabe.

They may not say it publicly, but even his enemies speak in awe when confronted by President Mugabe’s ringing intelligence and profundity.

It is fixity, purpose and unrelenting obstinacy which characterise our President.

His grim struggles with colonialism left undeletable imprints on the minds of many while his leadership and support have given impetus to the Second and Third Chimurengas.

President Mugabe has a reputation of high integrity, sound judgment and untiring zeal in the service of Zimbabwe.

He is the interpreter of the tears of the people and woes of the proletariat.

Most politicians of today are money-driven, use artful ruses to amass wealth, and all they do is for self-aggrandisement.

But our President, devoid of any inclination of self-centredness or pursuit of pecuniary gains, has made himself the friend of the poor.

His cherished ideal is that all African nations acquire political freedom and economic independence, which, Zimbabweans are starting to enjoy.

Zimbabweans owe their Independence to his indomitable will, undaunted perseverance, imperishable power of mind and unquenchable thirsty for freedom of President Mugabe.

Though at one time incarcerated, he made a firm resolve to devote his life to the needs of his people with his very life.

He acted boldly, courageously and intrepidly against the exploitation and subjugation of his people.

During the liberation war when the enemy put him in prison, they thought they had silenced his ideas and shackled his resolve.

Paradoxically, those years strengthened his character and enriched his mind.

When he came out, he continued the struggle with greater will, becoming a builder of our Independence. Despite of all the persecution and enervating political environment, he stoically led the struggle.

When his cherished dream of a free people and country was established in 1980, his first priority was directed to education.

He, as an intellectual, understood that lack of education was an impediment to both individual and national success.

His Government built many schools in a war-ravaged nation to ensure that the poor were part of nation-building. We also witnessed the construction of a number of colleges and universities throughout the country.

The health sector was also promoted in such a way that many clinics and hospitals were built.

Boreholes were drilled countrywide to provide clean water, and blair toilets rolled out to provide sanitation to rural communities.

Because of these improvements we witnessed a significant decline in mortality rate.

To curtail the spread of an emerging epidemic, President Mugabe’s Government pushed to involve every citizen in the war against HIV and Aids.

That is how we saw the Aids Levy being instituted, and the experts will tell you what a massive impact that has had on reducing the prevalence of the pandemic.

Quite importantly, in 1997 President Mugabe sought to address the unequal distribution of land, since a few had benefited from the initial distribution programme conducted in the early 1980s.

Under the terms and conditions of the agreement at Lancaster House and the 1980 constitution, President Mugabe and his Government were obliged to wait for a set time before touching commercial land.

Nothing much could be done to plight of the land-hungry peasants.

The British and the Americans had said they would compensate their kith and kin when the time came.

And so in 1997 Zimbabwe found itself eager to appease land hunger at a time that the British were going for a general election.

The Conservatives lost to Labour, and the then new British prime minister, Tony Blair blatantly repudiated the agreement.

If they thought this would stymie our President, they were in for a rude awakening.

In the same manner that he emerged from a decade of colonial incarceration, President Mugabe rallied himself and prepared for the next logical phase of the independence project.

He called for and organised the Land Donor Conference in September 1998.

All stakeholders — who included Government traditional chiefs, the mainly white Zimbabwe Commercial Farmers Union, the World bank and IMF, United Nations representatives, and officials from South Africa, Britain, the United States and other countries — gathered in Harare in a bid to secure both land and funds to enable Zimbabwe to carry long-waited land reforms.

But some stakeholders had other plans.

They worked hard to stall land reforms, and when it became clear our President would not abandon the agenda, they created their puppet.

So in 2000 we saw the Western-sponsored MDC working rigorously to stop land reforms via a new constitution — and the enemy thought they had at last silenced Robert Gabriel Mugabe.

It seems they have never learnt the lesson: President Mugabe’s resolve is double the strength of the challenge faced.

In the face of rapacious power, of unrepentant colonialism, he initiated a Fast-Track Land Reform Programme.

The onslaught was brutal — economic sanctions, propaganda and outright sabotage.

But look at him today. He stands proud and tall, ready for another election, the leader of a free nation.

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Last Saturday Zimbabwe marked the 18th anniversary of the death of Vice-President Dr Joshua Nkomo. Tinashe Farawo spoke to a close security detail of the late Father Zimbabwe. Due to the nature of his profession, we publish his remarks under a pseudonym.

Cde Hondo Yeminda
In 1977 I was transferred to work at Dr Nkomo’s house in exile, with his nephew Newsreel in charge of security.

It was during my assignment that I got to find out that he was a committed family man.

During my stint, Father Zimbabwe lost a close family member. He confided his fears of losing another family member to Rhodesians forces, especially after losing a step-brother in the mid 1970s.

Dr Nkomo did not want anything happening to Newsreel, his nephew.

I remember that after Independence in 1980, one of Umdala Wethu’s mission was to go to his rural home where his parents are buried.

He slept in the small round hut like any other villager.

He renovated his house in Pelandaba, Bulawayo and personally took charge of redoing the kitchen for his wife, Mama Mafuyana.

Dr Nkomo always said that was the least he could do for her because she had raised their children alone and Mama Mafuyana deserved the best.

His wife did not want to move from Pelandaba, where most people visited.

The same was with Dr Nkomo’s house in Highfield which was also another meeting place for people from all over the country.

Hence he got his family a private house in Gunhill in Harare where he would have quality time with them.

Dr Nkomo also personally started Blue Lagoon, a small business for the family. He spent his private time at Makwe, a farm in Matebeleland South, enjoying farming with his wife. The man also had a thriving dairy farm in Harare South.

These were his family enterprises.

Dr Nkomo usually spent much time at Nijo Motel in Harare and Mguza projects to mention a few. These were things he enjoyed doing outside of political work.

He always referred to President Mugabe by his first name, but with respect.

Umdala Wethu respected President Mugabe’s attempt to reconcile the nation after elections in 1980, and said “we had fought, people had died so that the people of Zimbabwe could rule themselves. What we had failed to win was Government by our own party, but we should be happy that our colleagues during the liberation war won”.

Father Zimbabwe declined the offer for him to be ceremonial President of the new Zimbabwe and accepted to be a minister.

It is a result of such selflessness that I view Dr Nkomo as a peacemaker, a humble giant who wanted the best for this country.

His views on land was the reorganisation of the people’s way of living both in urban and rural areas.

The late Vice-President’s guidelines were to acquire commercial farms for use by those in communal areas, side-by-side with commercial farmers; that the acquired land for resettlement be used collectively by forming co-operatives, which must be non-racial and non-political.

He hoped that villages coming out of this reorganisation would eventually grow into towns.

Dr Nkomo said this would create the growth of commerce and industry in the villages, generating jobs outside urban areas.

A memorable moment I spent with him was in February 1982 when, in disguise, I took him to Bulawayo from Harare after his failed attempt to meet Prime Minister Mugabe.

In January 1981, Joshua Nkomo was removed from Minister of Home Affairs to Minister of Public Service.

He called for a Zapu central committee meeting, which wanted him to resign but he highlighted the unrest that might arise within Zipra, and convinced his colleagues that it was necessary for him to stay.

The Prime Minister then granted him the post of Minister Without Portfolio assisting the Prime Minister on Defence and Public service and to remain a member of the Cabinet Committee on Security.

In February 1981 fighting between Zanla and Zipra broke out.

Full-scale fighting broke out at Entumbane, the site of previous fighting, where Zanla and Zipra assembly points had been moved.

To stop the fighting Joshua Nkomo literally took over the Brady Barracks Command Centre.

Joshua Nkomo went to Gwayi River Mine Camp where the main Zipra regular army was encamped and told them that it was no longer necessary to keep them as an organised army.

It was not until towards the end of December 1981 that the final dispersal of Zipra fighters at Gwayi took place. They were deeply disillusioned, their future was empty after failing to find places in Zimbabwe’s security forces. At least 3 000 were refusing to leave.

Brigadier-General Mike Reynolds was in charged Gwayi. He asked the late Vice-President Joshua Nkomo to help in persuading the men to leave. We drove to Gwayi River Camp where he told them that it was time to go to their respective homes.

I think what made him tick was to give leadership.

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The following are the relevant aspects of historically revisionist “interview” that Professor Jonathan Moyo granted to the private media as published last week.

***
Prof Jonathan Moyo
In 1975 I was in high school and nowhere near Mgagao as they allege.

I went to Mgagao in mid-June 1976 as part of a contingent that was ferried in the Organisation of African Unity trucks from the Liberation Centre in Kamwala, Lusaka.

I got ill on the way and arrived in Mgagao mid-June 1976 when I could hardly walk or sit.

One of the OAU officers put me on a bed which, it later turned out, belonged to one of the camp commanders who — on his return from wherever he had been — was so incensed to find me on his bed that he picked me up and threw me down like a stone.

I screamed like a baby and the OAU officer who had left me on that bed came to my rescue. Later that night I learnt that some two or so weeks earlier on June 6 1976 there had been a massacre of Ndebele speaking Zipra cadres at Mgagao.

Because I did not know any Shona then, I feared for my life purely on account of what I was hearing. I pleaded with the OAU officer to take me to a hospital.

The next day he and a Tanzanian army officer took me for treatment at Iringa, which was the nearest town to Mgagao.

I was in Mgagao for no more than 24 hours. In Iringa, I pleaded with the OAU officer not to return me to Mgagao.

. . . The OAU army officer and his colleagues from the Tanzanian army asked if they should take me to Morogoro, a Zipra camp and I wailed in protest and pleaded to be returned to the Liberation Centre in Lusaka.

After multiple interrogations by different officers I was handed over to the Tanzanian police who escorted me to the Tunduma border with Zambia where I was handed over to Zambian police who did their own interrogations before escorting me to police headquarters in Lusaka where I was subjected to further intense interrogations before being handed over to the Liberation Centre in Lusaka where I chronicled my 24 hour Mgagao ordeal of June 1976.

After a month, I was redeployed back to Tanzania with a new contingent of comrades first to Kibaha and then to Mwananyamala holding camp where I learnt my Shona.

I remained in that camp until February 1977 when I was assigned to assist with organisation for Festac 77 which was held in Lagos, Nigeria.

I first met Dr David Parirenyatwa there, he was a student.

After Festac, I was sent to train as a radio producer at the All Africa Council of Churches Communications Centre in Nairobi, Kenya where my lecturers included Oliver Chimenya and Lucas Chideya.

After that course, I was earmarked for deployment in Uganda to broadcast to Zimbabwe when the UNDP facilitated my travel to the US in November 1977 to complete my high school.

During that time I worked at the Zanu office in New York under the late Tirivafi Kangai, who was the party’s representative in America, and the late Edison Shirihuru until I started my undergraduate study at the University of Southern California in September 1978.

So I was at Mgagao for no more than 24 hours, not in 1975 but in 1976 before I went to America in late 1977.

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Teddie Bepete
The need for ideological training for political party members is imperative. Our future can only be guaranteed by leaders with firm ideological trappings.

The untrammelled evils of slavery and colonialism, which in our Zimbabwe we only dispensed after much blood had been lost and so much pain endured, taught us that unity is the key to the sustenance of sovereignty and the success of revolutionary initiatives.

Remember that the story of the liberation struggle was authored on the page of Marxism-Leninism, an ideology that was blended with Maoism.

We became captive of Communist ideology, not simply because we were obtaining military aid from China and Russia, but because these revolutionary nations were — through their foreign policy — espousing a philosophy that appealed to our woes.

One observer once said, ‘’If you want to walk into the future, you must first walk into the past.’’

The sanctity of the founding ideals of our national struggle can only be preserved and perpetuated through education. The future can only be reached if the journey starts by treasuring the merits of our ancestors whose lasting physical-intellectual architecture, like Great Zimbabwe, has traversed history.

It should never be forgotten that a people’s history can never be portrayed in better terms by aliens. Its bearers carry that burden and that honour.

Burkinabe revolutionary Tomas Sankara taught us to uphold our indigenous experience when he articulated that, “We must learn to live the African way. Its the only way to live in freedom and with dignity.’’

It is only us who can understand what Chimurenga is, what land reform is, what Command Agriculture is.

Which is why we need leaders who are ideologically founded and grounded.

We do not need or want leaders who have potential to betray the people’s common sense and scare away investors by sowing policy and ideological discord; who are content to live off foreign handouts instead of bumper harvests in their own country, on their own farms.

What are the commissars doing to proliferate the founding ideals? Are these the ideals they are cascading to the members?

This era of maverick, self-styled half-pint revolutionaries, no matter how erudite they may be, must end!

Resort to the rod, the Bible says. Of course I am not up for another Crusade, but I am certainly up for a restoration of ideals that excorsies political demands that have an economic Armageddon. Who will take up the rod to spare the child that is Zimbabwe?

Can students take up the rod and drill spineless professors so that they see sense? If so, let it be.

We have witnessed unprecedent abomination to the sanctity of our revolution, abomination that brings absolute desolation to this holy place we call our home.

What does history tell us? Apostasy, adultery, treachery, witchcraft, corruption were forbidden by the Chimurenga legacy. And the liberation war was won because the people stood for what was right and they obeyed the covenants of the land. Some people may say this was war-time teaching that has no relevance to today’s experience, but nothing could be further from the truth.

Once again, we must defer to the iconic Sankara, who told us that, ‘’It took the madmen of yesterday for us to be able to act with extreme clarity today.”

From this point onwards, we have to prioritise formalisation of ideological education as a country.

We will only stop having aberrant political heretics practising revolutionary adultery in the name of “progress” and “democracy” if we begin cultivating a sound ideological faculty for party leaders.

Like Ernesto “Che” Guevara taught us, and continues to teach us from the grave, ‘’The first duty of a revolutionary is to be educated.”

We have to impart the ethos of the unimaginable feat of our heroic and revolutionary predecessors for the clarity of the actions of our future generations.

The only solution to our current political and economic challenges is ideological redemption.

China has learnt that lesson, and we would do well to go to that school as well. China’s education model dates back to the Cultural Revolution. Its stability and economic prowess are a result of full-time Marxist ideology driven initiatives.

To enhance its ideological faculty, apart from a number of state-owned ideological colleges, President Xi Jinping in 2016 reiterated that ideological work in colleges should be integrated into the entire education process.

He acknowledged that higher education shoulders the main responsibility of cultivating success and successors for the socialist cause.

With correct ideological alignment our, political leaders will be able to deliver as expected. It need not be Marxism. It need not be Leninism. It need not be Maoism. It need not be capitalism, liberalism or any other ism talked of today.

It needs to be Zimbabwe-ism: a well-grounded understanding of who we are, where we came from and where we want to go.

Not for selfish gain but for our children. If we start to profoundly treasure the unique aspects of our history, the diversity of our culture and the blood-bought ethos of Chimurenga, then will we be able to reach that beautiful future. It must be remembered that at the head of the stream is where crystal clear waters are found.

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There is a common lament that Zimbabwe is in perpetual election mode, something akin to the Cheney-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz doctrine of never ending war.

It is a doctrine that has worked wonders for the United States’ economy, ensuring billions of dollars flow into the pockets of the elites and sufficient crumbs fall off the table to keep the rednecks happily ignorant.

The United States believes in never ending war as a pillar for its economy, packaging the doctrine as spreading democracy — the great experiment Thomas Jefferson waxed lyrical about.

Certain things have to be done to “protect” American “freedoms”, a certain price has to be paid for “democracy”.

In Washington’s case, the price is blood.

For Zimbabwe, the lament is also about the high cost of democracy.

Elections cost money, and we all know that money is hard to come by.

As Finance and Economic Development Minister Patrick Chinamasa — who can be unsettlingly forthright when the lawyer in him emerges from the shackles of his politician’s suit – once remarked, when an activist journalist confronted him with a self-outraged question on the cost of elections: “Democracy is expensive!”

When the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission asks for a few million bucks so that even the most uninformed of dunces can have an equal say in the country’s future, there are loud howls.

In the 2017 National Budget, Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa gave the electoral body about US$10 million.

ZEC — like a little Oliver Twist — wanted more, something closer to US$60 million.

After all, there is an election coming round next year and preparations have to be made.

According to 2015 data from the National Institute for Legislative Studies, the United States spent US$7 billion on its 2012 polls, Kenya spent US$427 million that year.

Ok, those countries are far larger than Zimbabwe and their economies are on another plane so comparison is not the point here; it’s just illustrative data, right?

Well, the institute estimates that Zimbabwe spent US$132,5 million on the 2013 harmonised elections, the polls that ended the inclusive Government, obliterated the opposition, and delivered a landslide to President Mugabe and Zanu-PF.

That figure, theoretically, translated to a spend of US$22 per voter.

The highest spend-per-voter in Southern Africa is found in Botswana (US$28 in 2006), while South Africa reportedly spends about US$8 per voter.

We think it is an investment worth making, an investment in democracy that comes at a cost far lower than that of our American friends.

Ours was blood-bought 37 years ago, we no longer have to pay that price.

All we have to do now is shell out some cash and our wise men and dunces can elect their wise men and dunces.

So while others may say Zimbabwe is perpetually in election mode, we beg to differ.

Zimbabweans love their politics. They can seamlessly move from a conversation about Dynamos to one about biometric voter registration.

Which is why we ask that the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission be sufficiently resourced as the country heads to the 2018 harmonised elections.

It may seem the call is coming rather early, but that is because we believe in meticulous preparation being one of the bedrocks of sound outcomes.

Look what meticulous preparation has done for agriculture this past summer season.

Are we not reaping the dividend of planning and investment in the smiles on our farmers’ faces and the balances in their bank accounts?

There is much work that the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission needs to do in terms of voter education, voter registration, acquisition of materials and equipment, planning for ward-based polling stations and the million other things that the fine men and women at the institution need to do ahead of voting day.

It is in the State’s best interest to be well prepared so as to stave off the usual accusations from the usual quarters about an ill-planned election — the same quarters that grumble about the cost of democracy.

A well-planned election contributes to electoral legitimacy, which in turn contributes to stability and investor/business confidence.

Which makes it an investment well worth making.

There is no cash price that can be higher than the blood that was already paid to buy democracy in 1980.

Let’s do ourselves a favour and pay that cash price.

2,085 total views, 1,688 views today

Air Marshall Perrance Shiri
Nyaya yaanotaura kuti akaenda ku Liberation Centre after he left Mgagao; the fact is Zanu ne Zanla leadership dzanga dzasungwa neZambian government following the death ya VaChitepo.

Mind you, death ya VaChitepo followed right on the heels ye Badza rebellion, saka it was alleged kuti makaita sei ana Badza? Makauraya VaChitepo.

Saka the entire leadership yanga iri incarcerated.

Ku military the only people vanga vari senior vanga vasara panga paina VaMujuru, vanga vari member ye High Command; Elias Hondo, anga ari ku Mozambique; then Dzinashe Machingura, anga ari ku Tanzania, who had just been promoted into the High Command.

Iye Elias Hondo had just been promoted into the High Command, VaMujuru had also just been promoted, na James Nyikadzino had just been promoted.

Vese vanga vari ku Tanzania or ku Mozambique. Ku Zambia ku Liberation Centre kwanga kusina munhu we Zanla.

Also read:

• ‘Stop your lies, Prof!’
• What he had said in the ‘interview’

And marelations had been severed by the Zambian government.

You should understand kuti panga pauya vana Sithole na Muzoerwa, in the context ye ANC yavo yanga yakonzerwa nema Frontline States kuti be united under Muzorewa, kwakagadzirwa a military wing ye ANC yainzi ZLC, Zimbabwe Liberation Council.

Ma leader acho anga ari Noel Mukono, Simpson Mutambanengwe, naana John Gwitira, uyu akunzi Gwindingwi.

If you read the Mgagao Declaration, one of the contentious issues raised was query yekuti why was Sithole taking on board rebels, people considered as rebels, ne Zanla; people who had been associated with the Badza-Nhari rebellion and making them part of the leadership ye ZLC, at the expense of people who had stood by him ari mujeri?

So those are the people who were considered as leadership ye Zanu ku Zambia but were not recognised ne Zanla and the majority. They were recognised by Sithole, who had no army at that point.

Then nyaya yekutaura kuti ndakaenda ku Mgagao ndikanorwara ndikaiswa pamubhedha weumwe shefu.

Chekutanga, time yaari kutaura, arikuti after June 1976, hakuna reinforcement kana trainee yakauya ku Tanzania during that time. Kwanga kusina.

Two, paiuya ma trainees or even vanga vachibuda vachienda ku (war) front, vaisvikira pa parade ground. Nearest place to the parade was hospital ye Zanla.

Dai paine munhu aita medical problem, one would have been rushed to the hospital yeipapo.

Dzimba dzaigara ma officers waitoenda behind some buildings, some other structures, waitoenda mberi kuma tents aigara ma officers.

It makes no sense kuti pane munhu akamuendesa kuma tent ema officers achitadza kumuendesa pa clinic panga paine mushonga wese ne medical staff yese.

It’s not possible zvaanotaura izvozvo.

Three, he mentions two camps that he says were in Tanzania: hakuna ma camp akadaro eZanla ku Tanzania.

The camps that were there at the end of the 1960s, kuma early 1970s, kwanga kuine Chunya ne Itumbi dzakaendwa ne the older guys vakaita saana Zvinavashe, ana Joseph Khumalo uyu akunzi Colonel Muzhamba.

Ndivo vanoziva about those camps.

After those camps were disbanded, kwakasara Mgagao Camp. Then kwanga kuine transit camp yainzi Kongwa kwekuti after training vanhu vaita recuperate and then they were deployed.

But by ’76 it had been disbanded wo.

Saka the only camp which was in existence in Tanzania pa time yaari kutaura iyi was Mgagao.

End of ’76 ndopakazotanga kuendeswa vanhu ku Chingweya; Mgagao and Chingweya, those were the camps anga ariko ari eZanla.

The only other people vakaenda ku Chingweya vasikana vaya vanombotaurwa vachinzi vakenda vari 70-chakuti ku Chingweya vachitrainwa na Elias Hondo na VaMuzhamba naana Samora Machel and it was Frelimo that was doing that.

They trained and they left zvobva zvapera, then we took over Chingweya end of ’76.

So those were the camps dze Zanla idzodzo – Mgagao na Chingweya. Idzi dziri kutaurwa idzi na Jonathan didn’t exist. Ma records eZanu, eZanla, hadzimo.

Then, the person Jonathan mentions, waanoziva waanoda kuti aite third party endorsement ndi David Parirenyatwa anga ari mwana wechikoro ku Nigeria. (Laughing)

Ko iye anotadza kuti paakasvika ku Mgagao anga ari commander ndiyani, waakaonawo ndiyani? Paakaenda ku Liberation Centre, vanga variko ndivanani, vaakataurawo navo ndivanani?

Anozotaura futi about going to Kenya.

Kenya kwanga kusina Zanla camp zvachose, kana representative tanga tisina ku Kenya.

Anotaura nyaya yekuenda ku Uganda. Ku Uganda kwanga kusina Zanla camp, kwanga kusina representative. Ku Uganda kunozivinwa kuti kwakazoenda some elements recruited by Sithole, and a few vakaenda on tribal lines vaimira na Sithole vakafanana na uya Gwitira wandambotaura, John Gwitira, ana Mlambo, Gordon Mlambo, nana Jonathan ava.

Yainzi Zanla Kampala as distinguished from Zanla. We didn’t have a Zanla Mgagao, tanga tisina Zanla Chimoio, Zanla Tembwe: taive Zanla — the military wing of Zanu.

Ana Idi Amin vanga vasiri vanhu vema detail ka; kuziva kuti Zanla yaarikutora iyi ndeipi. He was the Almighty, he had no time for details. (Laughing)

Apa zvanga zvamutsana na Nyerere ka. Saka Amin aida kuita one over Nyerere by also hosting Zanu. Remember Tanzania had rejected Sithole. So Amin akatora vanhu va Sithole.

Saka these people left Uganda at some point, came back to Rhodesia, worked with Rhodesian forces as extension of Rhodesian security services, Selous Scouts, trying to mislead povo vachizviti Zanla.

If you read your history you will know about how vakazorohwa ku Gokwe. Vakashedzwa ku parade ku Gokwe after they had confused the situation going around raping and killing villagers and messing things up for their handlers. Zvakamutsana ropa.

It was military wing ya Sithole yanga iri staffed nevanhu vamwe vaanga aita mislead kuno kumusha achiti ndiri kukendesai ku training ye Zanla vakapedzisira vaendeswa ku Uganda.

It was the equivalent of Dzakutsaku, Pfumo reVanhu ya Muzoerwa. Yake Sithole yainzi Ziso reVanhu, ndiyo yanga iri ku Kampala.

So munhu ari kutaura uyu haanawo vanhu vaangataure vanga vari ma commander muma camp aarikureva aya?

Mukatarisa “Chronicles from the Second Chimurenga” yamunoita ku Sunday Mail ikoko, inonzwa vese ma comrades vachiti commander wedu anga ari ani, commissar wedu ndinhingi, instructor wedu ndiani.

Iye haana waakasangana naye? Parirenytwa mwana wechikoro ndiye waakaona chete? Adii hake kusiya mwana wechikoro? (Laughing)

Pamwe anga aina ana Chimenya, uyu aizivikanwa ku Zambia nenyaya dzekutengesa. Hanti ndiye anga ari representative we Lonrho ku Zambia. Verenga book ra Fay Chung kana ra Phyllis Johnson uone how he’s portrayed iye Chimenya.

Jonathan was at Mgagao sometime around 1975. He must have come nema reinforcements akanga auya early ’75.

Akatiza ku camp; ndobva abatwa; ndobva adzoswa ne TPDF (Tanzania People’s Defence Forces). Pasina any problem, pasina chinongedzerwa, akango tiza from the camp.

Adzoswa, akaiswa muchikaribotso for purposes of interrogation. Any security organisation would want to know kuti problem yacho chi, une different agenda here?

He was released and he disappeared again. After the Mgagao Declaration, Sithole aitwa discredited, pakabuda information yekuti mukomana uyu anga achionekwa ari mu team dza Sithole ku Dar-es-Salaam.

Hence nyaya dzake dzekuzoenda kunana Zanla Kampala idzo.

Ndiyo nyaya ya Jonso.

Air Marshall Perrance Shiri is the Commander of the Air Force of Zimbabwe. He was speaking to the Editor of The Sunday Mail, Mabasa Sasa, in Harare on July 6, 2017

11,548 total views, 9,871 views today

Teddie Bepete
We can only attain unquestionable economic freedom if we begin to produce more. We can only produce more through hard work, not aid. Period.

We have to pay attention to the wisdom of revolutionaries like Ernesto Guevara who said: “The revolution is not an apple that falls when ripe. You have to make it fall.”

The journey from poverty to affluence is never an easy one. The road to progress traverses a terrain of impediments.

It is a journey in which the prospects of reaching the destination seem remote and unattainable; something that demands us to be ever watchful and be in a perennial state of struggle.

Remain alert to the reality that because our Independence was borne from the barrel of the gun, economic stability and prosperity are never going to come on a silver platter.

These will never be handed to us by a foreign hand, but from our own labour and resources. Economic freedom means managing our economy and employing home-grown initiatives.

A country may never boost its economy if resources are not evenly distributed downwards amongst its people. A country cannot be completely free without total control of its economic foundations.

“The idea that political freedom can be preserved in the absence of economic freedom, and vice versa, is an illusion. Political freedom is the corollary of economic freedom,” said Ludwig von Mises.

Zimbabwe’s irreversible Land Reform Programme was a major step ahead towards the achievement of total freedom.

And there is need to deploy pragmatic approaches like Command Agriculture to ensure our land is productive.

We can only attain unquestionable economic freedom if we begin to produce more. We can only produce more through hard work, not aid. Period.

Aneurin Bevan taught us that, “Freedom is the by-product of economic surplus.”

Dependency is the acid that gnaws at our well-being, leaving us empty and stunted. Slavery comes with the hand that feeds you.

The “free market” has never been good for our nascent economies.

It allows the already rich to use their capital to undermine our growth and secure the continuity of a capitalism that favours them, it never allows for equitable redistribution of resources among the poor.

Aid is a goblin that sucks our national silos dry.

Many ask how we can ameliorate our economic woes. The answer is simple: it starts with you and me.

We need to have faith in ourselves and admit that the future is in our custody therefore it is the duty of every Zimbabwean to strive for national economic prosperity.

There is need to stop the evil of corruption before we start on anything else. It is our duty as Zimbabweans to start working for transformation.

A revolution can never be successful without perseverance, sacrifice and loyalty.

Real transformers can never be given to materialism but to the needs of the people. We do not wish for cannibalistic economies that feed on our sweat and blood.

There are no foreign prescriptions that can solve our issues.

In the same way that we wear different shoe sizes, our feet need shoes that are sufficiently comfortable for the situation, last the journey and are fit for purpose.

No one should force us into the wrong size.

As Government implements groundbreaking policies like Command Agriculture and the Presidential Inputs Support Scheme, the people must be informed about the utility of such policy designs and see that these are the kinds of shoes that fit our feet.

The history of developed economies informs us that at one time in the history of their evolution, some kind of command was certainly used.

Things did not just happen of their own accord.

The modern economies of America and Britain are not the result of bambazonke.

Someone sat down and came up with a shoe that fit those nations best.

There is central planning and a deliberate thrust to inform the trajectory that industry, manufacturing, transport, infrastructure, mining, agriculture and tourism must take.

Let’s get the shoe that best fits.

81 total views, 16 views today

Taurai Changwa Business Forum
TECHNOLOGY and capitalism’s answer to minimising the potentially damaging frailties of an error-prone human workforce has been increasing the influence of artificial intelligence (AI) in the production process, and this has worked to some extent.

But technology, which relies heavily on algorithms and lacks the intuitive and discretionary traits of human beings, can only do some much. This is precisely why the involvement of AI has not been as pervasive as initially thought.

It however lays bare one of the most critical failings of a human workforce: they are liable to make errors and some of these errors can be very damaging to business.

Companies can potentially lose millions of dollars each year as a result of typographical mistakes.

Experts say most often than not disasters that have created ill-will, angered entire countries and become costly operational disasters can be traced to fatal human errors. Also, as is often said, in an age of global exposure and instantaneous connectivity, errors in written communications can have a hugely negative impact on consumer perceptions and create a lasting impression of carelessness.

There are obviously countless examples.

Events on June 27 when gold prices plummeted after an erroneous order was made on the market are quite instructive.

For business, errors can sabotage a first impression, reduce credibility, compromise brand positioning and diminish reputations.

They undermine the clarity of branded messaging, create confusion, suggest poor communication skills and convey a lack of attention to detail.

Furthemore, they can result in misleading or factually inaccurate information and cause consumers to question the integrity behind offerings or the abilities of a brand they perceive as uneducated and unprofessional.

Samsung Galaxy Note 7’s disaster is one of the most notable mistakes ever made in business history.

In their drive to innovate and become market leaders, companies often push the envelope perhaps a little bit more than they ought to do.

In this case, Samsung had to stop production a couple of times and undertake extensive and expensive recalls.

And the costs were staggering. A Reuters report indicated the South Korean company could have lost more than US$17 billion. In this case, it is quite clear that apart from losing money in aborted sales, the company will also spend more in trying to repair its brand and regain trust from market that is now increasingly skeptical.

For business, trust is as valuable as currency. With hindsight, it can be concluded that it is rather better to put off selling something that is not yet ready for the market than to risk losing a fortune selling a half-baked product to the market.

This is obviously an invaluable lesson, including for local start-ups.

Most importantly, it is however important to note that it is not the end for Samsung, and admitting to their mistake was the first step to correcting their error.

Wishing the mistake away will only add to it. Those in the field of marketing often say if you have messed up on a customer order, ignoring the failure won’t make it seem less important; it will just make you look crooked.

Put simply, be straightforward. The secret lies in acknowledging the mistake. State specifically what you did and how much you regret it.

Well, it might seem trite to ask: Do we have such business people who own up in Zimbabwe, or when things go wrong we blame each other or go into hiding?

The automatic response of human nature is to jump into self-defence mode.

There is honour in resisting the urge to find somewhere to hide or someone to blame – even if it’s justified. There are always extenuating circumstances, and most of us don’t mean to err.

But all the good intentions don’t change the fact that we made a mistake.

Don’t point fingers or use circumstances to make an excuse; doing so only makes you sound like you care more about getting out of trouble than really dealing with the problem you have caused, however unintentionally. Take responsibility and deal with the problem. Always apologise when you make a mistake.

It is also of utmost importance to offer a practical way to make up for the mistake.

Once that offer has been accepted, you need to timeously follow through. Failure to do this will only add to the mistake, damaging your reputation even further.

These are all some of the low-hanging fruits that do not need any monetary investment for them to be practiced and implemented.

It is time local companies do the same as it lies at the heart of customer relations and building one’s brand equity.

Taurai Changwa is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Zimbabwe and an estate administrator with vast experience in tax, accounting, audit and corporate governance issues. He is a director of Umar & Tach Advisory and writes in his personal capacity. Feedback: tauraichangwa1@gmail.com and WhatsApp +263772374784

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Clemence Machadu Insight
Folks, you have always heard that youths are the future of this nation. But when you look at the current state of our youths, what do you see?

Howdy folks!

So it was World Youth Skills Day yesterday, an international day established by the United Nations to spotlight employability issues affecting the youths.

The day has particular relevance to Zimbabwe, which is battling the challenge of youth unemployment.

The UN notes that young people are almost three times more likely to be unemployed than adults and continuously exposed to lower quality of jobs, greater labour market inequalities; and longer and more insecure school-to-work transitions.

It also underscores that education and training are key determinants of success in the labour market.

But in Zimbabwe, it is not just an issue of education, as many young people are highly educated but failing to find employment opportunities due to low demand by the labour market.

Folks, providing youth with decent jobs is in keeping with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and SDG target 4.4 which calls for a substantial increase in the number of youth and adults who have relevant skills.

Youth represent the majority of the population in the country and they do face a myriad of other challenges, apart from unemployment — ranging from inequality, corruption, poverty, human trafficking, emigration, drug addiction as well as the HIV and Aids pandemic.

They tend to bear the brunt of all these socioeconomic ills, and that is not sustainable.

Folks, you have always heard that youths are the future of this nation. But when you look at the current state of our youths, what do you see?

We have a big role to play to safeguard a bright future for our youths by creating adequate empowerment and job creation opportunities for them, and work hard to reverse the adverse effects of youth unemployment that are already manifesting everywhere.

But to find the right solutions, we must first understand the problems and barriers to the employability of youth.

If you ask many unemployed youths what their main challenge is, they will tell you, “Handina mari ye start.”

And when you ask them what project they would do if they are to get “start”, most will tell you that, “Ndoda kuita zvekuhodha kuSouth Africa.”

Folks, it is important to capacitate our youths with relevant skills and abilities that can unlock their full potential so that they can optimally contribute to economic growth and development.

If you look into the history of our country, you will realise that every revolution of our country was championed by the youth who were determined to improve their status.

The liberation war was fought and won by the youths.

Youth of today should not be relegated to the side-lines, but should be willing to accept responsibility, before we even start talking about what government should do for them.

One reason highlighted by the UN for youth unemployment is a mismatch between the skills that youths in the economy can offer and the skills demanded of them by employers.

The world body believes that this hampers the transition to equitable and inclusive societies envisaged in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

You will also realise that many youths in the country may be degreed but their skills are not linked to what is being produced by the economy.

Most employers are really looking at workers who already know what they are doing and do not have time for training.

The way we look at the school classroom should therefore not be that different from the workplace.

The current situation requires youth who think outside the box and are proactive when it comes to identifying opportunities and taking them up with government.

Instead of blaming Government for not doing anything about your situation, is it not proper to suggest ways in which Government can work with you as teams to do something productive?

Government is a servant of the people, which is why it can be voted into or out of power.

Governments that refuse to listen to noble ideas that can improve the livelihoods of the majority, who are youths, definitely know what they will be risking.

Some of the young people of today also have this twisted mentality that money can be made easily, which is why you sometimes find them in soccer betting shops or gambling on the internet thinking they can make quick buck, when they should be concentrating on better ideas.

By the time they realise that they were chasing illusions, they would have wasted a good number of years and returned back to square one.

But it should also be noted that most young people with academic degrees have been unemployed for a long time, and are now accustomed to a new culture that has corrupted what they have learnt at school.

If you give them a job today, they are not likely to apply what they have learnt in school as their skills have become obsolete.

This is why it is important to provide them with regular refresher courses that sync them with new developments. It is critical for skills to always match with the demands of the day.

Those who are fortunate enough to get jobs after a long time of unemployment might be easily tempted to indulge in corrupt activities, thinking that they should earn money quickly in case they might lose their jobs and return to poverty again.

This is why it is crucial that youths continue to be engaged into community development programmes that keep them morally grounded.

Government should also step up efforts in improving the labour market prospects and quality of work for the youths who are often disadvantaged in the labour market. It is important for policy makers to assign priority to policies for job creation.

Folks, providing jobs in the quantity and quality that we need in the country will require more action. Government should therefore pay particular attention towards concrete policies that support employment and lift aggregate demand, while increasing incomes at the same time.

The issue of land re-distribution to accommodate youth who have agricultural skills also comes to mind.

If you look at the demographics of land ownership in the country, you will see that virtually everyone who owns agricultural land is an elderly person and the youths can only get it through inheritance.

There is need for a deliberate programme targeted at allocating land to youths to empower them.

Happy belated World Youth Skills Day!

Later folks!

167 total views, 53 views today

Darlington Musarurwa Business Editor
SOMETHING is stirring in Africa’s mining sector.

The urge to control the exploitation of Africa’s non-replenishable mineral resources and taming the appetite of exploitative multinational mining companies, like popcorn, is popping up in various mineral-rich countries.

In Tanzania, shots have since been fired; in South Africa, the brawl is well underway; and in Zambia locals are slowly finding their voices, albeit faintly for now.

But nowhere is the clash between greedy miners and government as keenly and eagerly followed as in Tanzania.

It is simply epic.

On July 10, 2017, Tanzania’s President John Magufuli announced that he had signed mining bills that have far-reaching implications to the ownership of mining ventures, mining licences and contracts, including royalties.

Essentially, apart from hiking royalties of gold, copper, platinum and silver to six percent from four percent, the new mining regime makes it mandatory for government to control 16 percent in all mining projects.

While a moratorium on issuing out new mining licences has been declared, the new law gives Arusha the right, not only to review all existing mining licences with foreign investors, but to cancel mining contracts and renegotiate new ones as well, especially for natural resources such as gas and minerals.

The screws were tightened even further.

Mining companies no longer have the right to international arbitration. Tied to that is a drive to compel all the mining entities to list on the Da res Salaam Stock Exchange in order to enable wananchi to participate.

It is also designed to improve transparency as well.

The latest interventions follow the ban on export of gold and copper concentrates in March, which was meant to push for the construction of a domestic mineral smelter.

Similarly, South Africa, it seems, is in the throes of another mining revolution.

Exactly a month ago, on June 15, Pretoria gazetted a new and reviewed mining charter which requires black South Africans to control 26 percent of mining ventures.

Tentatively, the South African government had initially angled for a 51percent threshold, but relented after resistance.

But the new law gives Black Economic Empowerment shareholders in new mining licences their shares by requiring that loans to fund their shares should be written off by the end of 10 years — the time they are expected to have full ownership.

They also have to maintain their percentage shareholding without having to put in the money to follow their rights, if the company has a rights issue.

More importantly, in what experts now effectively call a “race stamp” on share certificates, the shares can only be sold to other black shareholders.

There are other requirements as well that seek to fundamentally upend the skewed ownership structure in the mining sector.

And this benign cancer is equally catching on in neighbouring Zambia, where local contractors are now increasingly calling for a significant portion of mining contracts.

Global mining houses fear that while this phenomenon — which experts call resource nationalism —seems to be endemic, it will soon become a pandemic, with its attendant deleterious effect on global white capital(ism). It’s war.

But in Tanzania it is now “war”.

Quite clearly, a revolution is not for the sluggards, for forces that are determined to reverse it are huge.

In similar fashion to Zimbabwe’s Fast-Track Land Reform Programme, Tanzania similarly bulldozed its new mining laws through parliament with obscene haste.

The bills were signed on the very same day the Tanzanian parliament concluded its session on July 5.

One might wonder why Magufuli who, despite being known for having a short fuse, is now behaving more like Julius Malema by pushing a seemingly disruptive leftist revolutionary agenda.

Well, audit findings based on investigations done in May indicated that Arusha could have lost a jaw-dropping US$49 billion in revenue from copper and gold concentrates in the 19-year period between 1998 and 2017.

In fact, the first audit committee reviewing exports of gold and copper concentrate said last month it had found 10 times more gold in Acacia’s containers than the company had declared, including undeclared minerals such as iron and sulphur.

Does this sound familiar with our own mining sector, where train-trucks are daily transporting ore to neighbouring South Africa, where smelters, some of which are owned by the very same companies that hold interests in local mines, charge a rent for smelting the same ore they are mining here?

By the way, Acacia is Tanzania’s largest gold producer, which is controlled by Canadian-based Barrick Gold, itself considered the largest gold miner in the world.

All these figures are just conservative.

In what could turn out to be an ominous statement to mining companies, Magufuli issued out a chilling statement before setting up the audit committee.

“There are many wars that are being fought in the world, including economic wars. Therefore, I am sending you to fight this war in the mining sector,” he said.

But white capital is unabashedly cunning, and this is not surprising.

It seems that every time white capital is cornered, it has a fully-fledged infrastructure that it invokes to push back reforms that are perceived to be potentially damaging “investors”.

But who are these investors and how are they benefiting the continent.

Just in the same way the recent South African mining charter was pooh-poohed by Cadiz fund manager Peter Major as “outlandish”, the Tanzania government’s claim that it had been swindled a fortune by mining companies was derided by Investec analyst Hunter Hillcoat as “implausible”.

It is the same with “moral prefects” of capitalism in the form of the ever-eager ratings agencies such as Fitch Ratings, Moody and Standard and Poor who play “little gods” by passing judgment — on behalf of Western and European capital(s) — on the appropriateness or not of actions taken by African governments.

But the abiding faith that these institutions have towards the neo-liberal world-view is not unsurprising.

It gets disturbing when our own black intelligentsia — who ironically seem to be more competent to take over and lead the revolution in the mining sector — become ready sentries of white capital.

Maybe it is because of the expensive whisky enjoyed in plush outposts in the remote mining districts away from the prying eyes of the dirt-poor populations.

Maybe it is the hefty pay packages, some of which are drawn down as allowances in havens such as Panama.

Some local mining executives reportedly earn eye-watering amounts that top $70 000 per month.

It is this class that most often crystallises into powerful mining lobby groups — the various mining chambers — that are quick to point out, at every turn, that governments have no business in business, particularly in the mining sector.

Zimbabwe — through Mugabeism (a philosophy that fearlessly challenges both political and economic Western and European hegemony) — has been a vanguard in challenging the exploitative neo-liberal global architecture.

Resource nationalism, indeed literally, arguably first took hold in Zimbabwe.

And this is why the country, in the eyes of those who are stubbornly opposed to its determined push to address the excesses of capitalism, should not succeed, for it will harmful template to their designs.

But judging by recent events a revolution slowly but surely seems to be well underway.

Here at home, basa richigere kupera: there is need to follow through the revolution to its logical conclusion.

Ordinary Zimbabweans in fact and in deed should benefit from their own mineral resources.

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Milton Kamwendo Hunt for  Greatness
BOB Bauman, the former CEO of SmithKline Beecham, was at his inspired best when he said: “All newly-appointed chief executives should ask five key questions: What are the basic goals of the company? What is the strategy for achieving these goals?

“What are the fundamental issues facing the company? What is its culture? And is the company organised in a way to support the goals, issues and culture?”

These are important questions to raise in meetings and reflect on. These are not just for companies but for anyone.

Without clear goals, there is so much mud raising. Without a strategy, there is just gambling with time.

Basic goals

Without some basic goals, activity has no meaning. It has been said time and again that if you aim at nothing, you will hit it 100 percent of the time.

This was before my uncle shared with me a story from his school days when he was doing Standard 4.

He said his favourite teacher used to say, “Aim for the sun, and you will land on the moon; aim for the moon and you will land on the nearby mountain.”

He would go on: “Aim for the nearby mountain and you will land on the nearby tree. If you aim for the tree, you will hit the nearest rock.”

Such is the power of goals.

They do not have to be many. If you have many goals, sift through them, identify a few that really mean something to you and then pursue these basic goals with passion and focus.

Hunt for your goals daily.

Wake up, not just because you have been sleeping for so long that your back is aching: Wake up to some definite action, with clear goals in mind.

Hesitating to commit

There will be obstacles in the way, there will be delays perhaps. But with a clear goal you will likely move faster than someone without a goal. A delay is not a denial. A detour is not a journey’s end.

Goals will always prompt you to give your best.

You do not have the luxury of being half-hearted and hesitant. You do not have the luxury of living as though you are rehearsing for the big life.

This moment is your big life and perhaps the best moment. It is as real as any other that you may wish for or will ever face and live through.

At times it will feel as though you are punching above your weight, keep punching.

Leave no stone unturned in pursuing your goals. Stop being lazy and start taking action. Stop hesitating and start pursuing goals that matter.

Face your mountain

Pursuing goals is like facing and climbing mountains.

Before you climb the mountain, it may look too imposing and challenging. The climb will challenge your stamina and your commitment, but it is a worthy challenge. That is why mountain climbers are always looking for another mountain to climb.

The best way to climb a mountain is to climb it! The best way to pursue a goal is to pursue it.

There is magic in definite goals and committed action. There is power in beginnings. Do not look down on your small steps because you gather momentum as you move forward.

You will not create any momentum standing still. Cross the line, declare your intention, enter the ring, sign up, make the order, enrol, buy the ticket, do something and stop hesitating.

Take the plunge.

The best way to begin is by beginning. This was echoed by the great mountain climber, WH Murray.

The Climber, Climbed

William Hutchison Murray (March 18, 1913–March 19, 1996) was a Scottish mountaineer and writer who did most of his climbing before World War II.

Mountain climbing is not a solo sport. Mountain climbers know other mountain climbers with whom they climb.

So it is with goal getting. When you start pursuing great and exciting goals, you find yourself meeting and connecting with others who are also pursuing similar goals.

If you are pursuing nothing worthwhile, you likely also find others to complain and commiserate with.

In the case of Murray, he is known to have done most of his climbing with, JHB Bell, who was slightly older than him.

Pursuing goals is about locating kindred souls and networking with others who are going somewhere and not in park-mode.

During the World War, Murray served in the Middle East and was captured in June 1942 by the German army. He spent three years in prisoner of war camps in Italy, Germany and Czechoslovakia.

Whatever you face today, regardless of how big it may be, should never tempt you to lose focus on your goal.

Pre-play your goals in your mind and keep focused.

Live in your destinations in your mind, even if you still have great distances to traverse. No challenge lasts forever. Do not wait for the perfect moment because this very moment is your moment of opportunity.

While imprisoned, Murray, the mountain climber, wrote a book entitled “Mountaineering in Scotland”.

Never complain of circumstances or lack of resources, but use what you have.

He wrote the first draft of the book on the only paper that was available to him. This was rough toilet paper.

Looking for perfection is a sophisticated form of laziness.

After all his efforts to keep the work concealed, the Gestapo found and destroyed his manuscript. He was disappointed as you would expect.

You would be justified to expect that after this he would just give up and start hurling insults and curses at his jailers.

Not Murray.

He knew what all goal crusaders know, that whoever you blame for your circumstances, you empower to inflict more misery on you.

Do not give up because you faced a loss or challenge. Your failures of yesterday should not taint your record of tomorrow. You failed yesterday but you still have today and tomorrow.

Murray knew better than to give up on his goal. To the incredulity of fellow prisoners, his response was to start again.

Whatever you do is a risk, but the greatest of all risks is to risk nothing. The greatest of all risks is to pursue nothing, do nothing and be nothing. It is better to try something and fail than to succeed at clever but lazy explanations.

Despite the risk of another loss and the poor prison conditions and diet, Murray persisted. His physical condition became so poor from the punishing diet that he believed he would never climb again.

Do not give up or despair. Keep your hope alive. Keep pursuing great things and keep your goals alive.

Murray’s rewritten work was finally published in 1947 and was followed by the sequel, “Undiscovered Scotland” in 1951.

The goals that you pursue will inspire more people than you know.

Murray’s works concentrated on his goal and passion — the Scottish winter climbing — and were widely credited with helping to inspire the sport’s post-war renaissance.

What you do today will inspire many tomorrow. Your battles and struggles may seem private, but your victories will be of public value.

Perhaps the greatest gift Murray left to all that would pursue greatness after him is at the beginning his book, “The Scottish Himalayan Expedition” where he writes: “ . . . but when I said that nothing had been done I erred in one important matter.

“We had definitely committed ourselves and were halfway out of our ruts. We had put down our passage money — booked a sailing to Bombay. This may sound too simple, but is great in consequence. Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness.

“Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred.

“A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way.

“I learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplets: ‘Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!”

That passage is worth re-reading at least 100 times. Begin and everything also starts moving. Take the simple step that looks feasible to you now. Clarify your goals and commit. Factor in the issues that you are facing and face them.

Your culture must be one of doing, taking action and not just watching, talking, intending and fretting.

Execution is not what you talk about but what you do. Take action, commit and Providence will also move too. Crystallise your goals and trigger the action.

Set your goals and take action to your greatness.

Milton Kamwendo is a leading international transformational and motivational speaker, author and coach. He is a cutting strategy, innovation, team-building and leadership facilitator, whose life purpose is to inspire greatness. Feedback: mkamwendo@gmail.com, Twitter @MiltonKamwendo, and WhatsApp +263772422634.

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Vp Phelekezela Mphoko
I first met Father Zimbabwe, Dr Joshua Nkomo, when I was a child in 1952; I was 12-years-old then.

I used to work with my uncle Aaron Dhlomo, commonly known as Ndabambi. They worked together at Rhodesia Railways, so I used to visit my father, my uncle, and then that is when I first met the Old Man.

To me, Dr Nkomo was like a parent, not a politician or trade unionist, because he was very close to my uncle.

I was going to school, and after finishing my course in 1960, I came back to Bulawayo and that time it was NDP and under NDP it was Mawema who was president.

When Zapu came in I also met him; we were not very close at that time.

We later (became) closer when I became one of his bodyguards along with Albert Nxele, Walter Mbambo, Winston and some other guys from Harare.

(One of them) Abraham used to say, “Follow your leader like a shadow.”We were bodyguards at that time and that is when we started moving with the Old Man during the time of Zapu.

When Zapu was banned, he went to Semukwe, that is where he was restricted.

I was now working at Dunlop. At Dunlop I started a collecting some money for Dr Nkomo and that is when the management identified me as politically-minded. So the money we collected we gave it to a certain Charles Nyathi who would take it to Semukwe. I also went to Semukwe to see the Old Man.

When he came out of restriction that is when we travelled extensively as bodyguards of the Old Man.

The drivers included Boniface Malowa Gumbo, uncle to the President, and Fibian, and quite a number of people who were bodyguards, up to the time we went to Cold Comfort Farm.

At Cold Comfort Farm it was agreed that we should now pursue an armed struggle. (There was) a special affairs committee led by James Chikerema, including Marembo and somebody else whose name I have forgotten, who were supposed to be leaders of that organisation. Now, I was personally recruited by the Old Man himself.

All of his bodyguards, Albert Nxele, Walter Mbambo, Sam Dumaza, Edward Mzwazwa, myself and then Peter Madlela, we were directly recruited by the leader, Joshua Nkomo.

Specifically in my case he came home. On the night of the 4th of April we were supposed to leave Bulawayo and we left on that day in 1964; the six of us.

So we went to board a train in Luveve for Northern Rhodesia and that was the last time I saw the Old Man.

We went for the military training and after that we came back to form the military wing of Zapu where in 1965 I would become chief of logistics; Ambrose was in charge of training; Abraham Nkiwane was in charge of transport — transporting weapons between Lusaka and Tanzania; and Godwin Buche became part of the training with Walter Mbambo; Robson Manyiwa was the chief-of-staff and Akim Ndlovu was the commander.

That was the first military establishment of Zapu.
Then came 1965, I remember very well that is when Buche and myself crossed into Rhodesia (with the help of) the local fisherman.

There was one we used to call Shorty and we bought a boat for two pounds.
We had by then established the crossing points.

So, that was 1965; then 1966 we started having people coming for training.
The ‘65 group was the one already in Zambia; the 1966 group is the one which included Tshinga Dube, David Moyo and other people.

But I was already in the command and in charge of logistics.
Then 1967, we had a joint military command which had then been established in 1966 with the ANC.

So, in the joint military command, I was in charge of logistics, co-chief of logistics with Masondo from the ANC and there was Akim who was the commander and his counterpart was Joe Modise.

Around May-June 1967, we were preparing for the Wankie operations.

I was commander of combined logistics and became commander of Nkomo Camp and then I moved to Danang which was at Luthuli Camp.

I commanded the joint rehearsal in preparation for the Wankie operation, I was the commander deputised by Jexe, an ANC guy.

So, after the training, which was one month, you talk a month’s rehearsal, it was very hectic. Joe Modise was one of the people in the camp, Chris Hani and John Dube were also from our side.

The joint training at Luthuli base was under my command.

After deploying for the Wankie operations, we went to Sipolilo. Sipolilo was also a joint military host and deployment for the ANC and us.

The plan was very ambitious.

We were supposed to cross the fighters under the command of Moffat Hadebe then the commissar was Masuku and other ANC comrades.

So we were supposed to cross the comrades which we did, then we crossed the weapons, then the donkeys for transport and the finally the Land Rover.

We created a raft with eight drums each side and it was very big and could sustain that weight. I think we had over 100 boxes of weapons, ammunition, medication and other logistical items.

Our plan was to cross the raft and tie it on the other side, deploy a platoon across, another platoon remaining on the Zambian side.
Once the raft had crossed, they would pull it back.

Unfortunately the rope was so big as the platoon went deeper into the water, the rope started sagging and it went into the water and became very heavy.

As it was now almost at the centre of the river where the current was powerful, and with a very heavy rope which was now wet, it sunk along with everything.

The seven guys who were rowing also fell in the water but they managed to survive; but all our equipment sunk there and I believe that equipment is still there up to today.

So we proceeded, the guys had their weapons — personal issues — and we crossed into Sipolilo.

There were four commanders; Abraham Nkiwane, Dumiso Dabengwa, Joe Modise and myself. We operated in Sipolilo and worked with the people, we were very close to the villagers.

Then we came back after almost a month, it was now 1968.

When they (Dr Nkomo and other leaders) were released in 1974, I remember I was in Czechoslovakia with President Sam Nujoma attending a World Peace Council. They were released and they went to Lusaka.

I went to see the Old Man and it was after a long time he remembered me; I was still very slim those days.

And then from there he was going in and out frequently.

One of the most important activities that took place at that time in 1974 when the leaders were there under the leadership of Muzorewa’s UNC and then from there we went to Victoria Falls for peace talks on the bridge together with South Africa and Zambia. Mozambique sent a delegation it was led by Monteiro; Tanzania as well.

At that time Zanu was having a lot of problems; in fact it was the time the leaders had been arrested.

Now the Old Man was there at Victoria Falls together with others, then the negotiations continued. They went back to Rhodesia because the discussions had to go to their logical end.

From there we went to Mozambique under Zipa.

What I remember is that in Mozambique it was different from when we were in Zambia. We first formed our Joint Military Command where we were serving together with Josiah Tongogara; Mangena was chief-of-staff, Tongogara was chief of operations, I was chief of logistics, Mataure was in charge of training, Munyanyi was in charge of intelligence, Robson Manyika was political commissar.

That is the command where we served with Josiah Tongogara.

The difference with the joint command of before was, it was led by political leaders — Jason Moyo and Herbert Chitepo where the leaders at the time.

When we moved to Mozambique in 1975 for the Zipa command the most senior person from Zanla was Webster Gwauya, who was a member of the Central Committee, the rest were junior people; very junior. Some had never had the opportunity of leading.

Rex Nhongo was among them, but had not been a leader in the true sense and that is why we had serious problems within the movement.

There were quite a number of things which happened; we don’t rule out infiltration because when the leadership of Zanu was not there people were just flocking both to us and Zanu.

But in our case at least we were there as leaders, we could screen: but what about Zanla where there was nobody?

That is why there was so much commotion — there was no leader.

We were the summit: President Mugabe was not there, Mudhara Joshua was not there, nobody was there because it was an intention by others for different purposes.

However, we went to Mozambique to try and rescue Zanu from collapse, in the process we had serious problems.

So the group of people who came after the closure of the border on the 3rd of February 1976 when President Samora Machel closed that border were the commanders.

That same day after addressing us, all Zipra cadres who had come to rescue Zipa were arrested by the Mozambicans on the instigation of Zanla comrades.

They were all sent to Tete, including Thomas Ngwenya, who is making so much noise about himself as if he was above us.

I sent my wife to see them in Tete; she travelled all the way to Chimoio. When she got to Chimoi she used her brother who was in the army to send the communication to those people who were there.

Then from there in 1976 sometime in August, I was arrested myself with the instigation of these guys — Zanla. I was arrested and thrown into a prison at an island.

My wife is the one who did the best and got me released.

My arrest coincided with the time when the British wanted to help the Geneva talks. But they took my car and they wanted to kidnap my wife only to discover she was Mozambican although she spoke Zulu.

When I was released, in the command General Odala was my counterpart from the government — he was in charge of logistics, I was in charge of logistics for Zipa.

Under my command I got a number of guys including Mhaka, Brig Kanhanga who were under my command for logistics.

All the materials which we got was kept under Frelimo, because you couldn’t keep weapons in a foreign country.

When I was released from prison I stayed at Kadoso Hotel, President Mugabe also came and we stayed together for three months at Kadoso Hotel.

The president was in room 21 and I was in room 19 and we were there together for three months before we were allocated houses. That was the time when we went to Tanzania to dismantle Zipa.

We flew together with the President to Tanzania.

The President was there, the Old Man was there, Muzorewa was there, and that was the first Frontline States meeting attended by President Augustino Neto of Angola.

The decision was to be made that the leadership whether it is Zipa or the leaders, who would go to Geneva. There was a heated argument.

There were people like Dzino who were challenging the leaders, that the leadership of Zimbabwe was not a monopoly.

It was finally resolved that leaders come back to their leadership positions and then the young fellows like Dzino and others were supposed to fall under the leadership.

They argued until they got arrested.

But the most critical point is that I talked to Dr Nkomo and told him that the situation in Mozambique was hostile because Frelimo was close to Zanu and, yes, I had been arrested.

Then the Old Man said to me: “No one owns anybody. If somebody can own somebody then you can also own that somebody. Go back to Mozambique and make sure that that situation favours you and favours us.”

I went back to Mozambique; that is when I became a representative of Zapu after the collapse of Zipa.

In Mozambique I had a responsibility to co-ordinate President Mugabe as leader of Zanu and president Nkomo as leader of Zapu. I also had the responsibility to co-ordinate president Nkomo as leader of Zapu and President Samora Machel.

Those were the roles which I had.

And during my stay there from 1975 up to 1980 we had so many delegations from Lusaka, the Old Man coming with his delegations all the time and I had all those years to develop a relationship with the Old Man.

The biggest lesson I learnt from the Old Man is that nobody owns anybody. One other thing is the biggest lesson also is that Old Man Josh was not a tribalist, never!

That is one thing I learnt from him. He was allergic to tribalism.

You can see by his own fellow leaders in Zapu, there was himself as the president, Josiah Chinamano, Joseph Msika, Samuel Munodawafa, Aaron Jirira, Dan Madzimbamuto, Willie Musarurwa, George Silundika, Edward Ndlovhu and others.

The majority of the people were all from Mashonaland; so the fact that Zapu was a Ndebele outfit is a fallacy of the Rhodesians.

He was a unifier and he worked under anybody including Muzorewa. Muzorewa felt so big and fired Nkomo at one time and Nyerere reprimanded him.

So those are some of the lessons I learnt from the Old Man.

A fortnight ago, Zimbabwe marked the 18th commemoration of the death of Vice-President Dr Joshua Nkomo. Our senior reporter Lincoln Towindo spoke to Vice-President Phelekezela Mphoko, on how he worked closely with the late Father Zimbabwe.

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Our Senior Reporter Lincoln Towindo last week spoke to Vice-President President Phelekezela Mphoko about his work in Government and Zanu-PF. Below is VP Mphoko in his own words

***

VP Phelekezela Mphoko

Zanu-PF has a programme which is people-oriented and the results have shown.

MDC is not talking on behalf of the people, they are emphasising on personal attacks. They have nothing to offer except to criticise.

When Government proposes programmes, they criticise because they want to benefit out of failures.

Take the example of sanctions. How can you call for sanctions, the punishment of your own people, and you want to benefit out of the suffering of your own people?

What they should do is, on certain policies we can talk and agree to say yes go ahead as a people of Zimbabwe, and where you don’t agree that is where you put up your own policies.

But you must be supporting your country.

To call for sanctions and enjoy the suffering of your people is wrong and that will make them (the opposition) fail.

They think they have an upper hand but they do not have an upper hand because Government has proved it can deliver.

People are benefiting from Zanu-PF; that is what it is going to prove during the elections, that people will vote for what they see, what they have benefited.

You cannot, if you are a beneficiary, work against your success; you can’t do that.

Our strategy is to win the election and continue helping people because we went to war to assist people.

Factionalism

Factionalism — first and foremost the President has said it and repeated it several times what he and his co-leader in the Patriotic Front Dr Joshua Nkomo agreed on.

They agreed on unity, they agreed on the land. Unity means the people of Zimbabwe are united.

Factionalists are not a product of Zanu-PF. If you see anybody promoting factionalism, he is a Rhodesian. A Zanu-PF person or a Zapu person can never talk against unity.

If you see somebody promoting factionalism that person is a Rhodesian, he has no support and is appealing to people with a different posture — ndionei, ndiboneni mina.

Factionalism will not help anybody, instead it will destroy you.

You see, what happens is that you cannot anoint yourself; you can’t do that. You have to be anointed not by some.

Go to the Bible and look at how King Solomon was appointed.

David was very sick, he was very frail and one of his sons, Adonijah, slaughtered over 50 beasts and anointed himself, assisted by Joab, who was a general in the army.

Joab and Adonijah were working together. In the meanwhile the reality happened and David installed Solomon and those who had anointed themselves failed completely.

Those are lessons you must learn.

You must learn what also happened to others during the Mzilikazi era. People decided to install Nkulumane before they had established that Mzilikazi was dead, and as a result of that it failed.

So I think it is very important that people learn from history; don’t learn from yourself because you are nothing. You can portray yourself or believe in yourself which is not correct.

Corruption

I always say tribalism is the mother of corruption and I believe very strongly that the majority of our people are very greedy.

In the liberation struggle when we were in Zambia, people’s properties we never touched.

You were obliged to take care of party property. If it is was a car, you would rather die and leave party property because it belonged to the people. The same thing when we went to Mozambique.

I tell you there was something very unique there.

It was a time of starvation hunger and so forth, but people would, if a bag of mangai, umumbu comes in, it would be distributed accordingly and nobody would unduly benefit.

That culture you have now, I don’t understand where it is coming from.

Because even the food that was there, those who were senior commanders would eat and remember the others.

But what is happening now is something I don’t understand. People want everything for themselves.

That is what breeds corruption and I can assure you, I wish we were like the Chinese or the Muslims who say if you steal they will cut your hand off; the Chinese would take you to the firing squad straight away.

But here, people have no feelings for other people.

The solution we keep on talking and have stiff penalties. But stiff penalties also are questionable. Stiff penalty, you take a man to prison and in prison he lives like a king because he has money.

We need to move away from this and the truths is that you have 76 years to live as a human being and the truth is that there is no single human being who has taken those riches into his grave.

The day you die, that moment, a lot of your things are gone, taken by others — simple as that. So you would rather start doing things for your people rather than amassing everything.

The only way corruption can end is that first and foremost let us declare our assets, let us declare assets as leaders.

Those who have crossed the line, all that they have stolen, must be taken and given to the people.

Arresting alone doesn’t help — that izinto linike abantu back — just take the things and give them to the people because it’s not yours you are now stealing from the people.

Going to jail does not help anybody, tora zvinhu udzose kune vanhu. This applies to everybody including political leaders. Even myself, of course!

He (President Mugabe) has registered an anti-corruption body, look at the structures he has created to end corruption.

Now the anti-corruption itself is now corrupt. The instrument that is supposed to take care of this problem is now corrupted.

What we should do is declare assets — everybody — and see what our people have.

What has happened is that a number of ministries have been personalised; personalised in the sense that when you move into a ministry you remove everybody in that ministry including (parastatal) board members and put your own people. Why?

If you are going into a ministry and you want continuity, you will need those people.

For checks and balances, in the 1980s there was what was called an inter-ministerial committee. I remember very well we were about 15 in that committee. What happened was no ministry could make big decisions on its own, it was monitored by the committee.

Until such a time, I don’t know how they made it that ministries now just do things on their own.

I would suggest that to monitor some of these things and close down these holes we have Parliamentary Portfolio Committees, they can also be used — for instance — whenever there is a tender in any ministry; let the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee be involved.

If there is something which involves the Ministry of Transport, let the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Transport be involved.

I think that will help us a lot by putting checks and balances. Otherwise if we don’t do that people will continue doing the wrong things.

Investment

We are picking up very slowly. Don’t forget again that we are working against very powerful people who have their ideas against Zimbabwe.

The West is very powerful and unfortunately our people here, the opposition, is anti-Zimbabwe and anti- investment because they think they are going to benefit from our faults or the suffering of our people.

Now people are gradually coming, they have been saying they don’t want to invest in Zimbabwe.

But now South Africans are coming, Chinese are coming, Russians are coming, Iranians are coming, Indians are coming to invest in the country.

And then everybody including the West is realising that they are being left behind. Everybody is now coming, investment people are now really coming.

They have been living on a lie for a very long time and when you live on a lie at one time people realise that it is a lie.

Command agriculture

There is no contradiction (on command agriculture).

Those people (who seem to contradict) have their own interests, they are guided by their own interests.

In Zimbabwe there is everything here; you tell them not to invest but they want milk, they want fish they want gold, they want platinum they want the minerals that we have here.

Whether its agriculture or what the ministers say, those people are governed by their interests.

What happens is that there is a Presidential Agricultural Inputs (Scheme); the Presidential agricultural input is directed to our people: the ordinary Zimbabweans.

The President always, every year, he makes sure that his people receive fertilisers, all the inputs necessary. That is the most important thing because those are the people we want to be satisfied.

Now there is an element which is different from that; an element where we want to avoid importing food from outside, that is where we are trying to make sure that everything, all the resources we have are used.

Like for instance you have this, the Brazilian Mechanisation, the Brazilian tractors which came which are being given to the people to plough and realise the best harvest, to stop importing food from other countries.

Honestly you will be promoting anti-President Mugabe stance when you go import maize from Zambia.

Zambians, all the whites there came from here they will be saying see this is what we have done, now Zimbabwe is failing, go and buy your maize from Malawi.

That programme in actual fact is there to address the shortages we have in the country. I don’t know how you want to put it.

The (Command Agriculture) programme, I don’t want to put some of these words you are talking because I have never agreed with them.

I have trained in the Soviet Union and I know what a planned economy is, but I am saying and we must be very careful not to distort our programmes. Because if you give a headline on a particular subject or a title to a book stick to the title, don’t distort it.

So, what I am saying is that agricultural programmes which we have are aimed at correcting the situation — it aims eradicating poverty, importing food and giving up money to some other people when we can do it.

We have one of the best climates in the world and best soils.

For instance, if you take our grapes and compare them with South African they are better because we have better sunshine than South Africa.

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Didymus should stop the phone calls and the invitations to private media hacks who have nothing better to do than to visit his Zesa-less house.

“NOTHING in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity,” Martin Luther King Jnr once said.

This is the sad story of a terribly naïve Morgan Tsvangirai and Didymus Mutasa, who due to desperation have perfected the art of embarrassing themselves.

Didymus should know better.

Surely, a former Intelligence Minister should have been much wiser.

But Proverbs 18:2 also tell us: “Fools have no interest in understanding; they only want to air their own opinions. Doing wrong leads to disgrace, and scandalous behavior brings contempt.”

After fooling himself into thinking of forming an opposition party with Rugare Gumbo, Didymus has now become a disgrace.

Over the past few days, this has-been has been exposing himself too much. It’s now a national concern.

First Didymus tells us: “I can’t pay (Zesa) with nothing. It is true I owe them about US$70 000 and I will not be able to pay it because I don’t have that kind of money and will never be able to get it . . . I am telling you the truth . . . and very soon we might as well fail to pay for our food.”

Ya, wachepa Mudhara Dhidhi. How many times do I need to remind people that it’s freezing cold outside Zanu-PF?

But there is more from Didymus. He told us that soon he would be quitting politics. Indeed, times are hard.

Whoever fooled Mudhara Dhidhi into leaving Zanu-PF should be hanged. Mudhara akarasiswa mhani.

Could it be the young wife? But, no, that one looks way too smart.

But then Didymus has a plan. Kikikiki! I couldn’t stop laughing. Hear this. His grand plan is to meet President Mugabe. Kikikikiki!

He says he wants to meet President Mugabe together with other opposition leaders to engage him on “what we think should be done to get the country working again”.

But we all know that someone is coming to that meeting, in the most unlikely event that it happens, with a big begging bowl.

Remember, a few months ago President Mugabe told us that he received a surprise call from Didymus who went on to ask about his health and so on.

Said the President: “I asked if it was all he wanted and he said yes, it’s all but I am not stupid. I know there was something he was looking for.”

Well, I know we have a very forgiving President.

After forgiving that warmonger and unrepentant bloodsucker Ian Smith, we know President Mugabe has a huge heart.

But Mudhara Dhidhi should wait for the 2018 elections. Handiti vakati vanozvigona?

There is no need to meet President Mugabe now. Didymus and all those in the opposition have their chance to meet President Mugabe at the polls. Since they say they will win, they don’t need to tell the President how to run the country.

They should wait until they win and do it themselves. Kikikiki.

Didymus should stop the phone calls and the invitations to private media hacks who have nothing better to do than to visit his Zesa-less house.

But then again, he can call kana munyu wapera kumba. We don’t want Dhidhi and the young wife to starve.

Now to Morgan.

I don’t usually break news because my job is just to preach. But allow me to be a journalist for a moment: The grand coalition between opposition parties in Zimbabwe ahead of the 2018 elections is dead before it has been born.

Top MDC-T officials have decided to leave Morgan to dig his own grave.

“Once again let me advise you that our president Morgan Tsvangirai is personally handling all issues to do with coalitions,” MDC-T spokesperson Obert Gutu recently told The Herald.

You wonder why and how Morgan can’t see the games being played here.

These MDC-T officials have for donkey years been criticising President Mugabe saying he has centralised power.

Now they are allowing their leader to centralise power saying “Morgan Tsvangirai is personally handling all issues to do with coalitions”?

And Morgan can’t even smell the coffee.

“Handiti anoiti MDC-T, siyai apedze MDC-T yake then we will take it from there,” is the talk in opposition corridors.

Morgan is conducting coalition talks at his house and the whispers are “siyai apedze chinhu chake kumba kwake”.

On his part, Morgan doesn’t see anything wrong with what’s happening.

“You interpret it yourself. It is a nice environment. I think everyone is comfortable, besides no one is forced to come here,” says Morgan when about holding the talks at his house.

Nice environment? Nice unoiziva ukaiona iwe? Sekuru vangu Matope (may his soul rest in peace) vaibva vati “iwe haikona kupusungwara.”

You see, time is fast running out for Morgan.

Its’ a few months before the elections yet Morgan is wasting time signing useless pieces of paper that he fondly calls MOUs. He speaks of these MOUs as if they are the electorate.

And then other opposition parties say Morgan is not negotiating in good faith because of his big brother mentality, while Joice — from her dark, desperate corner — is digging in saying “it’s either me or nothing.”

Hanzi “Morgan akadyiwa naMugabe zvikakwana”.

And then, of course, there are those morbid analysts who think the election is a bit too far for Morgan’s health.

Zvinonzi, “Uummm, Save varwara.” Muri ana chiremba here imi?

Anyway, anyone prepared for a bet on this, bring it on: there is no coalition to speak of.

Joice won’t budge; Tendai Biti and Welshman Ncube bring nothing but their sorry faces to the table; Nkosana Moyo is whistling in the wind.

And while Morgan is busy trying to play big man, his own officials are busy angling themselves to take over from him when he inevitably fails in 2018.

His top lieutenants want him to keep himself busy with never-never coalition scenarios while they sharpen their blades for the coming night of long knives.

Dear congregants, Bishop Lazarus is not a dreamer, he does not do fake news.

Many in MDC-T have already settled on Nelson Chamisa as the successor to the failure. They want Nellie to fail next.

The Americans are working on this succession project with some chaps in Zimbabwe and South Africa.

The project is well on course.

So let me reiterate this because dzokororo inesimba: grand coalition hakuna vanhuwee. Vachauya rumwe, rumwe vorakashwa, kuita kushagadwa muna 2018.

Bishop is out!

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Mindless accumulation is the new gospel. Its God is Mammon. And the rituals that guarantee advancement in this new order are deeply steeped in greed, selfishness and corruption.

Okay, this has been the order since the dawn of atavism, it is the culmination of millennia of individualistic economy; but for Zimbabwe it has not always been so.

Consider the words of Vice-President Phelekezela Mphoko as published elsewhere in this edition.

Speaking on the increasingly self-centred approach to public office, he says of his days during the liberation struggle: “You were obliged to take care of party property. If it is was a car, you would rather die and leave party property because it belonged to the people. The same thing when we went to Mozambique. I tell you there was something very unique there.

“It was a time of starvation hunger and so forth, but people would, if a bag of mangai, umumbu comes in, it would be distributed accordingly and nobody would unduly benefit.

“That culture you have now, I don’t understand where it is coming from. Because even the food that was there, those who were senior commanders would eat and remember the others.

“But what is happening now is something I don’t understand. People want everything for themselves. That is what breeds corruption…”

Something about the VPs literalist, stream of consciousness unpacking of greed, selfishness and corruption is reminiscent of Charles Mungoshi’s prose. His the Old Man character in the seminal “Waiting for the Rain” speaks thus about the coming of the coloniser:

“We cut off their genitals and threw them into Munyati River because they shouldn’t have been called men with that woman’s greed of theirs. (In this age of political correctness, we hasten to point out that The Sunday Mail is not in any way casting aspersions on women, and neither do we believe that Mungoshi was making a chauvinistic statement but was merely relating the patriarchal approach of the time. — Editor’s note)

“We said: build there, the land is the Earth’s, there is enough for everyone. But their greed reduced them to something less than men. We couldn’t understand this desire of theirs to call everything mine, mine, mine …

“What they didn’t know, which we knew, which made us survive, was that we owned nothing and it wasn’t our own cunning that made us live. Everything was the Earth’s.”

Greed. Selfishness. Corruption.

That is the unholy trinity that is holding Zimbabwe back; holding Zimbabwe back more than sanctions, droughts and the ugly legacy of colonialism.

Greed. Selfishness. Corruption. They drive us to say “mine, mine, mine”.

What drives an already rich person to externalise millions of dollars while ordinary folk sleep in queues in the streets in the hope of maybe getting US$50 the next day?

What motivates a person to loot public funds — money meant for hospitals, medicines, water, schools or food — so that they can finance narrow personal and political agendas?

What pushes a person to demand bribes for facilitation of infrastructure development projects that stand to benefit the economy for generations to come?

Greed. Selfishness. Corruption. Mine, mine, mine. An unholy trinity.

So we know what the problem is. But do we know how to fix it? Are we prepared to do what needs to be done to fix it? History has shown that you cannot appeal to mankind’s mythical intrinsic humanity.

People understand something uglier than quixotic entreaties to do good. They appreciate constructs as feral as their atavism: prison.

For too long we have been content to agitate for the firing of public officials who are caught elbow deep in the till. They face a bit of public embarrassment via sensational media reports for a while, and then they disappear from the scene to enjoy their loot in relative anonymity.

Sometimes they are simply reassigned to another office, where they may or may not dip into the cookie jar again. There are no reprisals, no penalties. Just a slap on the wrist.

Zimbabwe needs a robust accountability system that starts with asset declaration, periodical asset review, prosecutorial recourse where suspicion of criminal accumulation is present, and restitution that ensures the offender does not benefit from his/her abuse of office.

It is encouraging that the State is working on legal instruments to that effect, and it is our sincere hope that this will not result in the creation of one of those curious nets Ayi Kwei Armah speaks of which are somehow able to catch small fish but not the big ones.

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Peter Gambara
A lot has been said regarding farmers’ failure to deliver maize to the Grain Marketing Board as the moisture level of their grain was higher than the prescribed 12,5 percent.

In this article, I discuss lessons farmers and policy-makers need to consider.

When Government launched the Special Maize Production and Import Substitution Programme (Command Agriculture) in 2016, the minimum target yield was five tonnes per hectare.

Most farmers reasoned that it would be easier to achieve this minimum target if they grew long season varieties.

Seed-Co supplied seed for this programme, and the long season varieties included SC719 and SC727. These varieties have the potential of up to 14 and 16 tonnes per hectare respectively.

However, they require between 158 and 162 days to reach physiological maturity, and farmers should best grow them with irrigation facilities.

If grown between October 15 and 31, they will reach physiological maturity between March 7 and 22. The maize will require another two months to dry and reach the 12,5 percent moisture level the GMB desires. The earliest these varieties can be harvested is any time after May 7.

However, it is also true that very few farmers are able to establish their maize crop by October 1 so that it can be harvested by end of April, in time for the establishment of winter wheat.

The three medium maturity maize seed varieties that Seed-Co distributed were the SC627, SC633 and SC637.

These take between 140 and 148 days to maturity. If planted at the same time as long season varieties, they can be harvested any time after April 22.

The big lesson here is that if a farmer wants to plant maize on the same land that they want to grow wheat next winter, they should avoid growing long season maize varieties.

They will not be able to harvest in time for winter wheat planting on May 1. They should, instead, consider planting shorter maturing varieties.

Secondly, they should irrigate the maize in early October so that it reaches maturity on time and be removed in time for winter wheat.

Farmers who want to grow long season maize varieties should compromise between high yield levels and being able to use the same piece of land for growing winter wheat.

They cannot have it both ways.

If you plant these varieties on any piece of land, then simply rule that land out for winter wheat.

Rotations

Last season, farmers could only be contracted to grow maize under Command Agriculture.

Government has also indicated it will contract farmers to grow 60 000 hectares of soyabeans next season.

Farmers eager to double-crop by establishing a second crop in winter should consider growing soyabeans instead of maize.

Soyabeans can be planted much later than maize, but still reach maturity earlier than maize.

A soyabean crop that is established between December 1 and 15 will be ready for harvesting by April 30 and, hence, will enable a farmer to establish winter wheat.

Last season, many farmers also faced the fall armyworm menace.

This pest is easily spread if a farmer grows one cereal after another; like wheat after maize and then more maize.

Farmers should, therefore, consider introducing a legume crop in their rotations to reduce the easy multiplication of the fall armyworm.

The big lesson here is that farmers who want to grow winter wheat should consider a soyabean-wheat rotation instead of a maize-wheat rotation as the former is easier to manage.

Soyabean can be planted late, harvested earlier than maize and will be a big advantage both in summer and winter.

Such rotation also has other benefits of controlling potential fall armyworm attack.

Driers

Once maize has reached physiological maturity, a farmer can always consider further drying it using artificial means.

There are a few driers in the country that farmers can use for this purpose, and this means farmers who intend to use them should book in advance.

It costs about US$20 per tonne to artificially dry maize, and a farmer wishing to quickly remove maize to establish wheat can economically justify that extra cost.

This year, many farmers failed to meet the wheat-planting deadline because they could not remove their maize early enough.

It still had high moisture levels.

Such farmers could have easily used artificial driers to dry their maize and move on to plant the wheat.

There are two big lessons here; firstly, farmers who wish to remove their maize crop in time for wheat should consider using artificial driers.

However, they should book the combine harvesters and driers on time.

Government should also consider investing in grain driers at all GMB depots that handle bulk deliveries.

There are indications that Government has already identified 12 depots where these driers will be installed before harvesting next year.

That’s positive.

Right seed, right time

As highlighted above, Seed-Co long season varieties are best grown under irrigated conditions if the farmer intends to remove the crop early.

They can also be grown under dry land conditions in high rainfall areas or where supplementary irrigation is available.

It should be remembered that the 2016/17 summer cropping season was exceptional in as far as the amount of rainfall received is concerned.

The last time we received such rainfall was some 36 years ago.

Therefore, farmers should be warned that they should not get into the habit of growing long season varieties late as their crops risk not reaching maturity.

And also farmers got these long season varieties well into the season.

The question that arises is why Government decided to use one seed house in a country with over 10 seed houses.

Surely, all the seed houses can get a slice of the cake and provide their best seed.

Let them compete to supply the best-performing seed.

Moisture testers

Farmers rush to deliver maize with high moisture levels to the GMB partly because they do not have the means to determine moisture levels.

While the GMB provides free moisture-testing, it should be accepted that it is indeed cumbersome for farmers to travel long distances to have their maize tested.

Besides, sometimes they have to do so several times.

It would, therefore, make sense for Government to provide mobile moisture-testing equipment to extension staff to make them readily available to farmers.

There have been complaints that the GMB is rejecting some maize from farmers only to accept that same grain after dealers buy it from the distraught farmers and deliver it.

The type of moisture-testers the GMB is using are mobile and can show some variability, giving different readings when the same sample is tested more than once.

There is, therefore, nothing unusual about a previously-tested sample giving a different reading an hour later. GMB staff should test a sample thrice and then average the readings.

Besides, the condensation that occurs when a cold sample is taken from a plastic container (usually used by most farmers) on a warm, humid day can result in inaccurately high readings.

This all points to providing proper training to those tasked to do these tests.

Unfortunately, the GMB has a history of using temporary staff to reduce its wage and accessory bills. Farmers should also be trained on how to take samples and handle them.

They should be told to avoid using plastic containers to move samples and, instead, use paper (khaki envelopes).

In addition, the GMB should check the accuracy of its meters regularly by comparing the readings from their testers with laboratory-obtained readings.

If they are consistently different, then there is need to have them checked for accuracy. Low batteries can cause inaccurate readings, especially where testers are left unused for long periods.

Therefore, the GMB could do itself a favour by making sure those tasked with farmers’ samples know what they are doing and have their meters re-checked for accuracy. There are cases of farmers who have taken samples to private testing facilities and have been told they meet the 12,5 percent threshold only to be rebuffed at GMB depots.

Payment

Among other reasons, farmers rush to deliver maize to the GMB while moisture levels are still high because the grain procurer had developed an uncanny habit of failing to pay on time.

While Government provided US$60 million and then another US$200 million later for maize purchased by the GMB, farmers could have taken this to mean that the available funds were inadequate and, therefore, needed to deliver their grain early in order to be paid early.

Government needs to continuously re-assure farmers that there is enough money to purchase all the maize on offer and that the payment period will be, at most, just a week, etcetera.

One way is to set aside the money when the National Budget is presented in Parliament. That will provide the necessary assurances to farmers that they do not need to rush to deliver their maize.

Last year was the first time for Command Agriculture and the Presidential Well-Wishers Agricultural Inputs Support Scheme to be implemented simultaneously.

There is always room for improvement, and both farmers and policy-makers should learn from their mistakes as we move into 2017/18 summer cropping.

The target areas this time around are much higher, and that calls for better preparedness.

 Mr Peter Gambara is an agricultural economist and consultant based in Harare. He wrote this article for The Sunday Mail

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Carl Niehaus
In the dying days of her term as public protector advocate Thuli Madonsela was burning the midnight oil to bring out her State of Capture report.

Miraculously, she managed to secure additional emergency funding from the Treasury to get the report out before her term expired.

This was made possible by the former minister of finance, Pravin Gordhan, despite the strict austerity measures previously announced with big fanfare.

When one reads the report, one cannot but be amazed about how such a flimsy and poorly researched and unsubstantiated document can have such a disproportionately massive impact.

Evidently it is not based, and cannot be based, on the substance of the document because it hardly has any substance.

Evidently the explanation for this phenomenon is to be found outside the worth of the document — because it hardly has any worth.

Rather it is about how the mainstream media had been reporting about it, and how it used the report to create an overbearing and dominant narrative frame to constantly intensify the perception that President Jacob Zuma and his government are corrupt and rotten to the core.

What we are actually experiencing is what Noam Chomsky and Edward S Herman described in their seminal book, “Manufacturing Consent — The Political Economy of the Mass Media,” as propaganda for the manufacturing of public consent about a particular issue.

Chomsky and Herman argue that the dominant mainstream media outlets are large companies operated for profit, and therefore they must cater to the financial interests of the owners, who not surprisingly usually are big corporations.

The size of a media company is a consequence of the investment capital required for the mass communications technology required to reach a mass audience of viewers, listeners and readers.

Since the majority of revenue of major outlets are derived from advertising (not from sales or subscriptions), advertisers in fact have a “de facto licensing authority”. The reality is that in order to survive financially the news media must cater to the political prejudices and economic desires of their advertisers.

They make up a coalition of the financially powerful who subsidise the mass media and gain special access to the news.

What we have seen with regards to Madonsela’s State of Capture report is a real-life example of what is described in more abstract terms by Chomsky and Herman.

The white monopoly capitalists who are the owners and paymasters of the mainstream media actively backed her so-called findings and deliberately directed the media narrative about it in order to manufacture a general public consent in which Zuma and those who are considered to be associated with him are portrayed as “captured” and “corrupt”, while the likes of Gordhan and his former deputy Mcebisi Jonas are painted as almost saintly good guys.

Interestingly enough, efforts to highlight Gordhan’s links with conflict-ridden shareholdings in white monopoly capital companies, as well as Jonas’ chequered history with regards to his tenure as CEO of the Eastern Cape Development Corporation, are ignored and hardly reported on.

Inasmuch as the so-called findings of Madonsela’s State of Capture report are highlighted and reported on at every possible opportunity, there is no less than a conspiracy of silence by the mainstream media to report news that reflects negatively on the “heroes” of the dominant narrative that they are so actively manufacturing for the public to consume.

We have in the mainstream print media a text-book case of what Chomsky and Herman described.

News reporting in our country is dominated by four big companies that control over 80 percent of all newspapers and magazines. The four media houses are: Media 24, Independent Media, Caxton and the Times Media Group (with Media24/Naspers controlling 40 percent alone).

When so few people, who share the same social and economic interests, have control over the media that we consume the “market place of ideas” and “national debates” become elite driven, and it makes a mockery of the so-often punted idea of a free media within our democracy.

The white monopoly capital owned and controlled mainstream media reinforce each other’s narratives and jealously guard their hegemony. Any attempt that they perceive as threatening their media monopoly is fiercely resisted.

This was experienced by Dr Iqbal Survé and his Sekunjalo Group when they made a bid for Independent Newspapers when it was up for sale. The negative attacks on Survé and Sekunjalo by the rest of the mainstream media, who feared that a brick was being dislodged in the monopolistic media wall that they have so carefully erected, immediately started.

These attacks reached fever pitch when the Sekunjalo Independent Media Consortium, which includes the Public Investment Corporation and a Chinese consortium, succeeded to buy Independent Newspapers. Apparently Sekunjalo (and especially Survé) not being part of the old (white) boys’ club, together with its ownership of the African News Agency, which was launched after the demise of the arch-conservative SA Press Association, was just too much for white monopoly capital to stomach.

An avalanche of negative publicity followed and in quick succession no less than 386 negative articles were written, with Survé negatively written about 266 times, Sekunjalo 207 times and Independent Media 319 times.

A considerable number of stories concentrated on unsubstantiated claims that Survé was “asset stripping” Independent Newspapers through ANA, a claim that Survé rejected outright.

The stories contained mainly conjecture and speculation, mostly written by white journalists who have built their journalistic careers by being virulently anti the democratically elected ANC government.

It is my belief that one of the main reasons for these attacks was that ANA was developed as Africa’s first content syndication service and that in a short time it reached more than one billion users.

Those who at all costs wanted to continue to control the flow and content of the news that reaches the public feared that they were losing the iron grip that they had. Survé’s positive stance towards and support for independent newcomers in the market, such as The African Times, also raised their ire.

In the meantime, the rest of the mainstream media continued to punt the State of Capture report, and they were handed three more narratives to assist in their continued manufacturing of consensual outrage against Zuma and calls for regime change.

The first came in the form of a pseudo-academic tract called “Betrayal of a promise: How South Africa is being stolen”, produced by the State Capacity Research Project, which is heavily funded by George Soros’ Open Society Foundation.

Under the cloak of “academic respectability” the (very unscientific) narrow focus of its work is set out in the preface to the publication as to: “Release case study reports of the state-owned enterprises that have been captured by the Zuma-centred power elite over the past decade”.

One cannot ignore that the State Capacity Research Project is convened by Professor Mark Swilling, head of the Centre for Complex Systems in Transition, which is based at Stellenbosch University, that well-known bulwark of continued white Afrikaner pseudo-intellectual resistance to our democratic state.

The second came in the form of the SA Council of Churches’ so-called Unburdening Panel report. At first glance one may not see the link, but the manner in which the mainstream media reported on these two documents, and used them to strengthen Madonsela’s State of Capture report, provide the undeniable link.

The third came in an apparently “massive” number of e-mails that – so the claim goes – have been “hacked” from a server or servers linked the Gupta family. It was revealing how amaBhungane together with the Mail & Guardian ganged up with the usual mainstream media — Media 24, Caxton and the Times Media Group — to on a day-after-day basis release, in a closely co-ordinated and deliberately dragged out process, hand-picked e-mails that confirm their particular narrative of state capture.

One also cannot omit to note that — as with the State Capacity Research Project — the main funder of amaBhungane is George Soros’s Open Society Foundation.

At this stage there is no way to know whether all the e-mails that have up to now been released, or some, or any of them, are authentic.

The manner in which they have been obtained evidently does not make for obvious authentication, and one surely cannot expect from the hackers and their reporters – who obviously have a vested interest to claim that they are authentic — to police themselves.

It is particularly revealing that the same mainstream media and their white monopoly capital paymasters who are apparently so deeply concerned about state capture have no appetite for a truly thorough and in-depth mandate for the forthcoming commission on state capture that Zuma has agreed to.

Even the already very narrow time-frame for the commission’s proposed mandate to date back to 1994 is resisted.

Instead they want a mandate that will only concentrate on Zuma, his political associates and the role of the Gupta family.

Not surprisingly, this is exactly what Madonsela did, it is also what the State Capacity Research Project and the SACC did with their respective reports, and similarly what the selective drip-drip releases of the hacked e-mails now also do. It is evident they are only interested in how they can use the emotive concept of state capture in order to continue to manufacture consent for regime change.

Ultimately the mainstream media do not want to free South Africa from state capture — they want to ensure that we continue to be captured by the very same Johann Rupert and other white monopoly capitalists who are currently keeping our society (especially African society) captive.

It is my ardent hope that with the newly found independence of Independent Media, we the people of South Africa have an ally to reveal the whole truth and nothing but the truth. — The Sunday Independent

Carl Niehaus is a former member of the ANC National Executive Committee and Umkhonto weSizwe Military Veterans Association. His articles can be found at www.carlniehaus.co.za

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Christopher Takunda Mugaga
When Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa took to the podium to announce the Mid-Term Fiscal Policy Review last Thursday, the task ahead of him was daunting.

Announcing major highlights when GDP growth was sub-1 percent — in fact averaging 0,7 percent annualised — was uninspiring.

He was expected to deliver growth beyond five percent in line with the Zim-Asset framework.

However, a number of factors weighed down such expectations. These include, but are not limited to, a stubborn fiscal deficit, cash shortages, an uncomfortable domestic debt trajectory and El Nino’s impact on the 2015/16 agriculture season.

We are told growth in the last year was mainly on account of mining, up slightly above eight percent, and the service sector which slightly breached the average trend over a decade of 1,9 percent to add one point.

Effective demand was constrained as household consumption was down by 11,8 percent.

Mining rose slightly above eight percent. The manufacturing sector was below 0,3 percent whilst the major highlight was the bullish growth expectation for agriculture. For mining, growth of 5,1 percent is expected this year, driven mainly by gold, platinum, chrome, coal and nickel.

Trend developments in revenue performance under the multi-currency regime saw revenue collections move from US$933 million when we dollarised, reaching a peak of US$3,74 billion five years back before we realised US$3,5 billion revenue output in the last fiscal period.

Budget expenditure for last year stood at US$4,9 billion. Expenditure overruns beyond US$900 million were realised, creating a major threat.

What is more threatening is not necessarily the budget deficit, but, rather, the way and means of financing the deficit.

Such a deficit, coupled with a current account deficit, remains one of the major drivers of cash shortages currently bedevilling the economy.

This, therefore, implies that a 3,7 percent GDP growth target for the year might not be easily achievable unless we find ways and means to fight such gaps.

A major threat to import management measures which the Government has put in place is smuggling which is also synonymous with corruption.

While industry has welcomed different measures with relief, such measures, which include SI 64 of 2016 and SI 18 which focused on pharmaceuticals and foreign exchange management measures by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, the obtaining levels of smuggling are costing the economy well beyond US$3 billion annually.

This calls for stricter measures.

Official statistics could be pointing to a declining import bill. Total imports dropped by 15 percent from US$6,1 billion, but this might not mean a lot. It could be offset by an 18 percent increase in the value of smuggled goods, which find their way onto the domestic market.

On structural reforms, a number of policy measures were announced, which include reforms on ease of doing business, public finance management reforms and introduction of Special Economic Zones.

Given that a new SEZs board was announced recently, we expected the minister to include a particular template of the raft of measures which Government has put in place for the three identified zones.

A clear roadmap on when the authority was to start operating and the budget outlay for its functioning was supposed to have been presented to the nation in this particular annual budget review.

On Public Finance Management reforms, the lack of progress on reform of parastatals means they remain a fiscal drain to the economy.

Those institutions which require commercialisation or privatisation have to be identified and measures be taken to begin the reform process.

If funds are poured to capitalise these institutions, it is also pertinent to have audited accounts in time for tax-payers and other stakeholders to have a verdict on operations of such institutions.

International best practices have proven that it is possible to have efficiently-run parastatals as witnessed in Russia and China where the public sector constitutes almost 70 percent of the GDP on average.

The agricultural performance for last season was driven by climatic factors, with the El Nino effect undermining the interventions by both private and public sectors with almost US$1 billion having been poured.

Command Agriculture, which was introduced last year, is targeting about two million tonnes of maize against a domestic grain requirement of 1,8 million tonnes for both human and livestock consumption.

Zimbabwe’s mining sector has taken an ugly direction, with its growth now dominantly over-dependent on metal prices on the international market as opposed to domestic production.

Indeed, mining contribution to GDP increased to 8,7 percent from 7,9 percent in the previous year.

A major highlight is small-scale gold producers’ contribution which reached almost 43 percent from 36,7 percent in the previous year.

Interesting statistics from small-scale miners alone showed that last year they delivered half a tonne of gold and this year, it is about 75 percent of a tonne already. It is important to formalise the small-scale mining sector.

Remember, the country’s youth population is huge, and youths are prepared to join this sector if conditions in the industry are improved.

Government must invest in empowering miners given the weak processing efficiency obtaining in the economy, which averages 50 percent to 60 percent.

Banks in Zimbabwe continue to emphasise collateral, and this has left small-scale miners exposed.

It is quite refreshing to note that a committee at Cabinet level was set up just to deal with violence in mining.

The biggest hope is that the same committee will also look at issues such as how laws can be aligned within the mining sector. Mining is always a weather belly sector, and the current price of gold per tonne averaging US$40 million can only rise in the long run.

The capitalisation of the Zimbabwe Consolidated Diamond Company saw diamond output during the first half of this year rise to 1,1 million carats from 690 000 carats produced during the previous year.

It is vital to find ways and means to improve transparency in this particular sector whilst at the same time expediting laws to enable the sector to operate in Special Economic Zones.

With the vacillating nature of gold prices on the international market, the only reprieve for potential investors rests in allowing them to operate in SEZs.

This will smooth out price depressions in the short to medium term.

The clarion call is, therefore, to have Special Economic Zones set up in Manicaland in the shortest possible time.

Mr Takunda Mugaga is the CEO of the Zimbabwe National Chamber of Commerce. He wrote this article for The Sunday Mail

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