Charamba’s “defence” of Jonathan Moyo raises a stink

By Tatenda Dewa | Harare Bureau |

As Higher and Tertiary Education minister, Jonathan is busy ducking brickbats over alleged corruption, his former secretary at the Information ministry, George Charamba, this week gave a lengthy account “absolving” his erstwhile boss on a looming probe.

The Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission (ZACC) is seeking Moyo’s arrest over some $430,000 he allegedly connived in looting from the Zimbabwe Manpower Development Fund (ZIMDEF).

But ZACC is reportedly sniffing for his dirty footprints while at the ministry of Information, where they suspect he abused two departmental vehicles.

Moyo’s first line of “defence” came from an unlikely agent, George Charamba, who in the past has referred to the minister as a little mind.

Charamba took acres of space in the Herald, whose content he is said to directly control, to offer an explanation over the vehicles.

He said Moyo “punctually” and “promptly” delivered the one vehicle he had been using as an off-roader upon being transferred to Higher and Tertiary Education in 2015.

Charamba added that the Prado in question was given for use to deputy ministers in the department.

There seems to be no doubt that things happened the way he said.

Questions start sprouting when one questions the motive behind offering such a generous explanation that could have been covered in two paragraphs, and some of the clearly inconsistent statements he makes as he stumbles to account for the vehicles.

The headline of the Herald story, “Charamba exonerates Prof Moyo”, forces the reader to sit up and notice.

This is precisely because Charamba would always be the last person to start sanitising Moyo, especially at this time when the minister is down in the mud and the most sensible thing would be to continue pummeling him.

The two men are sworn political enemies.

Sometime back, Charamba went on air on a local radio station and made known his thoughts about Moyo and other individuals belonging to the Generation 40 faction in Zanu PF.

He called them little minds whose time was fast running out.

Moyo belongs to G40 that is fiercely opposed to Team Lacoste that Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa leads.

It is also clear that there is mutual rapport between Charamba and Mnangagwa, who affectionately refers to the permanant secretary as “Jojo”.

The G40 faction, using a senior Zanu PF member, Sarah Mahoka, earlier this year was all over Charamba who they accused of manipulating State media to rubbish the camp.

Moyo was also very revealing recently when he wrote an article in the private media explaining his fallout with Charamba.

The two’s legendary fallout dates back to 2004, when Moyo ganged up with Mnangagwa and other senior Zanu PF members to do a palace coup on Mugabe through the Tsholotsho Declaration.

Charamba did not hide the true facts then when he revealed that Moyo, as his minister, had wrestled a helicopter from him so that he could go to Dinyane Primary School in Tsholotsho to plot Mugabe’s downfall.

Going further, once ZACC started gunning for Moyo, the public media has been the first to tell the story, in a clearly celebratory manner.

That means Charamba cannot start “defending” Moyo now, so there must be a good reason why he was quick to distance Moyo from the controversial vehicles.

Since 2014 when the Information ministry launched the Information and Media Panel of Inquiry (IMPI) there were mumblings about some Prados being diverted by both Moyo and Charamba.

One whistle blower must have gone to ZACC about this alleged abuse.

This apparently unsettled Charamba, so he had to be pre-emptive lest the skeletons start falling out before he says something.

Tellingly, Charamba admitted that he was still using the other Prado.

He claimed that the two Prados were bought at the same time that the ministry procured vehicles for IMPI.

The explanation that Charamba gives for the coincidence in the purchase of the Prados and the IMPI vehicles raises a stink.

He said government had raised money to bail out the cash-strapped Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC).

When some money was left over after the bail out, he said, they decided to use it on the IMPI project.

It will never be clear why ZBC was given more money than it required in the first place, and whether it was indeed true that the corporation did not need the remainder that Charamba talks about.

Up to now, ZBC is still wallowing in poverty, so it is not convincing that it got a surplus from government.

Charamba claims in his account that the ministry had no off-roaders then and, curiously, “took advantage” of the financial allocation to the IMPI project to buy the two executive Prados.

The two cars, admittedly, went to Charamba and Moyo.

The permanent secretary claims he only had a personal issue vehicle, so the Prado came in handy as a duty vehicle, while Moyo needed a four-wheel drive to take him to rural areas.

Charamba does not come out any cleaner after this explanation.

To start with, he does not explain what it means to take advantage of the IMPI financial allocation to buy ministerial Prados.

Does it mean that they used part of the money from IMPI to buy the vehicles that both of them went on to use? Or does it mean that the money came from another source?

If it came from the IMPI fund, was it proper to then start using the vehicles on their own, instead of on business directly linked to IMPI activities?

Where do you draw the line between ministry duties and project-specific duties, especially when you use the vehicle to travel to your rural home and to see girlfriends?

Towards the end of his account, Charamba seems anxious to make the world believe that he ran the ministry so tightly the minister could not have abused State property.

“It was not possible for him (Moyo) to breach rules because he was never allowed to be close to the financial rules of the ministry,” concluded Charamba.

That sort of lets the cat out of the bag, does it not?

Someone has rushed to clean the house before the visitors arrive, it seems. Nehanda Radio