Hopewell Chin’ono responds to leaked James Makamba audio…. calls it “laughable and idiotic”

By Hopewell Chin’ono

Someone mentioned to me that corrupt exposures will elicit a smear campaign rooted in lies. I am sure you have watched a video that is smearing Temba Mliswa and insinuating that some senior journalists can be pliable.

The attempt to force into a conversation names of journalists that have exposed Supa Mandiwanzira’s rot is as laughable and idiotic as it is a tragic desperate way to wriggle out of corrupt exposures.

The video also insinuates that Temba Mliswa was paid to smear Supa Mandiwanzira. That video has emanated after the Supa Mandiwanzira exposures that implicate him and his cronies and how he has abused his office as a cabinet minister in the Government of Zimbabwe.

Mandiwanzira should simply respond to the issues raised regarding his breathtaking corruption.
Whether Temba Mliswa was paid or not is irrelevant because it doesn’t push away the corruption charges.

Bringing in the President and his Deputy into his corruption as if people exposing corruption are attacking them is an old, useless and predictable tactic.

It won’t work because even the president’s people are aware that Supa Mandiwanzira and the fraudsters around him are clutching on straws.

I reiterate once more that the money they mismanaged and illegally took from government coffers is meant to buy medicines in hospitals, stop cholera epidemics, bring clean running water, pay nurses, teachers and doctors, fix roads and many social amenities.

It is futile for Supa Mandiwanzira to make James Bond type of videos to deflect people from the real issues around his abuse of office.

The public does not care if Temba Mliswa was paid to expose rot, may the phantom person who paid him pay him more if they exist at all, so that we can live in a country where public officials don’t abuse their positions and are stopped from taking money and resources meant for the poor in order to fund their embarrassingly lavish life styles.

The video and the messages being send from Supa’s people insinuate that those exposing corruption are fighting government. This is ridiculous, they are fighting corruption and it ends there.

The question that Supa Mandiwanzira and the other cabinet ministers being implicated in corruption should answer is simply whether the exposures are true or false.

Attacking the person of Temba Mliswa with unsubstantiated gossip does not take away Supa Mandiwanzira’s rot. It simply suggests that the exposures are indeed true and can’t be defended hence the side show of schoolboy videos.

Joram Gumbo has been exposed, did someone again pay Temba Mliswa for that exposure?

It is also important for the President and his Deputy, General Constantino Chiwenga, not to allow thieves and fraudsters to use their names especially where corruption has been implicated and established.

They must act decisively otherwise they will also become part of the circus and this will undo the positive messages that they have moulded and send around the world for investors to come to Zimbabwe.

I deliberately chose not to attach the stupid video because I don’t want to give it legs and allow it to distract us from focusing on the main issue at hand, that of corruption.  Instead, I will attach the article I wrote last week to remind us of what we are fighting against.

I have since received more information and documents exposing more staggering theft involving Supa Mandiwanzira and his cronies not only at his ministry, but also at the National Social Security Authority (NSSA).

One NSSA official’s Metbank bank account went from $1Million to $5,4Million worth of kickbacks derived from proceeds of corruption and money looted from the pension fund.

This is how these guys are rotten to the core and unrestrained because they were protected during Robert Mugabe’s Presidency.

It is only because they have been exposed today that they are now alleging that it is an attack on the government and the President and his Deputy to expose their rot and deep-rooted crony corruption.

No it is not an attack on any of those people Mr Mandiwanzira!

It is an attack on how you have been crooked as a government minister before the current President and his Deputy were in their latest respective positions.

The old tricks of going to Mugabe and using side shows to defend one’s self from their rot will derail government programs if they are allowed to thrive.

Let us all focus on the real issues and not whether Temba Mliswa ate lunch paid for by so and so. Did what he said exist? That should be the answered question.

Fellow citizens, we shouldn’t be distracted by sideshows of inane videos that are meant to take our eye away from the ball and the main issues!

It is an age old tired trick which should not be allowed to work if indeed we are in a new dispensation.

Hopewell Chin’ono is an award winning Zimbabwean journalist and documentary filmmaker. He is a CNN African journalist of the year and Harvard University Nieman Fellow. His next film, State of Mind looking at mental illness in Zimbabwe is coming out soon. He can be contacted on [email protected] or on twitter @daddyhope