By Fungai Mukosera
I am gutted everyday by the blatant lies within our incumbent cabinet regarding their take on all the corruption and resource looting that is taking place in Zimbabwe to the Far East.
The NewsDay of 21 October 2013 holds a headline, ‘Govt cracks whip on Chinese’. I am disgusted by the Mines and Mining Development Minister Walter Chidhakwa lying that he ‘learnt with utter dismay last week about the abuse in Mazowe River and other rivers across the country’. Really?
This is a clear sign that personally as a service to his country and probably all his fellow cabinet members are not willing to deliver the resources of our country into the hands of the rightful owners.
I say so because the former deputy Minister of Mines and Mining Development Gift Chimanikire on 19 May 2013 was reported in The Standard under the headline, ‘Govt in dilemma over illegal Chinese mining activities’, as saying that these illegal activities were in the spotlight of the ministry and that some of these Chinese were ‘instructed from the top that they should start mining without a licence’.
I won’t ask the obvious question but will safely conclude that the handover of the ministry was done properly and these issues were brought out but they were not anything to get heads rolling in their board rooms because they are the top and hence the corruption.
The same Mines minister is coming out in the same Newsday of 21 October 2013 peddling lies that ‘The only problem with that allegation (non-remittance of diamond money) is that there is no evidence so that we can follow up to demonstrate our determination to stamp out such abuses’.
Should we now not call it evidence when the former Finance Minister Tendai Biti clearly communicated with the president about the diamond money disappearing on its way to the fiscus?
Is it not superfluous evidence when he clearly specified that ‘Our diamonds exports last year were $800 million and only $45 million came to Zimbabwe’? I guess the only ‘evidence’ that the minister means is the one that comes from the ‘TOP’ which the country is still eagerly waiting to hear more about.
This is the only root of corruption in Zimbabwe, THE TOP; as long as this top is not stuffed enough by the kickbacks that they are getting from the east, we can all forget and keep retreating to the resourceless margins of our country to pave way for their looting friends to harvest our heritage for a penny.
I will say it again as before that the whole world is fattening the lion and starving the endangered prey in Zimbabwe; the ecosystem they are envisaging to exist is highly imaginary and highly skewed to empower the predator.