MPs on the gravy train but in Mbombera class
By Wilbert Mukori
President Robert Mugabe’s government bought new top-of-the-range vehicles for his 26 minister and their deputies at a cost of $20 million much to the anger of the MPs.
The MPs are bitter, not at the lavish waste of public money at a time government is failing to pay for the life and death basic public needs, but that the parliamentarians were not getting a fair share of the looted public wealth!
Mugabe had no choice but to do something to appease his cronies. The last few months he has gone out of his way to flaunt his wealth and riches with the lavish birthday, a lavish wedding for his daughter, inviting the world to take a peep at his lavish Borrowdale mansion, etc.
Not even the wedding cake could take away the bitter after-taste left by this lavish display. The new vehicles were meant to assure his cronies that they too will get a share of the looted national treasure. Sadly the tyrant did not have enough cash to feed the piranhas too!
Resources, like everything else on earth, are finite; there is no such thing as a bottomless mine of diamonds and money. The Zimbabwean economy has been sinking at an amazing rate, fuelled by the insatiable greed of Mugabe and his ruling elite.
When there is not enough to feed everyone those furthest away from the centre of power and influence get very little or nothing at all. MDC MPs, having fought so hard to get on the gravy train, have been very bitter at getting nothing.
“Members of Parliament are not demanding vehicles because they are being demeaned as is being reported, but they are saying give us what is due to us,” MDC’s Mabvuku Tafara legislator James Maridadi told SW Radio Africa.
Maridadi said every legislator is entitled to a vehicle for use in their constituency during their five-year term in office.
“All we are saying is that the loans and the vehicles must be made available so that MPs can do their constituency work without hindrance. There is nothing scandalous at all in what we are asking for.”
Maridadi said it was clear that government did not consider the legislature important “and this is wrong, the people should come first and luxuries second.”
People like MP Maridadi fought tooth and nail to get on the gravy train and now that they are on it, they expect to get a fair share of the nation’s looted riches.
The MDC had a parliamentary majority and a raft of democratic reforms to implement throughout the life of the GNU. The party failed to get even one reform implemented; they had five years to do it and a parliamentary majority but failed to get even one reform implemented. What of substance does Maridadi think a totally discredited MDC can achieve this time round? Nothing; that is what!
Maridadi is mourning he is not getting lavish vehicles, allowances and all the other gravy train benefits he expected. Serves him right! The people have no sympathy for people like Maridadi who are crying that they have been forced into the fourth-class coaches – kombombera – of the gravy train!
The people of Zimbabwe have been dying for meaningful democratic change to end all this crippling corruption and to blow the gravy train to kingdom come! The whole gravy train should be blown up first class, mbombera and everything in between!
