By TatendaDewa | Harare Bureau |
An association of college and university students, the Zimbabwe National Students Union (Zinasu), wants President Robert Mugabe to fire the Higher and Tertiary Education minister, Jonathan Moyo, after he was named as a beneficiary of fraud.
The Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission (ZACC), a constitutional body, is investigating Moyo for allegedly playing a part in swindling the ministry of some $270,000.
The students’ body is also gunning for the expulsion of Moyo’s deputy, Godfrey Gandawa, who ZACC named as having connived in the alleged fraud.
According to the commission, Moyo used Gandawa to illegally obtain a $24,000 loan from the Zimbabwe Manpower Development Fund (Zimdef), an entity falling under the ministry that was created to benefit students at tertiary institutions countrywide.
In addition, Moyo allegedly arm-twisted Zimdef to buy him 249 bicycles that he donated to his constituency in Tsholotsho, while Gandawa’s privately owned companies were used to illegally purchase printers that were purported to be destined for tertiary learning institutions.
ZACC last Wednesday enlisted the services of the police to arrest Moyo during a Zanu PF politiburo meeting but President Robert Mugabe reportedly stopped them.
In a statement on Friday, Zinasu urged Mugabe, who is the chancellor of State universities, to deal with the Moyo and his deputy.
“We are…appealing to our chancellor, President Robert Gabriel Mugabe, to stop protecting criminals, but to let justice take its course,” said Zinasu secretary general, Makomborero Haruzivishe.
“Failure to do so will result in days of determined campus shutdowns till corruption in the education sector is wiped and free education delivered to the Zimbabwean students as espoused in our Constitution and promised in Zim-Asset.
“It is folly for Government ministers who masquerade as development oriented officials to loot what belongs to the students leaving them vulnerable,” added Haruzivishe.
“The result is devastating, pauperisation of students, corrosive effects on students’ dignity and image, and an unprecedented rise in STIs in colleges as multitudes resort to transactional sex for survival,” he said. Nehanda Radio
