What Jonathan Moyo said about corrupt Zanu PF officials

By Tatenda Dewa | Harare Bureau |

Former Information and now Higher and Tertiary Education minister, Jonathan Moyo, has become notorious for making inconsistent and contradictory pronouncements.

About a decade ago, he was scathing in his contempt for Mugabe’s continued stay in power.

Then, he described Mugabe as a national security threat because of advanced age and the bad image that he had generated for human rights abuses and leadership failure.

From late 2014, he has been singing his praises for Mugabe like his entire life will always depend on that.

He now belongs to a Zanu PF faction, Generation 40, that wants Mugabe to rule this country till donkeys grow horns, which will be a long, long while, if at all it comes to pass.

His camp is scared of another faction, Team Lacoste, which is led by Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa.

Team Lacoste, which enjoys the support of liberation war veterans and the generals, wants Mugabe off the throne before the 2018 general elections.

Not only is Moyo now rabidly behind Mugabe, who will be 94 in 2018 when the elections are contested, but he tends to react angrily to anyone who insists the president must go now.

He recently told Botswana president, Ian Khama, to “go hang” in the desert when he said Mugabe must give the baton to younger blood because he had become a burden to southern Africa.

In a different matter, despite having a shady past that includes allegedly siphoning money from the Ford Foundation some time back, Moyo has been unflattering with Zanu PF members who have been named as being corrupt.

He is now facing graft charges for allegedly swindling close to half a million dollars from the Zimbabwe Manpower Development Fund (ZIMDEF) that falls under his ministry and is mainly meant to develop students’ skills.

Moyo does not deny the charges. Just that he thinks it is noble to steal from his ministry to donate to Zanu PF and his Tsholotsho constituency, while also diverting fuel coupons meant for a pro-Mugabe rally.

Worse still, he now has issues with the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission (ZACC) that wants him to face trial.

Instead of acknowledging that he must face justice, he has chosen to see some ZACC commissioners as tribalists who are seeking to derail his “philanthropic” work.

He has singled out Goodson Nguni, one of the ZACC commissioners, as being behind the sting operation to have him thrown into the cooler.

His conspiracy theories in the wake of ZIMDEF gate stand in stark contrast with what he said two years ago when he was Information minister and the public media ran a series of stories on corrupt government officials, who happened to also be his internal political rivals.

These included Temba Mliswa, the former ruling party provincial chair for Mashonaland West.

Below are some of the highlight quotes that Moyo made in 2014.

• “This is the ultimate corrupt act to say you abuse public funds, you are caught with your hands in the till, it is published and then you say it is destroying the party. That is the worst expression of corruption
• You want us to keep quiet under the pretext that what you did that is unlawful was for your party and that if it comes out — just because you belong to that political party — you will go down with the political party. That doesn’t make sense.
• That is a primitive understanding of things. It is you and you alone, carry your cross. It has nothing to do with the party. What you are doing is not in the constitution of the party, not in the regulations of the party, not in the policies of the party. It is actually against the party. You were stealing alone.
• If we keep quiet about it and then the public discovers outside the media, they will say this guy was stealing for the party. They will say this party is corrupt and all they are talking about is some guy
• The question is, did you take the money and were you entitled to it? If the answer is that yes, you took the money and you were not entitled to it, should we stop publishing the story because of your political identity
• What is sinister, and the media has allowed this, is that some of the colleagues across the political divide think that if they put their hands in the till and take some money that is not due to them and you publish, that publication will harm their party.

Moyo has boastfully likened himself to Robin Hood, that old time outlaw who robbed the rich to give to the poor.

The comparison is poor, though, because Robin Hood was consistent albeit controversial in whatever he did and had a genuine desire to give to the struggling poor.

Moyo is changing positions like the wind and is the poor students who not only won’t have jobs when they graduate, but are so out of means that some of them are in fact engaging in prostitution and vending to see themselves through college.

He claims he is giving to the poor, but that is hard sell, because one wonders how funding a useless Million Man March is philanthropic work. Nehanda Radio