President Emmerson Mnangagwa, fearful of losing elections next year, is now in campaign overdrive, dishing out bribes to people right in the seat of government.
Cabinet ministers are getting US$500 000 “loans” they have not applied for despite having a few months left in their terms. How they are going to repay them is never said.
Deputy ministers are getting US$350 000 under a similar dodgy scheme. The bribes have been extended to all Members of Parliament who will each get US$40 000. How they are going to repay the “loans” is not explained, given that some may not be in the august house after the elections.
Surprisingly, opposition Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) MPs have also fallen for the bait – smiling from ear to ear as they clutched the latest windfall from Mnangagwa.
This has not gone well with many Zimbabweans who felt they blatantly breached the social contract they had with millions of citizens who sent them to Parliament.
“It’s looting at the grandest scale,” they said.
Said prominent author Tsitsi Dangarembga: “I really think the CCC has lost the election with that US$40 000 bribe. People stayed in the bush and sometimes had eight grains of maize to eat. And the opposition cannot resist a US$40 000 bribe. This is utter spinelessness!”
The extravagant dishing out of such money by the Treasury in a country battling abject poverty a collapsed health system and three-digit inflation has courted the ire of Zimbabweans, many of whom do not know where their next meals are going to come from.
Many feel the US$40 000 is a bribe meant to silence vocal CCC MPs from speaking out against massive perks Mnangagwa is giving his Zanu PF ministers and their deputies.
“This exposes CCC’s lack of organisational cohesion and moral bankruptcy,” quipped a political commentator who chose to remain anonymous.
“They should have resisted the seduction of mammon. How can they fall for such a clear bait.? This is a grand heist,” he said.
Many voters who had joined the “yellow wave” feel betrayed and would like the party’s youthful leader to recall all those in his ranks who have joined the Zanu PF gravy train.
“Some CCC supporters have been murdered, others disfigured by Zanu PF thugs for merely supporting the same people who are abandoning the cause we have been fighting, only for US$40 000 crumbs from Zanu PF! I feel betrayed,” said Enoch Kabvuratsiye of Chegutu.
CCC leader Nelson Chamisa has issued a guarded condemnation of the stinking “loans”, but remained silent on the course of action he intends to take.
Critics are soft on Zanu PF MPs who have always been recipients of such benevolence. “Their record is known.”
However, the opposition CCC legislators came in for some stinging condemnation for alleged hypocrisy as the party claims to be people-orientated. But nothing was about people when they found themselves in Parliament.
They started demanding State funding for their opulent lifestyles. They made noise for their own immediate personal comforts than for what they promised voters.
The luxury seekers disguising as champions of people’s rights kicked off their parliamentary tenure by demanding more US dollar payments, luxurious cars, fuel coupons and unlimited hotel stays at taxpayers’ cost.
Instead of compelling the government to put more resources in health and education sectors, the vanguard of the people ‘aspirations secretly accepted a US$40 000 kick-back from the very government purse they should guard from being ransacked.
“Any MP who accepted the US$40k bribe from the Zanu PF looters is, by association, a thief,” said Tendai Gondo of Harare. “Legislators are have an oversight role over the executive and conniving with the executive in looting national resources beggars belief.
“What is the purpose of fielding a goalkeeper who is on the payroll of the opponents?”
Sibanengi Dube is a Zimbabwean journalist and Editor of the Zimbabwe Observer
