‘Zimbabwe Today’ by Robb WJ Ellis (09-01-2008)

“Fugitive Guruve North legislator David Butau's personal assistant yesterday pleaded guilty to illegally dealing in foreign currency. Getrude Matika (32), who is employed at Butau's firm – Dande Holdings – was convicted on her own plea of guilt of transferring $87 billion from the company's account into various dealers' accounts before getting foreign currency in return. Her lawyer, Mr Charles Chinyama of Chinyama and Associates, successfully applied for bail pending sentence and Matika was released after paying $50 million coupled with stringent conditions. Matika will be sentenced on Monday. She was ordered to report to CID Serious Frauds Squad on Mondays and Fridays and to surrender her travelling documents to the Clerk of Court. Provincial magistrate Mr Mishrod Guvamombe further ordered Matika to continue residing at her given address until finalisation of the matter. Harare area prosecutor Mr Tawanda Zvekare appeared for the State.“

I am very surprised that her lawyer managed to secure bail pending sentencing. But suppose much depends on what the Zimbabweans call a ‘billion’ – a thousand million (nine zeroes), or a million million (twelve zeroes). In any case, when you work it on the black market rate or the official rate, I think it is a ‘done deal’ that this lady will go to prison…

And there are other cases before the courts…

“On Monday police arrested the director of Flatwater Investments, a commodity broking company that received $2,1 trillion from the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe and channelled the money into the black market to source foreign currency. Tazviwana Chivaviro (42) and the firm's chief operations officer, Nigel Tatenda Marozhe (27), were convicted on their pleas of guilty to dealing in foreign currency by Mr Guvamombe. They were remanded out of custody to today for mitigation and address of special circumstances before sentence is passed. Mr Guvamombe ordered the pair to pay $250 million bail each and surrender the title deeds of their respective properties. The two were also ordered to report twice a week at CID Serious Frauds Squad and to continue residing at their given addresses until the matter is finalised. They will also surrender their travel documents to the Clerk of Court.“

Of course, there is no room in remand prisons in Zimbabwe, because the magistrates and prosecutors have been on strike and they have a back log to clear.

The incompetence of Mugabe’s government permeates every strata of society – from the super rich to those in abject poverty in the prisons.

Nepotism – “a favouritism in business shown to relatives and friends”…

“A close relative of President Robert Mugabe was on Tuesday appointed police operations chief in a reshuffle of the top brass of the law enforcement agency. Innocent Matibiri, said to be a close cousin to the Zimbabwean leader, was deputy commissioner in charge of crime before his latest appointment to deputy commissioner in charge of operations. The operations post that was held by veteran officer Godwin Matanga is considered more senior to the other deputy commissioner posts. Matanga was re-assigned to head the administration department, a virtual demotion according to insiders at police general headquarters in Harare. However, Zimbabwe Police Commissioner Augustine Chihuri sought to downplay the reshuffle as a routine exercise carried out whenever it was deemed necessary. “This is just a routine reshuffle. We do this when ever we feel it is necessary it is routine,” Chihuri told journalists in Harare.“

We know from past history that Chihuri has a habit of saying exactly the opposite from the truth. So the reshuffle is NOT routine. This is the influence of ZANU PF and Mugabe on the ZRP – all so that he can put a sympathiser in charge…

There was a time when I was proud of having served in the ZRP. Back then it was a police force that still had scruples, morals and integrity. But that facade fell away pretty quickly.

Those of you who have read my book will know that as early as 1984, the powers at that time, were already manipulating events to see the end of many a promising career – mine included.

The one thing that I hang onto from my training is being apolitical. To that end, I am not a member of any political party – here or at home – although it is very easy to see where my sympathies lie.

Bringing Matibiri to the verge of being the number one cop in Zimbabwe is an abuse of power – but by now we should be used to it…

“Matibiri, whose meteoric rise in the police force has shocked many in the security services, is tipped to take over from Chihuri when he retires. Sources in the police said Matanga was demoted because the executive was not happy with the way he handled the bizarre case of a bogus traditional healer from the farming town of Chinhoyi who duped Mugabe and his Cabinet into believing that pure diesel was flowing from a rock. Matanga together with the Minister of State Security Didymus Mutasa led teams of senior government officials to Chinhoyi, 115 km north west of Harare, in search of the diesel that the healer, Rotina Mavhunga, had promised them.“

“The Zimbabwean government has still not released civil servants’ December payslips, in an apparent bid to stop a mass exodus of disgruntled professionals within its workforce, who might seek to find better opportunities in neighbouring countries.

Most civil servants, especially teachers, nurses and members of the security forces, are not happy with their poor working conditions, especially the low salaries that they earn, against the country’s hyper-inflationary environment.

Against that background, most civil servants have found it better to cross over to the neighbouring countries like Botswana and South Africa, where most of them have found better paying jobs.

Unlike other Zimbabwean citizens, who require visas to travel to South Africa, civil servants are able to cross into the neighbouring country using their work identity cards and payslips, and most of them have deserted their jobs in that manner, having travelled to that country as visitors, but disappeared into the glamour of that country.“

It is almost a prerequisite in any employment that payslips are given to each and every employee at pay day – more for tax return purposes than anything else. Budgeting for any household in Zimbabwe is a practise of the past – mainly because everyone knows that whatever they clear is gobbled up in no time with the huge prise hikes…

I still budget for our household – as I did using an Amstrad 6128 (what a great little machine!) back in Zimbabwe many years ago. I don’t suppose many people have the ability to budget, not least because they haven’t a clue of the market prices – but also because there is scant magetz to power a computer!

“Sources within the civil service told The Zimbabwean this week that all the government workers have still not received their December payslips, which they were supposed to get between the 15th and 23rd of that month.

“We got our salaries but we still have not received our payslips. No one has even bothered to explain to us what is really happening,” complained a Bulawayo-based teacher.

However, some employees at the Salary Service Beureau (SSB), which prints the civil servants’ payslips, revealed that the payslips were being with-held to try and curb a mass exodus of government workers, especially teachers, into South Africa.“

Such open duplicity…

“We know what the government did but most of the teachers have already crossed (the border) and there will be disaster when schools open. Already most of the schools have been advertising staff vaccancies, with some having already lost more than 12 teachers for a single school.“

“Twenty years ago Zimbabwe saved itself from a five-year insurgency – the so-called Dissident Era – that threatened to plunge the country into a civil war of the proportions seen in neighbouring Mozambique and in Angola.

True nationalism and patriotism (if somewhat forced in some instances) prevailed over personal interests when in 1987, then Prime Minister, Robert Mugabe's ruling ZANU PF party united with its bitter rival, the late Joshua Nkomo's PF-ZAPU, to form the existing and ruling United ZANU PF party that went on to form a government of national unity under Mugabe as president and Nkomo as co-vice president with the late Simon Muzenda.

That unity was by no means perfect but it served the most important purpose of uniting the nation and redirecting its socio-economic development to occupy a high perch in regional, continental and even world scales.

This was, of course, until the ill-conceived war veterans' compensation of 1997; the military misadventure in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1998 and the ill-fated land redistribution exercise of 2000 and beyond.

There are various reasons why the unity of 1987 was mooted and implemented but the ultimate realisation was that only Zimbabweans could rescue themselves from themselves.“

This is a mater-of-fact look at the political to-ing and fro-ing since 1980. And this is written by a Zimbabwean who witnessed much of the activity. Sometimes with guard humour, sometimes with distaste – as I am sure many of us did.

The fact that a man with such insight also elected, like so many others (myself and my family included), to leave the land of milk and money (joke!) as we saw the writing on the wall, speaks volumes. That we saw the country beginning to fracture and fail even as much as ten years ago is not a reflection on our observations as much as a slur on Mugabe.

Even then he had lost the plot.

Come to think of it, he lost the plot not long after independence – with the Gukurahundi.

That a man should issue such a slur on his own people within a few years of winning the coveted title that so many people lived and died for – is proof that we are not dealing with a powerhouse, but a paranoid person who is scared of his own shadow…

“If it hasn't dawned already, it is my submission that the same realisation must guide the nation to invoke the same spirit of the late 1980s and apply it in 2008.

Zimbabwe is scheduled to hold joint presidential and parliamentary elections in March. The opposition Movement for Democratic Change has made a valid request – in my view – that the elections be postponed to allow for a number of provisions to be included. These include reconstituting the voter registration which has been in shambles for decades now.

It is common, for example; to find on the current register, names of dead people or citizens like me, who last voted in 2000 and have been out of the country since 2001. It has often been reported that such “ghost” or “absentee” registrants have voted, almost entirely for the ruling party.

The opposition also seeks an assurance that all eligible voters will be allowed to register and exercise their right in a free and fair election that is monitored by many international observers who are of undisputed repute. May I also add to this requirement that those outside the country be allowed to vote. There is an estimated 2-3 million of us, a number too large to ignore.“

The writings of a man who has read the situation and makes valid points. All of which may register with us, but fall, sadly, on deaf ears within Mugabe’s administration.

Take care.

‘debvhu