Friday 7 October 2016

"It's my property," insists Tsvangirai, of the $4 m mansion - maths does not add up. By Wilbert Mukori

We all know that Politics is not an exact science with clear cut answers but rather an art with no clear cut answers.

Arithmetic, for an example is an exact science, so 1 + 1 = 2 and will never be anything else.

In Politics, an art, one can argue A = B and be correct and yet because both A and B are not clearly defined and exact variables one can also have A < B, A > B, A ± B, etc., etc. and each one of them considered right!

Morgan Tsvangirai is deliberately trying to politicized the $4 million Highlands mansion he was allocated when he was Prime Minister to confuse everyone.

“How does my house compromise me? This is my house. This is not anybody’s property, it’s my property,” he has argued when the point was raised, not for the first time, that he should vacate the property now that he is no longer PM.

The question of who is the rightful own of the property can easily be settled by answering the question who paid the $4 million price tag on the property. As far as public record goes, the property was paid for using taxpayer’s money; if Tsvangirai disputes that then he should produce the proof that he has repaid the loan.

Tsvangirai was allocated the mansion at the time because he made a big fuss about his own house being unsuitable for someone of his senior position; this is a familiar tale to the people of Zimbabwe.

VP Mphoko and his family were holed up in the five-star hotel for nearly two years, at taxpayers’ expense. Like Tsvangirai, he insisted that all the houses offered to him were not good enough for a man of his high office! It took the determined resolve of people like Sten Zvorwadza to finally flush him out of the luxurious accommodation!

Whilst one can understand the need to provide more secure accommodation for senior public officials, the nation expects the individual concerned to be reasonable in their demands. When the individual leave office they are expected to vacate the allocated accommodation. It is absurd for each ex British PM or USA President to be provided a 10 Downing Street or White House at public expense.

What Tsvangirai and his MDC friends must never forget is that they were elected on a ticket to delivery democratic reforms and end the Zanu PF corruption, oppression and this corrosive culture of entitlement.

The very fact that Tsvangirai and his MDC friends failed to implement even one democratic reform throughout the five years of the GNU does raise the question of their being compromised. Mugabe bribed his Zanu PF cronies and thugs to buy their dogged loyalty and to do his dirty work; bribing MDC leaders would have been second nature to him.

SADC leaders accused Tsvangirai and his fellow MDC leaders of “enjoying themselves whilst in government and forgetting why they were there,” in sheer frustration at MDC’s failure to implement even one democratic reform during the GNU.

“I am not answerable to Saviour Kasukuwere. He doesn’t know anything about this house. He is just trying to make political hot air out of something that he doesn’t know,” argued Tsvangirai.

“He doesn’t know that I have a house which has a contract and I advise him to talk to President Mugabe before he starts uttering something that he doesn’t know.”

If there was any deal made between Tsvangirai and Mugabe then it only proves that he was compromised. Zimbabweans risked life and limb, and over 500 lost their lives in 2008 alone, to elect Tsvangirai to end the rot created by Zanu PF, he has not only joined the rot but he even has the chutzpah to demand we allow him to keep the loot now questions asked!


Morgan Tsvangirai must vacate the $4 million Highlands mansion allocated to him when he was PM, he no longer holds any high public office and therefore must leave. That is as crystal clear as it is mischievous to try to cloud the issue.  

16 comments:

  1. These ZImPF people must think every Zimbabwean is downright stupid. Are we to believe that Mujuru sat there like a king-cabbage for 34 years and did nothing to stop the madness of the regime because "if you have a leader who is a dictator, even if you tell him that this is wrong, he won’t listen.” By the way our king-cabbage did benefit from the vote rigging, it secured her position in power, and she joined in the wholesale looting!

    Mavhaire you too benefited from the dictatorship, you have been in power for 34 years and what have you ever accomplish? You are desperate to get back on the gravy train and that is all you care about.

    Zim PF people are finished just as much as Zanu PF itself is finished the only difference is the former are paying for the sins a lot sooner than the latter!

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  2. One of the notorious thing about our political leaders is that they think it is perfectly ok for them to say one thing and do the exact opposite and, worse still, they demand accountability of everyone else except themselves. Ask Tsvangirai about the $4 million Highlands mansion or Mujuru about her family fortune valued at one time in billions of dollars and they get really angry. So far no one has dared ask President Mugabe about his extravagant lifestyle, family fortune, nepotism, etc.

    Of course Tsvangirai and his MDC friends sold-out on reforms and the $4 million mansion was part of the bribe. It would be irresponsible to allow Tsvangirai to keep the mansion just as it will be irresponsible to allow the Mujurus, Mugabes, etc. to keep the looted wealth; to do so will be to reward them and their families for betraying the nation!

    The best course of action is to thoroughly investigate why MDC failed to implement even one reform, let Tsvangirai himself explain to the nation why he repeatedly ignored SADC leaders' reminders for MDC to implement the reforms. It should be easy to establish beyond doubt that Tsvangirai and his NDC friends are not just incompetent but worse still they are corrupt, after receive the gravy train trappings of power they did not want to upset Mugabe by implementing the reforms.

    Yes Tsvangirai paid Mugabe for the $ 4 million Highlands Mansion, he kicked reforms into the tall grass. Sadly for Tsvangirai the mansion did not belong to Mugabe but the people of Zimbabwe and by kicking reforms in the tall grass he was effectively kicking the people in the teeth. If he thinks the people are going to allow him to keep the mansion as his reward for kicking them in the teeth, he has something else coming!

    Of course Tsvangirai does not want to be held to account for what he did and did not do during the GNU but what of it! He must and will be held to account come rain come sunshine! And so too will Mujuru, Mugabe and all the other politicians on both sides of the political divide!

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  3. @ Peter Fuyane

    Whatever deal was "struck between the President and his mukwasha" is their business what we the people find objectionable here is that Mugabe should be bribing his mukwasha with a mansion paid for using taxpayers' money and that Tsvangirai should kick the democratic reforms into the tall grass to please Mugabe. Tsvangirai kicked the taxpayers in the teeth and it is stupid to expect the same taxpayers to reward Tsvangirai for this by allowing him to keep the mansion!

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    1. I agree with you there, it is nonsense to allow Mugabe to use wealth stolen from us to bribe official, globe trot and to gratify his insatiable greed and those of his family and cronies and let the tyrant get away with it. We must recover the looted wealth!

      It is nonsense that people like Tsvangirai should sell our hopes and dreams for thirty pieces of silver and be allowed to keep the silver! We must recover the silver and provide him with the rope with which to hang himself!

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  4. My dear brother Bigboy, you are the one who is brainwashed. People like you have failed to see President Mugabe for the cunning, corrupt, incompetent and murderous tyrant he is because you are naïve and gullible. One of President Mugabe’s favourite tricks is to give with one hand and make a big song and dance about it and then stealthily rob even more than he gave away. The naïve and gullible see the former but are too stupid to ever see the latter even when the dirty trick is repeated over and over again.

    You have been wittering here about how President Mugabe is now committed to good governance and that we should focus on changing the system and not personalities.

    You are all confused because you cannot accept that good governance here arises from implementing all the democratic reforms to ensure free, fair and credible elections; period. In your pea-size brain you cannot accept it ending there, you want President Mugabe to be allowed to contest in the said elections. You have been told the democratic reforms are to ensure elections are free, fair and credible period; in other words no one is being barred from contesting.

    You are not content with Mugabe being a contestant like everyone else and asked that he be the only contestant on the feeble grounds that he has accepted good governance. All the other candidates accept the constitution, rule of law, etc. so what! What you, Bigboy and your fellow Mugabe apologists, want is to be granted special powers to shortlist who can contest the elections what you are failing to see with your pea-sized brain is that you have taken us back to the starting point and the need for reforms.

    An election process in which there is pre-selected candidates to produce a pre-determined result cannot and will never be a free, fair and credible elections!

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  5. "The MDC has stated, times without number, that corruption, particularly in the public sector, is at the root of the political and socio – economic crisis that is presently bedeviling the nation. For many a time, Zanu PF Cabinet Ministers and other highly placed bureaucrats in the civil service have brazenly stolen and/or abused public funds and public resources such as farming inputs and machinery etc.," you said.

    Well Mr Gutu you are spot on there!

    Charity begins at home, particularly when it comes to ending corruption. MDC leaders including Mr Gutu himself failed to implement even one democratic reform throughout the five years of the GNU because Mugabe bribed them to kick reforms into the tall grass. Tsvangirai is hanging on to his $4 million Highlands mansion, one of his many corruption trophies.

    Professor Moyo would not be in power today to loot the $270 000 or Mugabe to loot $ 15 billion from Marange diamonds if MDC had implemented the reforms designed to end vote rigging! I am sickened to the back teeth with people like Obert Gutu, Tendai Biti, Joice Mujuru, Morgan Tsvangirai, etc. sanctimonious condemnation of corruption when they not only did nothing to end corruption but have done all they could to have a share of the loot! In fact the condemnation is half-heart in that they are fighting to get back on the gravy train so they can continue the looting from where they left off when the kicked off the train.

    What is bedeviling this great nation is corrupt and incompetent politicians and our knack for recycling them so they can continue to fleece the nation!

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  6. Is that law going to stop the gross mismanagement, the rampant corruption and the lawlessness, the three killer diseases behind the country's economic meltdown and chasing away would be investors? If not, then the bond notes have already started to fall in value before they have started circulating!

    After 36 years of cheating, bribing, bamboozling and even murdering anyone Zanu PF considered a threat to its iron grip on power; the economy is the one thing the corrupt and tyrannical regime will not be able to cheat. With unemployment now a nauseating 90% plus and everything collapsing, the regime is failing to pay its civil servants there is no way this can go on forever. This Zanu PF regime has to go and go it will!

    VP Mnangagwa can start crafting a law to stop regime change because that is what he will need next!

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  7. "It is my property," Tsvangirai say; yeah right! We are to believe that you Richard Morgan Tsvangirai earned $ 4 million in five years as PM to say nothing of the $300 000 you paid Locadia, the thousands of dollars spent on Sea Cruises, etc.

    Professor Ncube got his former white owned farm, Mwonzora has his big house, etc.; there is no doubt that MDC leaders were bribed to kick the reforms into the tall grass. It beggars belief that people will once again trust the same MDC leaders to carryout the reforms, same task they failed to carry out last time. How can we be that naive!

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  8. So Mai Mujuru blames President Mugabe because he never listened to her or anybody for all the regime did wrong during her 34 years at the heart of government. She blame her husband Solomon for all the corruption the family was involved in because he never told any of his wives what he was up to. So for 34 years she has sat there and never lifted a finger whilst the country went to the dogs.

    Now she wants the nation to elect her back into office, even reward her with the post of State President so she can sit there whilst the country goes to the dog again because even as President she will still see nothing, hear nothing and do nothing.

    Mai Mujuru is corrupt and incompetent, being appointed President will not change her and make her a competent leader!

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  9. @ Magavimba

    The regime is spending some of the looted money from Marange to stage 2008 Operation Mavhotera papi mark2 using the same war veterans turned Puruvheya/ Dzakutsaku as before. For all their posturing as liberation war heroes whose commitment to povo and freedom is unshakeable people like Jabulani Sibanda, Victor Matamadanda, Chris Mutsvangwa, Chinos, etc. have proven that they are just thugs for hire to the highest bidder! Buy them lots of meat to eat and plenty of beer to drink and you have yourself ruthless and mindless dogs.

    War veterans fell out with President Mugabe because he did not have the decency of throwing the scraps and bones at them, many of them are living in grinding poverty just like the rest of us. They still believe that this corrupt and wasteful system can make the ruling elite and the all war veterans filthy rich; it has clearly not happened so far but they still believe it will.

    Of course Mugabe will assure them that it will happen; they demanded 10% of all foreign owned businesses' 51% shares Mugabe will tell them they will get 50%. Ever since the indigenisation law was passed back in 2007 all would be foreign investors have avoided Zimbabwe like a Leper Colony so the war veterans will get 50% of nothing. It will take the likes of Matamadanda and Sibanda another ten years to figure that one out!

    People like Douglas Nyikayaramba, Perrence Shiri, Valerio Sibanda and no smart that their fellow war veterans Matemadanda and Mutsvangwa and President Mugabe has used them for his own selfish purpose just as he has used the disbanded war veterans the only difference is the former groups have continued to receive the scraps and bones, sometimes with big chunk of meat. The stupidity of all these well fed security chefs is that they believe they by pretending to be apolitical and to condemn corruption (thus implying they are themselves clean) they can help Mugabe remain in power and thus retain the status quo!
    How can we retain a system that has forced millions into a live of abject poverty just to gratify the insatiable greed of the few ruling elite, including the corrupt and politicised security chefs! Yes Jonathan Moyo must go but these military buffoons too must go. We need to carry out in depth democratic reforms designed to end Zanu PF control of the security sector and replace the corrupt and politicised buffoons with professional Generals, Commissioners, etc.

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  10. Senator Coltart knows that there is no realignment anyone can do take away President Mugabe's dictatorial powers which the new constitution gives the State President. The very fact that we have all those 18 opposition parties including MDC-T and Zim PF still yapping about the National Election Reform Agenda (NERA) only goes to show they still have no clue what the democratic changes we need are.

    As far as I know, Ncube's MDC of which the Senator here is a senior member, has not joined the idiots pushing NERA. One assumes that MDC have seen the futility of NERA although the Senator still yaps of electoral reforms on other forums.

    He will never submit any electoral reform proposals because he is smart enough to know there are none!

    What I would like to see Senator Coltart and all his corrupt and incompetent MDC friends do is apologized to the people of Zimbabwe for selling-out during the GNU and then en masse walkout into the political sunset never to show their ugly faces ever again!

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  11. George Charamba says President Mugabe told him the story of US$ 15 billions of diamond revenue was swindled was a lie.

    “Then the bombshell: "Figure yandakangotaura zvangu kuti zvityise, kikikiki!" wrote Charamba in his Manheru column.

    Nonsense! Zanu PF spent at least US$4 billion to bankroll its 2013 elections including $10 million paid to NIKUV alone. The late former Zanu PF Mines Minister, Edward Takaruza Chindori-Chining, said in a parliamentary report in 2013 that there was looting in Marange as no records were being kept of the quantity and quality of the diamonds being mined. With no records being kept, those mining the diamonds were free to steal and loot and they did at a grand scale. The former minister feared for his life for producing this report and he dead a few months later on 19 June 2013 in a suspicious road accident.

    Former MDC Finance Minister during the GNU, Tendai Biti, has complained that government revenue from diamonds has been falling although mining activities had increased by leaps and bonds. The current Zanu PF Finance Minister, Patrick Chinamasa, admitted last year that government revenue from diamond was one sixth of what he expected.

    Corruption of diamond wealth in Marange is rampant and, worse still, the wealth is being abused to kept the regime in power! Diamonds should have been our ticket out of poverty but because of corruption it is now a curse.

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  12. "We are not participating in the Bikita West by-election because of our no reforms no election resolution and I can authoritatively say, on behalf of the party, that there is no official endorsement of any candidate in the Bikita West by-election," said Obert Gutu.

    Yet the MDC-T has already said it will contest next year’s elections although the party has accepted that not even one reform was implemented or is likely to be implemented in the remaining months. Indeed, MDC-T endorsed Themba Mliswa in the Norton by-elections a few weeks ago! Gutu is talking rubbish, as usual!

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  13. We went to war to end the exploitation and discrimination of blacks by the white colonialists. It is a great pity that many of those at the coal face of the struggle the war veterans led by President Mugabe and his cronies have betrayed the people and have since become the new oppressors. It is right and justice has been served that the rogue war veterans have themselves been betrayed by President Mugabe and thus got nothing, Yes Maponda, you were used and then forgotten!

    We have failed to deliver a free, just and prosperous society because of the greed of the tyrants and rogue war veterans. We must focus on getting this important task done and must not allow ourselves to be distracted by greed individuals like these war veterans who still think the war of independence was about them and everyone else must wait until their have had their fill of power and wealth!

    People like Maponda, Mahiya and other war veteran leaders must be held to account for all the crimes the war veterans committed against innocent civilians in the name of Zanu PF!

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  14. "Vakuru vakati nhamo ineharo!" (The wise say, ignorance is stubborn!) In the case of Tsvangirai we are seeing how true this is.

    “Zanu-PF and Mugabe are finished. They can’t win this election except to try and steal it. But they must be stopped,” Tsvangirai told his naive and gullible audience.

    How many times have SADC leaders told him to the only way to stop Zanu PF rigging the elections is by implementing the reforms and how many times has he, foolishly ignored their warnings?

    It was only after MDC had lost the 2013 elections that the party acknowledged that Zanu PF rigged elections. The party then resolved not to contest any more future elections without first implementing the reforms. Tsvangirai has since forgotten his "No reform, no election!" resolutions and is diving into the contest head first from a great height.

    It is one thing Tsvangirai indulging himself in his folly of contesting flawed elections for the sake of winning a few gravy train seats but it is another matter that so many innocent Zimbabweans end up paying dearly for his foolishness.

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  15. 64% of Zimbabweans trust President Mugabe according to Afrobarometer, a PanAfrican research group.

    Zimbabwe is a Police State and everyone is fearful of the regime's CIO who, according to former State Security Minister, Didymus Mutasa in everywhere and knows everything about us all. In such a State who will be so foolish as the admit that they hate the President with a passion especially to a total stranger who might well be a CIO!

    If Afrobarometer was right and President Mugabe believed this was not just another cooked up result by another bribed PR group then he should allow all the democratic reforms to the implemented so there can be free, fair and credible elections! Why not?

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