Last week RBZ Governor, Dr John Mangudya, and Finance
Minister, Professor Mthuli Ncube, were thrilled to announce that the country
secured a $500 million loan. The loan would end the shortages of fuel, wheat,
medicine and foreign currency that had plagued the nation, they said.
For a nation who import bill has ballooned into hundreds of
millions of dollars as its own local industry collapsed so we imported even
more whilst earning less from exports; the loan will easy the shortages but
only for a month or two at most. This is voodoo economics at its worst; we
borrowing money to spend it on recurrent expenditure with no or little hope of
generating wealth. How are we going to repay the debt?
Worse still, tomorrow, when the present loan is spent, we
will face an even tougher challenge of raising enough to pay for the recurrent
expenditure and repay the loan.
Governor Mangudya and Minister Ncube were thrilled with the
$500 million loan but many Zimbabweans out there were not; Zanu PF is dragging
the nation into a debt trap. When you are in a hole, stop digging! Many people
wanted to know were the loan was coming from. Bloomberg has uncovered the
source of the loan.
“The Zimbabwe National Army (ZNA) stepped in to provide
collateral for the African Export-Import Bank's $500 million loan advanced to
Zimbabwe recently,” reported Bulawayo 24.
“Bloomberg has reported that the loan, which will be paid
over four years when production starts, is backed by a mine that Great Dyke
Investments, a venture between Russian investors and the Zimbabwean military,
plans to build at a cost of $4 billion.
“Bloomberg reports that the structure of the deal was
decided earlier this month at a meeting attended by officials from Zimbabwe's
treasury, central bank, mines ministry, Afreximbank, and Great Dyke Investments
chairwoman, Hespinah Rukato, the people said. The mine could produce about
800,000 ounces of platinum group metals a year if built.”
ZNA, s***t! It does not get worse than this!
It was Tendai Biti, when he was Minister of Finance during
the GNU, who first flagged the existence of a shadowy informal body, the Joint
Operation Command (JOC), a Mafia type junta, comprising the top brass in the
Army, Police, CIO and Prison Services headed by Robert Mugabe, Emmerson
Mnangagwa and a handful of other select Zanu PF officials operating alongside
the formal government.
Central government bankrolled JOC activities and its members
extravagant lifestyles notable Robert Mugabe and his family whose globetrotting
have broken all world records. And yet JOC has secured even more funds from
other clandestine sources such as black-market trade in foreign currency and
looting.
The top brass in ZNA, Police, CIO, Prison Services and other
JOC members were all granted mining concessions in Marange and Chiadzwa diamond
fields. The late Edward Chindori Chininga, himself a former Zanu PF Minister of
Mines, revealed the true nature of these concession in a parliamentary report
in 2012 of which he was chairman. The concessions allowed the mining to take
place with no records of quality or quality of diamonds, where the diamonds
were sold and for how much, etc., etc. And so it was impossible to know how
much was earned, the tax payable and so the concession holders and their
partners did not pay any taxes.
In 2016 Mugabe admitted the country had been “swindled” out
of US$15 billion in diamond revenue. A Canadian NGO specialising in diamonds
estimated that Mugabe earned US$2 billion from diamonds in 2012 alone. Mugabe
never arrested even one diamond swindler or recover one dollar. How could he
when he is one of the swindlers himself.
When Emmerson Mnangagwa took over from Mugabe following the
November 2017 military coup, he promised to end corruption. A year and half
down the line, he too has failed to arrest even one diamond swindler or recover
one dollar. A few weeks ago he finally admitted his failure.
“Corruption is deep rooted!” he confessed.
How can he uproot corruption when he and his fellow JOC
Mafia junta who helped him stage the November 2017 coup are corrupt themselves
and are godfathers corruption?
The confirmation that the ZNA and the other JOC operatives
are extending their wholesale looting mining concessions from diamonds to
platinum, lithium and many other resources and activities is most
disconcerting.
Of course, the top brass in the ZNA, Police, CIO and the
rest of the JOC junta members KNOW they have no business holding mining
concession in Marange, Great Dykes or anywhere else in the country. If anyone
of them wanted to be a miner, they must resign the position in the Army,
Police, Government or whatever. They will then be issued a mining licence
subject to the same rules and conditions as everyone else. This is exactly what
they do not want and hence the reason they have propped up this Zanu PF
dictatorship and will resist any democratic change.
“That's just a slogan, just travel bans on a few people. Zimbabwe trades with every country in the world. It has a huge trading account with the United States, so sanctions are a fiction. The real sanction in this economy is ZANU-PF, the real sanction in this economy is Emmerson Mnangagwa and that's why we are in this fix. Mnangagwa is a disaster. Mnangagwa is so bad he makes Mugabe look like an angel. And Mugabe was certainly not an angel by any standard,” said Biti.
ReplyDeleteTendai Biti do you remember who said Robert Mugabe was “father of the nation, the unflappable fountain of wisdom”? It was you, Tendai Biti during the 2008 to 2013 GNU. You were the Minister of Finance and you and your fellow MDC leaders failed to implement even one democratic reform in five years. Not one!
You lot were warned against taking part in the elections without reforms but you would not listen. All you were after is the few gravy train seats Zanu PF was giving away, you got one of the seats at the price of landing the nation in this mess.
You are a sell-out and you should just shut up!
British Prime Minister Theresa May has just announced that she leave her job as Prime Minister and by the end of July the UK will have another PM. Whoever is going to be PM, he/she will be 7 th since 1980. In the same 40 years Zimbabwe has had two leaders. The first, Robert Mugabe, came into power by rigging elections and has retained his iron grip on power by rigging elections and, from time to time, supplementing the rigging with the use of wanton violence. He was finally forced out of office at gun point when his erstwhile vote rigging and wanton violence enforcer whom, it should be said, he was getting rid of in favour of his wife and her G40 faction, ousted him first.
ReplyDeleteAlthough Mnangagwa and the coup gangsters promised to hold free, fair and credible elections and thus get the democratic mandate of the people of Zimbabwe, they failed to follow through. After four decades of rigged elections and absolute power the temptation to carryon was too much. The awarding of the ZNA JOC Junta members the loot-all-you-want platinum mining concession over and above the same concessions in Marange and Chiadzwa will only make the junta more and more powerful.
Many people believe Zanu PF spent as much as US$4 billion in last year’s elections extension compared to US$2 million maximum spend by all the opposition parties. The party used the money bankroll its various vote rigging and vote buying schemes including schemes to buy off opposition leaders and thus keep the opposition weak and feeble. Most of the money came from the wholesale looting taking place is Marange and Chiadzwa diamond fields. With the ZNA expending its resource base into platinum mining, Zanu PF knows its vote rigging juggernaut will be well funded.
Countries like Britain, USA and all the democratic nations the world over have done well politically and economically not so much because they have never had bad leaders, they did. The secret of their success is that their democratic system of government has
The Army, Police, CIO and Prison Service have always played a pivotal role in Zimbabwe politics after all the top brass in these arms of government have been very active members of Joint Operations Command, the shadowy Mafia junta that has been the real power in Zimbabwe. It is no secret that the Army has always deployed thousands of plain-clothes soldiers to campaign for Zanu PF during elections which the same way the party had deployed freedom fighters during the 1980 elections.
ReplyDeleteSo the Army is expanding its mining portifolio from diamond to platinum mining. The Russians and Chinese and other ill-repute nations are all in on the act because they know these loot-all-want mining concession are the most profitable operation ever. The local partner does not want to pay any tax and so no records are kept and so the foreign partner will declare whatever they want and they too do not pay any tax, at least not in Zimbabwe.
Mnangagwa knows that it is in his and Zanu PF's interests that the Army and other arms of government are granted these wholesale looting concession, he knows that the Army will be deploying an even big contigent of soldiers to campaign for the regime and the top brass will remain committed to the regime's shoot to kill order. The Army top brass has as much to lose as Mnangagwa and the other Zanu PF thugs if Zanu PF was to lose the elections.
The 15 November 2017 military coup openned a Pandora's box which, once opened, cannot be closed again. So reports of another coup cannot be dismissed lightly!
ReplyDeleteThe idea of Chiwenga replacing Mnangagwa and expect the economy to improve is naive. Zimbabwe is a pariah state and removing one dictator for another will not change that reality.