By Thandekile Moyo| In a country where pensioners spend four nights sleeping outside banks to access less than US$5/day, Mary Chiwenga, the wife of Zimbabwe’s vice president, is accused of having ‘externalised’ US$1m to SA and China.

In the past two years, the lives of the poor and working people in Zimbabwe have not improved an iota. A high-profile criminal prosecution of Mary Chiwenga, wife of the vice president, tells us a lot about the spending habits of Zimbabwe’s political elite. Meanwhile, if you walk through any major town in Zimbabwe at night, you will find dozens of people sleeping on the pavements. If you observe carefully, you will notice that many are found outside banking halls. Why and what’s really going on?

Suffer the pensioners

Zimbabwe has been experiencing cash shortages for years. As a result, most urban dwellers now transact electronically using the EcoCashcellphone banking platform or swipe their bank cards. Unfortunately, many people, especially pensioners, most of whom relocated to the rural areas after leaving their jobs, still depend on hard cash to live.DISPLAY ADVERTS

Banks do give cash, but in limited supply – if one is lucky, you can get up to Z$50 a day. That is exactly R50. On 20 November 2019, the state-run newspaper, The Herald, ran a headline that screamed: NSSA increases pension payouts. The National Social Security Authority (NSSA) is the Zimbabwean body that manages pensions. The report said:

“The National Social Security Authority (NSSA) has more than doubled its minimum pensions from $80 to $200 a month, while workers’ compensation scheme minimum pensions have been tripled from $80 to $240.”

This may sound hopeful. Who does not want to hear that their salary has been doubled or trebled? But what this means in real terms is that minimum pensioners payouts have been increased from R80 to R200 a month and workers’ compensation trebled from R80 to R240 a month.

With Z$240 in Zimbabwe, one can go and buy exactly 16 loaves of bread (Z$15 each) or 24 cans of Coca-Cola (Z$10 each) or 13l of petrol (Z$18/l) or, since it’s festive season, a bottle of Robertson sweet red wine from OK Zimbabwe, our biggest supermarket chain “where the nation shops and saves”.

This is what people who saved their pensions with the NSSA get monthly. But this money, at a Z$50 withdrawal a day, can only be withdrawn over four days, if one is lucky. So, because they cannot afford to get into town for four days in a row, many pensioners have no choice but to sleep in the bank queues right outside the bank for at least four days a month.

It is unconscionable what the government is doing to pensioners. NSSA pensions are decided after consultation with Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube. The Z$80 pensioners’ salaries were originally US dollar salaries. With the coming of the bond note, they were pegged at a rate of 1:1 against the US dollar. But on 20 February 2019, Reserve Bank Governor John Mangudya decided to change the local currency to what he named the RTGS dollar and its rate against the USD was to be determined by the markets.

They, however, did not adjust salaries to the new rate.

What this means is according to today’s rates of US$1: RTGS20, a pensioner earning Z$200 should in fact be earning RTGS4,000 or R4,000. The government, through the Reserve Bank, came up with a policy that changed the currency, but did not adjust people’s bank balances and salaries in line with the new rates. This is criminal.

Squander the rich

As this injustice is occurring, the trial of Priscah Mupfumira, a former tourism minister, who was arrested on 25 July 2019 over the US$95-million NSSA scandal has been postponed after she was declared “too depressed” to stand trial.

How depressed are her victims, one wonders.

Now, in a country where pensioners spend four nights sleeping outside banks to access less than US$5/day, Mary Chiwenga, the wife of Zimbabwe’s Vice President Constantine Chiwenga, is accused of having externalised US$1-million to South Africa and China.

Everything about this case stinks.

It is a cocktail of corruption, misogyny and abuse of office. Mary Chiwenga’s husband is accusing her of all these crimes, and that husband is the vice president. He has managed to get the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission (ZACC) embroiled in his marital issues, showing us the extent to which institutions in Zimbabwe are under the influence of politicians. Not only did the vice president manage to get the ZAAC to investigate his wife, he also got the police to arrest and detain her, and who is to say it was not him that ordered the magistrate to remand her in custody?DISPLAY ADVERTS

This is a clear case of abuse of authority. Where does this influence over the judiciary, armed forces and other state institutions start and where does it end?

Let’s be clear, Mary Chiwenga is no angel. In 2018, she sent someone to “talk to me” about my social media posts which she felt painted her and Zanu-PF in a bad light. She advised me to stand down and rather take it from her than have the soldiers pay me a visit.

I refused to be intimidated. A short while later I was fired without warning from my job at a government-funded publishing house.

I admit I step on many government toes with my writing, but I will forever wonder to what extent her threats were linked to my firing. Mary Chiwenga failed to manage the power that came with being married to an army general cum vice president. Many do not feel sorry for her for what is happening, but for the sake of justice and constitutionality, we cannot condone what the vice president is doing to his wife.

The nature of the allegations against Mary Chiwenga tells a story of a family that had access to millions of dollars. Mary Chiwenga is accused of externalising US$1-million. Where on Earth did a civil servant’s wife get US$1-million? How much do vice presidents earn that they could have access to that kind of money? How much did Constantine Chiwenga earn as an army general?

Pictures of the Chiwengas’ mansion did the rounds on social media after the overthrow of Robert Mugabe, exposing just how rich the general must be. If ZACC was truly in the business of investigating corruption, would it not have gone further than arresting Mary Chiwenga and dug deeper into the source of the US$1-million? Do the Chiwengas’ earnings justify their wealth?

Let us look at how Mary Chiwenga is said to have externalised the money. Had she smuggled the money to South Africa stuffed in suitcases we wouldn’t bat an eyelid, we would think she is just another common criminal. What is shocking is that Mary Chiwenga is accused of having externalised this money through formal channels. She waltzed into CBZ bank, past pensioners and others who had probably been in the queue for days, and somehow managed to get the bank to transfer hundreds of thousands of US dollars to banks outside Zimbabwe. This is enraging to many Zimbabweans whose US dollar bank balances were changed overnight to a worthless local currency.

-Daily Maverick