By Luke Batsirai Tamborinyoka
As ED begins what he presumes to be his last term of office on the back of a stolen election, all indications point to a determined “lootocrat” lining up his family, cronies and allies for a “last supper” that will be defined by massive looting and avaricious plunder of State resources before he reluctantly disappears into the political sunset in 2028 or earlier.
Whatever the case, this is Mnangagwa’s last dance with power and the indications, especially given the shenanigans around the Mutapa Investment Fund (MIF), all point to looting on steroids. What we are currently seeing on the ground through this MIF is a brazen and systematic laying out of a clear framework to unveil a deliberate plan to steal the country’s vast wealth in the coming months, away from the public glare,
Our Lord Jesus Christ had his Last Supper or the Passover in the Upper room in the second floor of a building in Jerusalem Mnangagwa is definitely no Jesus Christ. But we see him blasphemously and in a crude and heathenic way cutting the national bread in the upper room; huge and sumptuous buttered slices that he intends to share only with his family and a coterie of his gothic disciples.
The Mutapa Investment Fund is a new zone of attack by Mnangagwa and his clanist brigade of certified thieves.
His appointment of family, clansmen and clanswomen into Cabinet and the deployment of relatives and cronies to strategic State and quasi-State institutions has all been part of a deliberate ploy to loot on a grand scale—and for the last time— the country’s vast natural and mineral wealth.
ED and his henchmen have become the latter day Pioneer Column, scouring the country for lithium and other wealth for their own self-aggrandisement.Indeed, they have become today’s colonialists pillaging and looting a whole nation’s assets and wealth.
We have seen it all before in his past and equally stolen term.Indeed, in his pilfered term from 2018 to 2023, Kuda Tagwirei, Henrietta Rushwaya, Justice Mayor Wadyajena, Scott Sakupwanya, Uebert Angel and a vast bandwagon of local and foreign nationals were exposed in the Gold Mafia documentary as part of a criminal underworld fronting Mnangagwa’s agenda to plunder the country’s resources.
ED has used an array of frontmen over the years, including his children and relatives, to build vast personal fortune and to turn this country into a personal empire.
Kuda Tagwirei, Delish Nguwaya and others have all frontED his vast appetite to loot and spirit away the proceeds of the country’s resources.
From waste management (the Pomona deal), fertiliser, Command Agriculture, the procurement of Zupco buses and other deals, ED’s surrogates have played the proxy in his unmitigated and gargantuan looting spree.
In the Ministry of Health where he first deployed his uncle Obediah Moyo as Minister of Health and later his wife as a Health ambassador, we saw massive looting as these cronies purported to be assisting NatPharm to import the country’s medicines when in fact they were bleeding the country dry through overpricing. Proxy foreign firms would supply the country with medicines at inflated prices.
Now in this his Last Supper, his final term stolen on 23 August, Mnangagwa is determined to loot massively in his last dance with power so that he bequeathes the country’s wealth to his progeny.
Oh yes, the man is hell-bent on leaving the country’s wealth in the hands of his children.
And he will loot big with neither shame nor compunction, without batting an eyelid!
MIF(ED)
The Mutapa Investment Fund (MIF) has left the whole country miffed. Indeed, we’re all MIFfed by this deliberate plan to salt away the country’s immense wealth.
Under this well-orchestrated heist, over 20 State-Owned Enterprises have been farmed out to the Mutapa Investment Fund (MIF), formerly the Sovereign Wealth fund. The SOEs under the MIF include strategic entities such as ZESA, TelOne, the National Railways of Zimbabwe the POSB, ZUPCO, NETONE, Powertel, Air Zimbabwe, Hwange Colliery Company and COTTCO, among others.
The original idea of a Sovereign Wealth Fund was meant to leverage on the country’s huge natural and mineral wealth with the noble aim to use them to anchor inclusive economic growth and economic development.
But now the plan has been hijecked. The idea now is to use these strategic State entities to loot. The controversial Presidential gazette that seeks to mask all procurement and disposal of the assets of these strategic State entities is highly revealing The regulations make it clear that all transactions around these strategic State entities must happen away from the public glare, beret of any iota of transparency and accountability.
In fact the law legislates secrecy on anything to do with these entities, a last supper antic to make a meal out of these State companies.
Batai mbavha iyo ! Stop the thief.
Mnangagwa remains a touted murderer in the court of public opinion. Quite an uncanny reputation. And murderers by virtue of their trade, are known to have a strange affinity for secrecy and murkiness.
Maybe that trait would not be surprising for a crocodile whose element is the muddy waters. . The mud has never been a transparent arena.
The love for secrecy is Mnangagwa’s key tenet. Some five or so months ago, he was forced by public pressure to withdraw a similar regulation that sought to prohibit on grounds of “national interest” the publication of how and who would be supplying medical equipment to the country.
Yet what was in the national interest was for everything to be done transparently and under public scrutiny.
Mnangagwa obviously wanted to steal. And he wants to do it again as evidenced by the promulgation of similar regulations exhorting secrecy around the Mutapa Investment Fund, itself the scene of an imminent heist..
ED has come again with another veil of secrecy on public wealth, whose business in fact deserves to be transacted in full glare of the public, all n the interest of probity, transparency and accountability, key tenets of democracy.
This week, dear reader, I wish to make a few observations on why the Mutapa Investment Fund must bring huge palpitations to the nation’s collective heart
- ED , his family and cronies are directly in charge
The MIF will be a huge entity worth billions of dollars overseen by the Ministry of Finance and Investment Promotion.
Forget Mthuli Ncube. He’s just a stooge currently in Cabinet at the benevolence of Mnangagwa after losing the Cowdray Park seat in the last election. He will not say a word about this pending heist.
ED’s pointman at the Finance Ministry that will be in charge of the MIF is his son, Kudakwashe David Mnangagwa, the deputy Minister of Finance.
Dear reader, Kudakwashe David is the same man who se company churned out huge amounts of money obtained from the RBZ to channel it into the illegal foreign currency market. Well, it would not be remiss of me to suspect that Kuda was just a front for his father as he kept Zimbabwe’s illegal foreign currency market kicking!
With a close relative, John Mushayavanhu, set to be appointed RBZ governor in the coming days, the MIF is under threat from a thieving triumvirate.Why? Simply because the trio of ED, his son David and his nephew Mushayavanhu could well decide over dinner the fate of the billions of dollars in assets of these strategic State entities.
- The prospect of relatives as board members
The controversial regulations.provide for the appointment of a 10 member board of equal gender to the MIF.
The board is still to be appointed but given what we have seen in the past five years, the board members could very well be nieces, cousins, aunts and uncles from Chivi, Shurugwi, Gutu, Mapanzure and Zvishavane.
The pliable board, whenever it will be appointed,will simply allow ED’s allies to grab these companies and their assets for a song in the likely event that they are placed into “private” hands or should their assets be disposed of.
- UnConstitutional regulations
In gazetting SI 156 of 2023 that instituted the attendant controversial regulations and renamed the Sovereign Wealth Fund to the Mutapa Investment Fund, Mnangagwa used his Presidential Powers to amend primary legislation.
It is the sole duty of Parliament to make laws. it is patently unconstitutional for the Executive, through the President, to amend a law made by Parliament without consulting the same Parliament whose primary role is to make law..
The notion of separation of powers is a key tenet of democracy. Over the years, we’ve seen the Presidency usurping the powers of Parliament by abusing Presidential Powers to make laws, itself the sole preserve of Parliament..
Even in the run-up to an election in which the President is a candidate, we have seen in the past the President amending the Electoral Act, in other words determining the rules of a game in which he is a player.
Mnangagwa has not stopped there. He has gone further and created his own “Commissions’ that have brazenly taken over the role of chapter 12 institutions that ought to be independent.
For example, in place of the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission, ED has set up what he calls an Anti-Corruption unit in his office, headed by his relative Thabani Vusa Mpofu.
In the place of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission, we saw Mnangagwa creating a personal unit called Forever Associates of Zimbabwe (FAZ) to (mis)run the last election.
He has done it again, this time usurping the power of Parliament by unconstitutionally amending primary law, all in a sinister bid to prepare for his last supper as he brazenly puts strategic State entities on his menu card.
- The return of the Undertaker
Mnangagwa has a history of plundering huge corporates and running them aground.
It is common knowledge that as Zanu PF secretary for Finance, Mnangagwa with his allies the Joshi brothers looted and ran down several thriving party companies.
It was a huge empire that Mnangagwa the Undertaker Iiterally ran aground.
On April Fools day in 2004, disturbed by the way companies and party finances were being managed under Mnangagwa, the Zanu PF central committee set up a special investigation committee to probe the matter.
Upon the setting up of the committee, ED’s cohorts the Joshi brothers immediately skipped the country. All we know is that the internal report of the investigation committee was swept under the carpet, never to see the light of day, notwithstanding the undeniable fact that ED had run down the party’s once-thriving business empire.
ED had taken party members for fools through the committee that was set up on 1 April 2004, a probe team whose report went nowhere, assuming there was ever a report in the first place.
Today, the legendary corporate undertaker wants us to put all the country’s strategic entities into an empire of similar scope called the MIF, run by himself, his son at the Ministry of Finance, his nephew at the RBZ and obviously a pliable board that is still to be appointed
The Undertaker will definitely strike again.
Conclusion
It’s definitely a last supper crusade as the man prepares to loot in his last term, which he is unsure when it will end, given the nagging questions around his legitimacy following yet another stolen election.
For him, it’s time to eat one more time. The last supper.The last dance.
Akuda kudyira kuenda . Filling the tummy for the road, as we would say in the village.
And he remains determined to plunder the country’s national wealth while we all stand and watch.
They call it the Mutapa Investment Fund—-or simply MIF. Indeed, we are all MIFfed, though we appear to be helpless about it. Our national wealth appears to have been downgraded to that despicable moniker yet again: Mutapa Investment Fund for ED (MIFFED).
The whole country is MIFfed as the gluttonous Mnangagwa lines our children’s fortune for his last supper.
But why are we so helpless when this man is angling to run away with the country’s fortune?
Fellow Zimbabweans, we have been taken for granted for too long. Should we allow Mnangagwa to have a last supper of our collective national wealth? Shall we stand by and allow this evil man to partake to the vast natural resources bequeathed to all of us by our forebears?
Hell No!
Luke_Tamborinyoka is a citizen from Domboshava . He is a journalist and an ardent political scientist by profession . Tamborinyoka is also a change champion in the Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) . You can interact with him on his Facebook page or on the twitter handle @ luke_tambo .