'Street kids' claiming late Mujuru's amassed loot - idea of restorative justice is appealing!

The late General Solomon Mujuru is believed to have been one of the country's richest persons when he died. Now his wealth is up for grabs and, not surprisingly, many want a share of it. As many as 90 individual are claiming that the late General was their father!

"The rest who now claim to be Solomon's children are street kids who are after his wealth," the late General's brother, Joel told News Day.

"What kind of children are they who appear at the courts without even coming to see their father's relatives? We like Solomon's children, but those we don't know should go for paternity tests first before we can accept them. Where were they when Solomon was still alive?"  

The very idea of the hundreds of thousands of street kids getting a share of Mujuru's wealth appeals to me. The only "paternity" test, if there should be one, will be to establish that they are Zimbabweans!

Let us face the facts; Mujuru did not amass his wealth from hard work or from the exercise of his talent but from wholesale corruption and looting. The late General owns mines, farms, houses and many other assets and, like many others of his looting kind, has failed to put these assets into productive use. It is the decades of institutionalized criminal waste of resources by the Zanu PF ruling elite that has destroyed the Zimbabwe economy.

The hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of street kids in every city, town and growth point across the length and breadth of our country are the victims of our collapsed economy, the victims of the corruption and looting, the victims of the criminal waste of resources. So these street kids have a greater claim to Mujuru's looted wealth than his wife and all his biological children; after all the latter have benefited from the looted wealth for the last three decades whereas the former have suffered because of the looting all these years.

It is not right that those who have unjustly benefited should continue to do so into the future whilst those who have unjustly suffered, suffer. No one was born into this world to suffer to gratify others' insatiable appetite for riches.

There is a law forbidding profiting from stolen property; there is no question that Mujuru's amassed wealth is from corruption and looting - derivatives of stealing.

Besides there is something called restorative justice in which the looted wealth is given back to those who have suffered directly or indirectly because of the corruption and looting.

No doubt the looters and those who stand to inherit the looted wealth would want to hang on to the loot and claim ignorance of the law or natural justice; since when has the river of justice changed course because the mouse called ignorance is standing in its way!

Mr Joel Mujuru, if the millions of street kids, the rightful owners of your brothers amassed wealth, do not get the loot back this time they will once there is regime change in Zimbabwe. Regime change will trigger a review of all the criminal waste of the nation's resources, all the miscarriage of justice and redistribute the mountain of looted wealth back to those living in abject poverty, the people from whom it was stolen. Regime change will allow justice to flow freely again after decades of brutal oppression and injustice!