Tsvangirai's office 'plagiarised' a document

According to reports by "The Sunday Mail" Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai's office allegedly plagiarised a document by one Derek Matyszak of the Research and Advocacy Unit Zimbabwe and compiled "their own" document which Mr Tsvangirai tried to present for discussion in his ill-fated Extraordinary Council of Ministers meeting that was snubbed by several ministers last Tuesday.

The document by Matyszak, titled "Everything You Ever Wanted to Know (and then some) About Zimbabwe's Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Legislation But (quite rightly) Were Too Afraid to Ask", was prepared as a second edition in May 2011 and has been on the internet since then.

The PM's document entitled "A Summary of the Law on Indigenisation" that was supposed to be the centre of discussion in the Council of Ministers meeting, has a footnote that claims that is was "Prepared by the Office of the Prime Minister's (OPM) Legal Department for Extraordinary Council of Ministers (CoM), Tuesday, April 3 2012."

Strangely, the PM's office has no legal department but there is a legal expert in the PM's office, Ms Rose Zigomo, who used to work at Atherstone and Cook, which is the PM's legal representative.

This has raised speculation that the PM was trying to smuggle into the Council of Ministers legal opinion written by Matyszak, who works for the Research and Advocacy Unit Zimbabwe, an organisation viewed as hostile to the Government.

The PM's spokesperson, Mr Luke Tamborinyoka, last week said he could only comment about the document after seeing it.

All the arguments raised in the PM's document against the Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment policy are explained in detail in Matyszak's document.

In the PM's document, the Minister of Youth Development, Indigenisation and Empowerment, Cde Saviour Kasukuwere, is attacked for inconsistently applying the law and this argument is explained in detail in Matyszak's document.

The PM's office in some instances just changed the wording from Matyszak's document to push the same argument.

For instance, Matyszak argued against the provisions regarding subcontracting applicable to indigenous Zimbabwean businesses and concluded that "this discrimination will probably not pass constitutional muster."

In the PM's document, the same argument was made with the conclusion that "this discrimination is unconstitutional." In essence, the PM's office just summarised what

Matyszak had written.

However, in one of the most glaring examples of plagiarism, the PM's office on Page 3 copied word for word what Matyszak had written in his document.

The paragraph that was copied word for word, including commas, reads: "All legislation passed by Parliament must receive presidential assent before becoming law. When a Bill is passed to the President for assent, such assent must be given or 'withheld' within 21 days. If the assent is withheld, and the Bill is returned to Parliament it does not become law unless a motion to this effect is approved within six months by two-thirds of the members of the House of Assembly.

"The Act was passed by Parliament in October, 2007, but Presidential assent was only given on the 15th January, 2008, well outside the 21-day period."

This is not the first time that the PM has brought into Government documents prepared by hostile forces as he smuggled into Government his Government Work Programme that had been authored by Charles Heartly under the cover of Adam Smith International.

Not surprisingly, no one has taken the GWP seriously in Cabinet which had received the programme at first in good faith. In recent months, whenever the PM tries to bring up the issue about GWP in Cabinet, it is met with "uncontrollable laughter."

A senior research lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe who spoke on condition of anonymity said the coincidence between the PM's visit to Britain and his attempt to bring this "Western-sponsored" document into the Council of Ministers raise a lot of questions.

Said the lecturer: "I have gone through the two documents and I can confirm to you that there was a lot of plagiarism. The extent of the plagiarism is worrying, especially

because this is coming from the Prime Minister's office."

What has irked some Cabinet ministers, especially those from Zanu-PF, is not only the hostile source of the authorship of the document but also the unprocedural manner in which the PM sought to smuggle the document without the necessary input of the Attorney-General. The AG is the Government's legal advisor and sits in Cabinet to handle such matters.

"Besides the AG, the PM did not even get input from the Cabinet committee on legislation. If this was a legitimate document, the Minister of State in the PM's office, Timba, should have taken the document to the Cabinet committee on legislation.

"Cabinet was then supposed to deliberate on the issues raised in the document and take a position. It was unprocedural to take the document to the Council of Ministers because the council is an implementation forum. Cabinet makes decisions and the council of ministers implements.

"This document was not about implementation but about decision. This is one of the main reasons why a number of Cabinet ministers even in the MDC-T were concerned that the so-called extraordinary meeting called by the PM was intended to be a pseudo Cabinet meeting," said a top Government official last Friday.

Some observers said it was a shame that while the PM was trying to oppose the indigenisation programme, big companies such as Implats have moved on and accepted the programme.