Removing Mukuru will open Pandora's box!

Whether we are in the Diaspora or in the homeland, events unfolding in Zimbabwe will affect us all. The story of Pandora comes from the Greek poem, Theogony by Hesiod circa 700 BC.

 Once a certain stage has been reached in human events, the future becomes inexorable and unpredictable.

Looking back to our story in Zimbabwe, as early as 1990, the last of the great white missionary fathers, Sir Garfield Todd, reminiscing loudly in the book, Through the Storm, said that his greatest regret in being part of a new Zimbabwe was that "Robert Mugabe has corrupted everybody."

Mukuru (otherwise lovingly known as ED by his supporters) sat at the feet of the great Houdini himself, Robert Gabriel Mugabe.

It was Mugabe who conflated his family fortunes, the state, the war veterans into a formidable compromised organ, each organic cell feeding on its neighbour.

ED was a good learner, and today he is blamed for a situation he inherited from the great one.

The great questions of the day originate from the fact that while Zimbabwe has stupendous sovereign wealth under its soils; most of it alluvial so that even a child with a hoe can dig two feet deep into the soil and find rare minerals.

The fact that liberation heroes find themselves, after 43 years of independence, the most miserable and poverty stricken in such a situation, is not historically unknown.

I want to put this in context.

The Iranian nationalist, Muhammad Mossadegh (1953) discovered that the Anglo-Iranian Oil Companies were willing to share Iranian oil proceeds in the ratio of 80-20 in their favour.

Unless he could see the books, there was no knowing that the 20% was "real." Secondly, secret sources told him that the Saudis had a 50-50 share arrangement.

The overthrow of Mossadegh by the US Central Intelligence created distrust which has remained to this day.

Zimbabwe instituted a Community Share Ownership Trust program entered into between the mining companies and the communities within their resource areas. I have traced these arrangements as far back as 2013.

In that year Zimplats in Ngezi "released US$4.1 million" (their words) to the Zvimba community. Zimplats released US$1.9 million in 2016 and US$2.2 million in 2017. In 2023, Zimplats built Turf School at US$300 000.

Zimplats promised a birthing sum of US$10 million when the Act was passed in 2007 and has generally been unsurpassed in its generosity.

Mthuli Ncube-a sell out!

While the CSOT (Community Share Act) 2007 is a small attempt to harness sovereign wealth and that it affected 60 mining companies, it was a good start. But two of Mossadegh's issues were never addressed.

In fact, in the Budget Act 2018 Professor Mthuli Ncube withdrew two of the articles that had made the arrangements compulsory.

 A parliamentary report reads: "The statute, as amended, and in some cases removed key provisions of the IEEA, leading to withdrawal of funding by most qualifying companies. The result, the majority of CSOT's collapsed." (Parl. Report 2024).

I have said before that brother Ncube is a traitor.

But he is not alone. It appears that the activities of theses Community Share Authorities were taken over by Zanu PF stalwarts. Their expenditures and contracts (tenders) went unaudited.

The land issue.

The point I am making is that once you open Pandora's box be prepared to find some really stinking stuff. Sir Garfield's complaint was that Mugabe had corrupted everybody.

We know, from divorce submissions that Bona Mugabe had 21 farms.

 I can reveal that a saint in my church, a retired teacher, came home to the news that "Amai wanted his Mazowe farm.

The saint, died from shock. Whether ED should take all the blame, I am uncertain. Once we open the Pandora box, I am certain that we will find that "all have sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God."

 According to the British Guardian, Mugabe and his wife (30 November 2010) own 14 farms. In addition, the Guardian article says that while the majority of resettled black farmers own on average 10 hectares, 40 percent of all captured white-owned land has been distributed among   the chefs.

Limit your vision.

I have tried to show you that ED is only the face of a compromised system, which we might concede, he was able to maneuver and extend its reach beyond the boundaries set by Mugabe, his tutor.

Nevertheless, removing him, without a limited vision of what can be accomplished within a short space of time, will actually make a bad situation worse, as indeed happened in 2019.

The sovereign wealth issue can be dealt with easily and swiftly because one is dealing with blood -thirsty foreign companies. There are role models of social corporate responsibility to copy from; the Saudis, the Iranians and Iraqis.

But going beyond that area, say to land distribution, one will find out that judges, the generals you have recruited in the overthrow of the Second Republic and some superior judges have more than one farm.

A bishop friend of mine threatened to hand me over to Lucifer if I mentioned the fact that he has two farms.

The overthrow of ED will allow you no more than six months before all these beneficiary sinners regroup against the new dispensation. The US has witnessed a similar situation.

The Department of Justice, the Judiciary, and the prosecutors as well as newspapers were compromised in order to get rid of Trump. Politico newspaper was paid US$8 million dollars and the great Reuters were given sums estimated at US$40 million.

Corruption, therefore, was lucrative to certain powerful groups. When Zimbabwe starts to dismantle the corrupt state, I assure you that the corrupt institutions which benefitted from the Second Republic tender-entrepreneur system will regroup and appeal to the corrupt courts in the name of the rule of law.

When everything failed, Trump escaped three attempted assassinations by divine intervention.

Peace.

*Ken Mufuka is a Zimbabwe patriot. He writes from the US.