Opinion / Columnist
Mugabe's imprisonment threat enough to scar the cowardly Mutasa!
02 Mar 2015 at 11:45hrs | Views
Mugabe accuses Mutasa of embezzling party funds and imprisonment.
"... cheating and cheating and cheating and even cheating at high level of members of the politburo who divert funds in order to create their own strength somewhere," said Mugabe.
"Those are the things we are now discovering and once we discover that in fact that money was misused, vanofira mujeri (they will die in prison)."
Corruption is rampant in Zimbabwe and it is one of the causes of the country's crippling economic meltdown. All these 35 years Mugabe has denied there was no corruption in the country allowing it to grow and spread; now the chickens have come home to roost in the millions like red-billed quelea! Accusing Mutasa of fiddling party funds is like killing one bird it will do nothing to end this serious problem.
Besides denying there was no corruption, the only thing Mugabe has ever done about corruption is to diligently collect the details of any corrupt activity of each and every chef, Tom, Dick and Harry. He has had those with no political connections arrested and prosecuted and used the details of the rest to blackmail them.
Mutasa has been threatened to challenge Mugabe over the undemocratic conduct of last year's party elections and out came his file; he is now been accused of the same thing - corruption.
In a country whose ruling elite are running an illicit $800 billion diamond operation in which the nation is kept completely in the dark and tax revenue has "dramatically shrunk" to zero, as Information Minister, Jonathan Moyo recently twittered; it is clear that 99%, at the very least, of the ruling elite are corrupt to the core. That includes Mugabe himself; he received a staggering $2 billion from his share of the diamond looting in Marange in 2012 alone according to Africa Partnership Canada report.
Mutasa should not listen to Mugabe's threats; he should just go ahead and submit the court challenge. "Simbi inorobva ichapisa!" goes the Shona adage. (Strike the metal while it is still hot!) It is now three months since Mutasa first said he would challenge the process; it is clear that it is all the usual hot air and no action from the likes of him.
Of course Mutasa is corrupt; Mugabe was not telling us anything new in that. The threat to throw Mutasa in prison is not a surprise for a tyrant who has murdered over 30 000 innocent Zimbabweans and his not so innocent political opponents. As for Mutasa he is not just corrupt, he is incompetent, a political tyrant and a political coward to boot!
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Wilbert Mukori can be contacted at zimbabwesocialdemocrats@gmail.com
Source - Wilbert Mukori
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