Interesting that the much talked about Marange diamonds are creating tens of thousands of jobs in India, at least according to international media reports which have been picked up locally. According to these reports, up to USD1,5 billion worth of Marange diamonds will make their way to India this year alone. Remembering of course that media reports remain the primary source of “the truth” for millions under the sun, the incredibility thereof notwithstanding. And you have to go “wow”, remembering that this national money is headed to one country when bogus Dr. Mpofu has said – apparently much to the consternation of the fiscus point man Biti – that the Marange godsend will “easily” pour into the national purse USD2 billion annually. Ehe. With these Indian reports claiming USD1,5 billion, one obviously has to question where the bad doctor gets his civil-servants-pleasing numbers when it is apparent the country (and of course the civil servants) stands to get stupendous returns to what Zanu PF is claiming as its birthright: much love to compatriots who are neither MDC-T nor MDC-99! Can’t a country get honest people who will share the resources with the ordinary man? I ask this deliberately perhaps as that Panglossian trait that, despite all pointers to the contrary, you would still expect the best from mortal men who themselves expect the best from everyone else but still continue to controvert those very same expectations! Talk about the painful contradictions of contemporary Zimbabwe. Yet the Indian reports bring bad vibes when you recall that Zanu PF has only seen benefits accruing from the mining sector as deriving merely from the community share ownership when the bigger picture demands employment creation proper as the Indians. “We believe that the flow of Zimbabwe diamonds will create over 60,000 jobs,” a diamond buff in India swooned. Yeah, Zimbabwe has over 80 percent unemployment with swarms of korokozas and one dead ZBC News at 8 expert caught with a Lebanese trying to smuggle the “tsotsi khiphi daimani”  (thief, hand over the diamond) helping themselves to the wealth that has stomped even the granddad of liberation politics.

The Herald recently reported that “bigwigs” aren’t paying their electricity bills. Below is a response from a Kubatana subscriber … a good illustration of the disgust many ordinary Zimbabweans feel toward politicians in this country ….

In light of the revelations by the Minister of Energy and Power Development that quite a number of top government officials and Ministers owe ZESA amounts not less than US$10 000 in unpaid bills, it is saddening to note that the same people sit and discuss how underperforming the institution is yet they are the main cause of our worries. We have suffered a lot as a result of load shedding and being disconnected yet the ‘haves’ ie the rich continue to evade paying their bills. For how long shall the ‘have not’ ie the poor continue to subsidise the rich in the name of the agricultural revolution? It is a fact that when they applied for land they indicated they had the financial muscle to carry out farming activities, what has happened now? An investment in a mini hydro power worth US$100 000 in the Himalaya area in Manicaland has benefited more than 200 household’s with each household paying not more than US$5 per month in electricity bills. If the monies owed to ZESA were to be invested in such initiatives how many households would benefit and how much in savings would be raised for the betterment of the common person on the street. It is so sad to be urinated on whilst we are alive.
- Percy, Harare

Just when I was beginning to believe that all politicians were corrupt, money grabbing charlatans, and that politics was a misnomer for profit-making exercise, along comes Minister of Constitutional and Parliamentary Affairs Eric Matinenga.

Matinenga is holding his peers in government and Parliament accountable for the public funds disbursed to them from the Constituency Development Fund. Unlike members of Parliamentary Portfolio Committees that investigated shady land deals and the disappearance of diamonds Mr Matinenga is doing what he was mandated by the people of Zimbabwe to do – his job.

This morning’s papers report that Matinenga’s ministry has reported those legislators who have failed to account for the funds to the Office of the President and Cabinet as well as the Prime Minister’s office. The Anti-Corruption Commission is also expected to investigate the legislators.

The legislators who failed to account for the $50 000 from the fund are:

Sekai Holland – Minister of State for National Healing, Reconciliation and Integration, MDC-T Senator, Mabvuku-Tafara
Lucia Matibenga – Minister of Public Service, MDC-T MP for Kuwadzana
Douglas Mombeshora – Deputy Minister of Health and Child Welfare, ZANU PF MP Mhangura
Marvelous Khumalo  – MDC-T MP, St. Mary’s
Peter Chanetsa – ZANU PF MP, Hurungwe North,
Edward Chindori-Chininga – ZANU PF MP, Guruve South
Naison Nemadziva – MDC-T MP, Buhera South
Franco Ndambakuwa – ZANU PF MP, Magunje
Abraham Sithole – ZANU PF MP, Chiredzi East
Lawrence Mavima – ZANU PF MP, Zvishavane -Runde

Minister Matinenga may not be very popular in Parliament after this, but he’s got my vote.

It is Tuesday evening, Valentine’s Day and for some reason I find myself watching Oscar Pambuka’s Melting Pot. In the studio he has a two chaps discussing youth empowerment. One is – perhaps predictably –  from Upfumi Kuvadiki, that notorious anti-investment outfit that shares the same degenerate  ideologies as Mbare’s Chipangano vigilantes.

It reminds one of how so many things are wrong in this country where political instruction from the elders has moved from the very tenets that saw young men once upon time in 1912 form Africa’s oldest political movement, or what stirred Ndabaningi and his contemporaries as valiant young men to take up the fight for a greater good, yet you have to ask yourself what these Upfumis have in common with the Robert Mugabe of 1963. What place do they have in Zimbabwe’s political history other than tales of grief, tales of how they broke down the walls which other compatriots tried to build? Has it not been recorded that the coming into government of the firm hand of Tendai Biti “coincided” with the economic stability that eluded the Zanu PF elites for more than two decades? This is no way is to extol the abilities of any mortal, but the facts stare right back us.

The language of the Upfumis is about empowering the youth, giving them USD5,000 to start their own business, economic emancipation, and a new form of capitalism. If only this were true. At least Oscar Pambuka to his credit did ask about the abuse of the funds where the young patriots are reportedly using the funds to buy crappy chattels. But still rather predictably, an Upfumi Kuvadiki rep was quick to dispute this claim, going on and on about lies being told about young beneficiaries of this largess. I have said this before that Zanu PF has made extinct the spirit of hard work: youths now know only too well that hard work is an alien virtue; after all, they are from that amoral stock where killing people who do not agree with your political beliefs are indeed a virtue! Young people are being taught that all you have to do is line up on the Zanu PF ticket and claim the resources of the land as your own simply based on the name of Robert Mugabe and Zanu PF.

A rather daft university student said to me the other day he had been elected into the Zanu PF youth chairmanship of some sort, and I asked him if he believed all that nonsense that came with allegiance to the party of blood. All he had to say for himself was: “My friend, you never know. What we want is to eat.” I shut my ears as he continued talking. And you just have to see the people who speak on behalf of the youth: fat cheeks and arrogant mouths when we all know the penury the majority of young people here live with as they continue the dangerous trek to South Africa despite reports that their fellow countrymen are being shoved into the Black Maria and deported as personas non grata. That is not to mention hundreds of thousands who seek honest lives by enrolling for higher education only to be kicked out of classes because they cannot afford the extortionate fees. Small wonder then that for the soul-less types, taking over white-owned mines and other business concerns is too good an El Dorado to resist. You still have to ask yourself how this youth empowerment drive seeks to address these issues as obviously not all youths are anarchists who want to reap where they did not sow. These clowns are just obsessed with being wealthy but apparently have no clue how to get there without taking over what someone else built ages ago.  They obviously do not have the knowledge gleaned from Aesop’s fables and the wisdom of their own father about imaginary riches. A bunch of morons by any other name. But I know they read this and say: “screw you; we are claiming what rightfully belongs to us!”

Why now you bozos?

The Daily News has reported that The Transport and Infrastructural Development Ministry headed by Nicholas Goche has only managed to resurface 11.6 kilometres of road in 2011.  Last year Goche’s Ministry collected a total of $80 million dollars on behalf of ZINARA.

Presumably that 11.6 kilometres combines Borrowdale Road (Our Dear Leaders way home), which underwent extensive repair and repainting last year and some patch jobs on the road to Zvimba. No doubt sitting in Cabinet Our Dear Leader has even congratulated Minister Goche on an excellent road network.

The threat of the downing of tools by Zimbabwe’s civil servants has reached fever peak with the workers representatives embarking on a campaigning streak to mobilize support for the strike. The workers are demanding minimum of US$538 per month for the least paid employee, which they reflects the poverty datum line. The impact of the first one-day nationwide strike yesterday was mainly felt in the education sector and in high-density schools were teachers failed to turn up for work leading to an assumption that the workers are not pulling in the same direction as some government workers reported for duty.

The year 2011 was a year of un-coordinated job action by various government departments demanding better salaries. Depending on how important the department was to the inclusive government at that time some government workers embarked on a strike and forced the government into submission.  An investigation of how the government has awarded increments and allowances to some of its employees leaves one wondering if some government employees are more special than others.

The most recent and more controversial was the paying out of allowances to Members of Parliament in December 2011 just after the Minister of Finance had indicated in his monetary statement that the government had no money for civil servants pay increments. The legislators had threatened not pass the budget in Parliament unless they were paid their sitting allowances, which the government owed them back to 2008. The same legislators went on to demand top of the range luxury vehicles whilst some teachers in the harsh rural areas like Nyamapanda are struggling without the hardship allowances just to motivate them to work. In July 2011 a paltry salary increment by the government was met with mixed reactions from the employees as they complain that it was far below the poverty datum line, which stood at US$502 at that time.

In April 2011 magistrates stopped work at Zimbabwe’s courts nationwide in protest over poor remuneration and they were immediately awarded the increment.  Not to be outdone fellow court workers, the prosecutors, downed tools in protest over salary discrepancies between them and magistrates.

Funds from diamond sales and the special treatment of certain civil servants whilst neglecting others has fueled plans for a nationwide strike by the civil servants. If the legislators can manage to pay each other a whopping US$15 000 some may argue that maybe the Minister of Finance has a secret pool where he can access funds in times of crisis.