Corruption watch WITH TAWANDA MAJONI
Zimbabweans love discovering the truth. When they do that, they get busy hiding the truth. That applies particularly to the politicians.
On that note, it becomes quite hard to believe that the recently completed Tendai Uchena commission of inquiry into the sale of state land report will bring any change.
Just last week, the commission completed its audit of the state land sales and handed the report over to President Emmerson Mnangagwa. What the public knows is only what is contained in the executive summary, which is what was made public.
The summary looks like the report is a largely an honest job. Never mind the fact that what’s stated in there is pretty obvious stuff that we have known all this time. What would vary in the full report, therefore, are the nitty-gritties.
The executive summary tells us that more than 170 farms were given for sale in and around urban areas throughout the country from 2005. They are valued at more than US$3 billion but less than 10% of that was realised by the State. Why? Because of a whole range of issues that include straight theft and land invasions by war veterans, politicians, cooperatives, land developers and trusts.
Here is the juicy part. Among its recommendations, the commission suggested further investigations of the offenders by the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission, the police and other relevant outfits. There are more than 430 cases of violations that jeopardised the state, mostly by land barons and politicians. Harare Metropolitan comes tops at 156 of illegal sales and other offences, followed by Mashonaland East province at 120. That means the two provinces constitute more than half of the violations, out of a total of 10 administrative provinces.
But it’s hard to look at the glass and regard it as half-full instead of half-empty. In other words, Zimbabwe is one country where it’s very difficult to be optimistic, considering what history says. It’s not as if this would be the first time that a commission — or committee — has produced a national report. What runs through all those reports, sadly, is that they are sheer waste of time and money. They haven’t taken us anywhere different from before they were produced.
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Let’s consider land audits first. In 2002, a presidential land review committee led by a former cabinet minister, Flora Buka, produced a “preliminary” report that assessed the fast track land redistribution programme that had officially commenced in 2000. It looked at allocations, violations and what not. One of the biggest findings of the committee was multiple farm ownership.
Now, Buka received all sizes of brickbats mostly from within the ruling Zanu PF membership for telling the truth. She was called all sorts of names for being so naïve with her findings. She must have felt very used because nobody in that party and government was prepared to take her seriously and acknowledge the honesty of her committee’s work.
Unsurprisingly, another presidential committee, this time led by the former chief secretary to the Office of the President and Cabinet, Charles Utete, was set up and came up with another report the following year. That one was a disaster, despite 99,99% of the committee members being professors and PhD holders. It glossed over the burning issue of multiple farm ownership and recommended that a taskforce be set up to look into that problem. Very weird, because that’s one of the tasks it was supposed to carry out. It blamed the shoddiness of the land reform project on sanctions and national economic issues, never on the real causes. It sounded just like the Zanu PF leadership.
But who is going to be surprised? Just about every top chef had more than one farm and Utete was a coward. He didn’t want to get his fingers burnt too early. That’s one wise way of looking at this. The other was, the Utete presidential committee was a political project that was meant to manage the crisis that the Buka report had produced. That means sanitising some people or, at least, covering them with the carpet.
That’s one thing that happens quite often in the Zanu PF government. Problem is, a carpet doesn’t quite cover what’s put under it. You always see the bulges and, therefore, remain with a big idea of what’s happening underneath. One such big bulge was the then president, Robert Mugabe. We always suspected he owned many farms, despite his repeated rants against multiple farm ownership.
Now, after his passing on, we know that he had more than 20 farms. Mugabe wouldn’t have been so dumb as to follow the recommendations of the Buka committee. He was one of the people who were being recommended against. This is not to say the Buka report mentioned him at any one stage. That was unthinkable. But, if some people were going to go under, they could also want to pluck the clothes off the former president. Besides, Mugabe still needed those people that were muck-raked by the Buka report.
Outside those land committees, successive Zanu PF governments have set up several other commissions of inquiry whose findings and recommendations have been completely ignored. There was that commission that was set up in the early 80s to look into the killing of thousands of people in Matabeleland during Gukurahundi, precisely covering 1983 and 1984. That was the Simplicius Chihambakwe commission of inquiry. Hello, does anyone remember what happened to the Chihambakwe report? Obviously, something happened to the report. It was swept under the carpet. That means nothing happened with the report.
Again, predictably. For those that had appointed the commission were disappointed with the findings of the commission. They were implicated, so the most natural thing to do was to toss the report under the carpet. What remains to date is the big bulge that we can see only through the window.
Then there was the Wilson Sandura Commission into the 1988-89 illegal purchasing and resale of cars by government officials and cabinet ministers involving Willowvale Motor Industries. Ex-president Mugabe set up the commission of inquiry, purportedly to uncover what had happened. Fine, quite a number of cabinet ministers resigned following the scandals. But they didn’t resign because of the revelations of the commission. They resigned —one of them, Maurice Nyagumbo, committed suicide — because of media reports that investigated the Willowgate scandal.
But then, Mugabe and his crew were not prepared to take the Sandura commission findings and recommendations quite seriously. All the living culprits were pardoned. That could only mean one thing. The commission was set up as a window-dresser to manage the emerging political crisis. Mugabe knew that Willowgate had the potential to damage him fatally. But he was clever. Setting up the commission would create the false impression that he cared and was a clean chap. Quite a number of people bought that ruse hook, line, bait and rod.
Well, that was during Mugabe’s time. We now have something called the “new dispensation” under Mnangagwa. They even have the audacity to call it the “Second Republic”. But history is not kind with this “new” outfit. Take the Kgalema Motlanthe Commission of Inquiry into the August 2018 post-election military-led killings of people who were protesting the election results of last year.
The commission made numerous recommendations, including the prosecution of soldiers who were responsible for the killings. Hardly any of those recommendations have been heeded by the Mnangagwa dispensation. It’s bad business as usual.
That’s quite telling on what the recent land commission inquiry report will take us to. They do commissions, waste money, try to take us for idiots and then go back to snooze.
Tawanda Majoni is the Information for Development Trust (IDT) national coordinator and can be contacted on [email protected]
