s Mutasa, who when he is not selling farm equipment or running his many businesses, controls the CIO contemptuously told the press that vice president Joyce Mujuru had been misinformed about the thefts at Kondozi by ‘a soldier’ (a senior Army office given the unenviable task of trying to return the farm to its pre-land reform era prosperity and productivity).
Mutasa was quick to point out that Mai Mujuru was his ‘friend’. This, of course, is Zanu (PF)-speak for “So she can’t be expected to turn me in”.
“I am not competing to be vice president or president. My wish is simply to help Zimbabwe,” he told the press. No doubt, after helping himself rather liberally first.
This remark shows the extent to which everything in Zanu (PF) now revolves around the succession issue. Mutasa is signalling to Mujuru that if she looks after him nicely, she can count on his support when the real dog fight for Mugabe’s successor takes place.
By using the state-controlled media in this way, Mutasa can send his message to all those in the pro-Mujuru camp – wherever they are. Even more interesting is that he chose the CIO-owned Financial Gazette as his mouthpiece.
Mutasa also announced that Kondozi Farm would now be partitioned and parcelled out to various well-connected ‘capable’ farmers – a tacit admission that Operation Kaguta has been an abysmal and unmitigated disaster.
They should have come to Magaisa for advice in the first place. I could have told them that sticking a bunch of soldiers onto a stolen farm, from which the tractors, irrigation pipes and other vital equipment had also been stolen – sorry I mean liberated by ministers, was not a sound strategy for feeding the (by now very) hungry nation.
But actually, the partitioning is just another stroke of Mutasa genius. Once the property has been sub-divided there will nobody to whom the stolen property can be handed back. Each new farmer will of course need his own tractor, irrigation pipes, pumps etc. Clever huh?
One of Mutasa’s fellow thieves, Christopher Mushowe, minister of transport and communications, has reportedly returned some of the equipment he nicked. Perhaps he does not feel as secure in his ‘friendship’ with Mujuru as Mutasa does and has gotten cold feet about the possibility of doing time in one of Zimbabwe’s hell-hole prisons.
Others like minister of agriculture, Joseph Made, Mike Nyambuya (energy and power development) and Munacho Mutezo (water and infrastructural development) are hanging on to their ill-gotten gains. They obviously feel that if Mutasa is safe, so are they.
They were also no doubt reassured by the bold statement from the officer commanding the police in Manicaland that he would not take his orders from the Attorney General. He would do nothing to investigate the Kondozi thefts unless ordered to do so by the Commissioner of Police or the President himself, said this brave soul. No doubt he will go far.
Post published in: Arts