“The (mechanisation) programme became politically charged and all the politicians from the ruling party wanted to be part of it,” he told a chiefs meeting in Bulawayo last Friday.Gono is, in some quarters, being touted as a possible successor to President Robert Mugabe, although he is not “openly” active in politics. His sudden stance has become a surprise to many at a time he is expected to be singing praises of his paymaster.
Gono said he was now considering excluding politicians from his future agricultural programmes.”They were too many fingers in the whole pie,” he said.The central bank has often been accused of engaging in politics through the mechanisation programme. The latest distribution of farming equipment took place just before the March 29 elections, and was widely viewed as a campaign strategy for the ruling ZANU-PF.
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The RBZ has also been accused of using the programme to benefit mainly ZANU-PF supporters, with only a few opposition members getting something, as a way of trying to give credence to the exercise.Gono said RBZ would in future use traditional chiefs to disburse farming implements.However, chiefs are accused of being appendages of ZANU-PF and this may not change the way the implements are distributed.
“Chiefs are not elected and the elected ones always give us problems,” Gono lamented. “The elected ones gave their own supporters and there was a lot of factionalism and vote buying going around.”He said the tragedy of politicians was that they sloganeered a lot without offering practical solutions.
“Even if I attend a ZANU-PF meeting you will never see me chanting slogans, because some of these people and their slogans have put us where we are,” he said, without elaborating.The RBZ recently bought more than 60 buses and will soon be distributing more than 54 000 litres of fuel monthly to chiefs. – CAJ News
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