HARARE - Less than two weeks after dissolving the UK and Ireland MDC executive over embezzlement charges, a property scandal involving cash bribes and other sordid inducements to MDC city fathers has erupted in Chitungwiza.The grubby affair is being investigated by a special taskforce headed by MDC organising secretary, Engineer Elias Mudzuri, appointed to robustly deal once and for all with murky corruption in the Chitungwiza Town Council.
This week Nelson Chamisa, speaking after a weekend of hearings by the special taskforce that also includes Morgan Komichi, Tapiwa Mashakada and Thamsanqa Mahlangu, the MDC national spokesperson declared that systemic corruption dominated the MDC-led council in Chitungwiza.
“In all provinces, the MDC has a citizenship charter or a covenant between councillors and ratepayers. That has been breached in Chitungwiza,” Chamisa told ***The Zimbabwean. “Certain things have been done under ground. We want to expose and unmask this.”
MDC fires corrupt councillors
The MDC was also considering calling on the state government to remove the councillors. While the taskforces final report is not expected until mid-week, the MDC is moving to sack the corrupt council and appoint unelected administrators to run the city for the next three years.
Although the MDC’s probe into corruption in various sectors is hardly new – this is the first time the party has established a taskforce to investigate an MDC-led authority over corruption allegations.
The MDC leadership has watched in consternation as rampant corruption took its toll in the sprawling town. Councillors have allocated big housing stands to themselves amid a grinding housing shortage in the dormitory town. The MDC has fired the ceremonial Mayor, Israel Marange, after he was convicted on corruption charges.
There has been primitive accumulation by the 24 Chitungwiza councillors, with almost all of them grabbing commercial and residential stands for themselves.
Meanwhile, the administration has dismally failed to rehabilitate the collapsing water and sewer reticulation system. Chitungwiza councillors were booed by angry ratepayers at a rally held by Prime Minister Tsvangirai in the Chibuku Stadium last month.
Analysts say the Chitungwiza Town Council corruption scandal could be used as cannon fodder by the Local Authority minister, Ignatius Chombo, to justify and exercise the wide powers he has to remove local councils and appoint hand-picked administrators aligned to President Mugabe’s party.
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