It is certainly not true that I am converting the house into a clinic, he is reported to have said. I know there are some people who just go about making this claim, I don’t know why. Perhaps we can tell him why. Investigations by The Zimbabwean have revealed that the following notice appeared in the Herald on 14 October 2009: Notice is hereby given of an application to carry out the following development on Stand 284 Mt Pleasant Township 11 of Lot 35A Mt Pleasant (92 Norfolk Road) Mount Pleasant, Harare. 1. It is proposed to establish a health facility on the above mentioned stand.
The notice says that, because the property is within a residential zone, special consent is required for its change of use. Therefore the application and plans were made available for public inspection, and anyone who wanted to make objections or representations relating to the application could do so.
Our reporter has spoken to a neighbour who went to inspect the plans at Cleveland House. The neighbour says that the letter of application was signed by Kereke as the representative of an organisation called the Rock Foundation Family Trust (RFFT), and was headed Re: Application for special consent to alter land use from domestic residential to health facility use on Stand 284 Mt Pleasant 11 of Lot 35A Mt Pleasant.
Emergency facility
The letter clarified the words health facility by saying it meant a modern, state of the art emergency facility. The plans, the neighbour said, showed buildings that were labelled for used for the sort of functions that one might expect at an emergency medical centre, and included and eye unit and a dental unit, as well as areas for gynaecology, paediatrics, etc. There was an ambulance bay, a nurses station and a pharmacy. The neighbour told us that several local residents had subsequently submitted objections to the application for change of use. We were concerned not only about the potential disturbances from a 24-hour emergency medical centre in the middle of a residential area, but all our properties are on a septic-tank system, and there was no indication in the application about how that issue would be dealt with. In any case, there are emergency medical facilities nearby in Marlborough and Avondale, and we saw no particular need for this change of use.
The neighbour said he was concerned that building works had been started on the property and enquired from the City Council about the status of the application and the objections. He was told that the application had not yet been considered, and that building of the proposed health facility should not be taking place unless and until approval had been given.
Gym, piano room
He told us: The City Council’s Building Inspector at Mount Pleasant District Office visited the site, and he was shown, by the site manager, building plans for extensions to the residence that had been approved on the 2nd of December. The site manager subsequently also showed them to me. I was not in a position to compare these plans with those that I had inspected for the health facility, but the proposed buildings appeared, from memory, to be very similar, though areas on these plans were now labelled gymnasium, squash, piano room, pool room, computer room, etc.
So even though Kereke now appears to have the necessary approval to construct the buildings as extensions to his residence, why did he say that he had no intention of converting them into a health facility, when documents clearly indicate that he did? (And indeed, construction at the site continued apace throughout the Christmas holiday period even on Christmas Day.) There are more questions than answers in this development. Could it be that he would prefer news of the project to be kept under wraps?
Kereke is regarded by many as one of the architects of the RBZs disastrous monetary polices that led to hyperinflation and the demise of the Zimbabwe dollar, and which, through the use of a fixed exchange rate, at the same time enabled a small elite to become extremely wealthy. Kereke is described as being complicit in forming or directing repressive state policy where his name appears in the Council of the European Unions Common position renewing restrictive measures against Zimbabwe, the EU targeted, personal sanctions list.*
In July 2008, the RBZs Kereke and Mirirai Chiremba were named on the EU list as a diplomat and foreign affairs ministry official”, respectively. Press reports at that time said that while the immediate reaction was that the EU got it wrong, it has been said that the two actually have diplomatic passports and travel and pose not as RBZ employees for alleged nefarious activities on behalf of the Governor to do with the foreign currency that is bought from the street and unaccounted for.
What is RFFT?
What is the Rock Foundation Family Trust? The neighbour told us that the application for change of use indicated that the RFFT family had resided at 92 Norfolk Road for many years, but our enquiries have shown that only Kerekes family has lived there in recent years. The implication is that Kerekes family and the Rock Foundation Family are the same people. Why do they use that name? Could it be to camouflage the identity of the people behind this proposed investment? We wondered how much this modern, state of the art emergency facility might cost, so put the question What is the cost of a CT scanner? into the search field at wiki.answers.com. The answer we got was: A 2008 model with all the new technology would cost upwards of $3.5 million.
This would be only one tiny part of the equipment envisaged in the medical centre. What about the rest of the equipment for the eye, dental, gynaecology and paediatric units, and for the haematology, microbiology and biochemistry labs? What about the (no doubt fully equipped) ambulances, the drugs, the consumables, to say nothing of the highly qualified, specialist staff that would need to be retained?
It is inevitable that many people will ask how an employee of the Reserve Bank who is on the EU sanctions list was able to source this level of funding at a time when millions of Zimbabweans are starving or have been leaving the country as a result of the wilful destruction of the economy. Kereke probably wants to keep those people off his back.
Post published in: News