Although Wednesday was a working day, the front doors were firmly closed. As there is no post box we slipped our petition under the door. Our comrades in Washington DC had a similar experience.
Despite Ambassador Mapuranga’s official Mercedes Benz being parked in front of the building, there was no response to knocks on the door, so again they had to slide the petition under the door. We find it appalling that these diplomats are reneging on their duty to serve the Zimbabwean communities abroad.
It is clear that Zimbabwe’s embassies fear the diaspora. They are typical of diplomatic outposts of a rogue state led by an African ‘Big Man’ as the former UN Secretary-General Koffi Annan of Ghana described Mugabe this week. He said it was time Africa looked beyond the continent’s colonial past. “The support for the Big Man system –Mugabe is an example – created a political culture that simply encourages autocrats and dictatorships,” he said.
A ‘Big Man’ such as Mugabe needs big money to keep in power and this is why the Vigil and the rest of the Zimbabwean diaspora are demanding transparency. MDC-T MP Eddie Cross told a recent conference that if the diamond fields had been exploited on the lines proposed by the original company, as a joint venture with the government like in Botswana, our economy would have been transformed.
As much as $5,5 billion dollars could have gone to the state in the past four years. In Botswana . . . the state receives two-thirds of gross sales. Education is free and the people do not pay personal taxes. Botswana has an income per capita today of nearly $9,000 and is rated a middle-income country. Zimbabwe had an income per capita of just $390 in 2012 and is rated one of the poorest countries in the world.
The Vigil is confident that Mines Minister Obert M’puffed-up will eventually have to explain how he acquired his enormous wealth. We were glad to see the detailed exposure of his financial dealings by Nehanda Radio.
Vigil members were concerned to read a report on Morgan Tsvangirai’s recent rally in Buhera which said “The vast difference between the villagers, desperately eking out a hand-to-mouth existence, and the lavish lifestyles of top MDC-T officials and ministers who rolled into Tsvangirai’s home area of Humanikwa village – about 200km from their posh houses in Harare – in top-of-the-range vehicles and swanky attire, was all too visible.”
Post published in: News