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Tafara Shumba
According to Jewish law, such women were to be stoned to death. In a bid to trap him so that they could find a basis to accuse him, they solicited for his opinion on such an issue, to which he said, “He that is without a sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.” The Pharisees dispersed after being convicted by their own consciences. According to some commentaries, Jesus wrote each of their sins on the ground.
While we do not tolerate corruption, nobody in the MDC-T qualifies to condemn the vice the way they did. If the MDC-T were part of the Pharisees, among the vices that Jesus could have written are Tsvangirai’s double dipping scandal, Biti’s US$20m IMF Special Drawing Rights, Mangoma-NOOA fuel scam, graft in the councils and so on.
Alleged corruption in Zanu-PF was the campaign trump card that the MDC-T rode on in a failed attempt to ascend to power. The MDC-T touted itself as a harbinger of change, which would undo all the perceived vices prevalent within Zanu-PF.
Without absolving those fingered in the media exposes, the MDC-T is not any holier. When they joined government in 2009, corruption cases extended to unparalleled levels — it reached a magnitude never witnessed since independence.
In an interview with VOA Studio 7, the MDC-T Secretary for Local Government, Sesel Zvidzai described corruption in his party saying, “the party was shocked to find that street kids, who had just become mayors, who neither had toothpaste nor toothbrush, had got a fleet of vehicles now and expensive houses.” He was referring to, among other people, the sacked MDC-T Gweru mayor, Tedious Chimombe.
These are paupers who rode on the euphoria of change in the typical proverbial rags to riches manner, and when they assumed office, most of them had virtually nothing.
Former Harare Mayor, Muchadeyi Masunda, once aptly commented that the MDC-T councillors entered into council without even bicycles under their names. The same councillors later lived large with fleets of cars, houses, and residential and commercial stands, courtesy of corruption. Some of them were so heartless that they even fraudulently seized widows’ houses. Yet, as poetic justice would have it, most have gone back to reclaim their pauper status.
The MDC-T leadership itself admitted the pervasiveness of corruption among its councillors, before instituting investigations, whose proceedings, it later emerged, were a mere public relations stunt or window-dressing designed to hoodwink people into believing that the party was against corruption. It took the effort of Cde Ignatius Chombo, the Minister of Local Government, to rid the councils of these corrupt councillors and mayors.
The MDC-T, which used to disparage Zanu-PF legislators for alleged self-aggrandisement at the expense of service delivery, were accused of the same vice by its memberships.
In one of his newspaper articles, Tendai Biti said, “. . . a clear chasm developed between the grassroots and its members seconded to government. Suddenly one group was driving Mercedes Benzes. . . (as a result) of corruption.”
Lest we forget that the people who are making the loudest noise on corruption today are the same who embezzled the US$50 000 Constituency Development Funds (CDF) availed to them for development projects. Some of the legislators used the money to marry second wives, while others spoiled themselves with posh cars. Payments of tribute to Tsvangirai by these legislators are a matter of public record. Biti in particular threw a tantrum, including obscenity, when he was quizzed on a national radio station to account for the funds.
Corruption is in the DNA of the MDC-T and it has become so pervasive that even the party leadership failed to rein in its corrupt subordinates. This is typical of those that see and hear no evil and, therefore, dare not throw stones since they live in glass houses.
The party’s secretary general, Tendai Biti, has not fully accounted the US$20m IMF emergency package extended to Zimbabwe to help distressed manufacturing firms that mysteriously vanished under his very watch. Biti unprocedurally directed treasury to withdraw the money from IMF and banked it into a FBC account before transferring it to Interfin. This was in violation of the Audit and Exchequer Act, which stipulates that all public funds must be deposited into the Exchequer account.
The party’s deputy treasurer General, Elton Mangoma was arrested on corruption charges related to a botched US$5 million fuel deal entered with a bogus South African firm, NOOA. He was also involved in the controversial tender scam for the expansion of Hwange Thermal Power Station.
It is too early for people to forget the double dipping scandal in which Tsvangirai himself, a presidential hopeful, prejudiced the government of US$1,5m. He received US$1,5m from the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe for the renovation of his posh Highlands house and went on to receive the same amount from treasury for the same purpose. In just a four-year stint in Government, the MDC-T officials, who now want to be holier than thou, accumulated great wealth whose origins are dubious.
Online Reporter