adminquite worrisome really, which begs priority.
It is of the silliness infesting our village, finding its way along every path, leading itself to every watering hole and rising with the smoke from every cooking hut.
The village is being put under a season of silliness Madzimambo, the type that may well require exorcism by our most potent tsikamutanda, or prophet if you prefer.
It is depraved silliness spread by learned men feigning ignorance, which can so easily manifest into the kind of danger posed by a village jester who thinks fire a play thing, a source of laughter only to raze the village to the ground.
The precarious silliness we must have exorcised is that of the malicious pranks being made against indigenisation.
The most learned among MDC-T parliamentarians seek to mislead the people, the entire village, into believing that the community share ownership trusts now uplifting their long deprived and be-trodden socio-economic welfare are an illegal fuss that we must have done away with.
It is silliness letting loose from overfed bowels, relieving its stink at the heart of a starved village.
It attempts even at relieving its drunken waste in the village well.
But beware; it is all feigned drunkenness, far from being Dutch-courage.
For it is well aware of its faculties and calculated intent to piss in the village well, on indigenisation, and have us recoil from our new source of livelihood.
Community Share Ownership Trusts which will economically empower the indigenous majority in rural Zimbabwe are not illegal entities as Tendai Biti would have the people believe.
Respectfully, his opinion lacks distinction between what is illegal within the corners of written law, and what he, as secretary general representing of the MDC-T will seek to de-legitimise for artisan political mileage.
The law is clear, written isn’t it, drafted and passed by a Parliament in which Biti and the MDC-T sit, and sat when Zimbabwe’s Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Act [Chapter 14:33] became law.
They would have read then Section 3 (1) of this law that mandates indigenous Zimbabweans to own “at least 51 per centum of the shares of every public company and any other business . . . .”
While the Act does not in itself effectively outline the vehicles through which a majority indigenous Zimbabweans will acquire the mandated 51 percent equity, it does in section 21 empower the Minister responsible for indigenisation, being the Minister of Youth Development, Indigenisation and Empowerment, to make regulations which can facilitate the distribution of the 51 percent indigenous quota.
Section 21 of the Indigenisation Act provides that “The Minister may make regulations providing for any matters which by this Act are required or permitted to be prescribed or which, in his or her opinion, are necessary or convenient to be provided for in order to carry out or give effect to this Act”.
These regulations which the Minister is empowered to make become law and are binding, plain and simple.
And thus, by powers vested in him by Parliament, Hon Kasukuwere went on to have made the Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment (General) Regulations of 2010.
His objective, as directed by section 21, being “to carry out or give effect” to the Indigenisation Act’s intent on having 51percent equity in businesses owned by the majority indigenous Zimbabweans.
It is within these Regulations of 2010 that provision is made for ‘community share ownership schemes/trusts’ as a mechanism through which a majority of indigenous Zimbabweans in rural communities are enabled to secure equity in ‘qualifying businesses’ exploiting their natural resources.
Section 14B (2) of the 2010 Indigenisation Regulations provides; “A community share ownership scheme or trust that complies with this section may be taken into consideration when assessing the extent to which a business has achieved or exceeded the minimum indigenisation and empowerment quota.”
Section 14B is the magic wand being waved by qualifying businesses opting to dispose equity to communities within their “corporate sphere of influence,” having calculated the long term business benefits of doing so.
Section 14B allows the empowerment of a real majority, and not the fictitious elite that Biti and his MDC-T peddlers of misinformation continue to parrot about.
Even more regulations; the Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment (General) Regulations, 2011 on “Minimum Requirements for Indigenisation Implementation Plans Submitted by Non-indigenous Businesses in the Mining Sector” provide in section 1 (e) for community share ownership schemes/trusts as one of the “designated entities” that can secure shares in businesses in the mining sector.
The MDC-T’s misrepresentation of statutory provision on community trusts must be understood within the context of their fear, a legitimate fear.
They fear communities empowered under indigenisation, empowered communities easily mobilised to secure their economic gains through the ballot.
But the silliness could not have been more evident than when this writer had a debate with Deputy Minister Obert Gutu on Star FM on February 4 2013.
We were called upon to give our opinion on Honourable Biti’s allegation that community trusts were illegal.
Of course Minister Gutu concurred, immediately went on the warpath, speaking of bastardisation and mafia like tendencies, comedy really.
When he was done venting, the presenter asked this writer for the written word as proof that Minister Gutu and Biti, lawyers themselves, where wrong at law regarding their interpretation of community trusts being illegal?
This writer obliged, after all the word spoken in parliament was written, in the form of an indigenisation legal framework, its Act read together with all its Regulations.
Right there, at the scroll of this writer’s phone, thanks to technology, lay the written law.
This writer’s offer to read the legal content, its critical provisions to the waiting listeners was halted by the Star FM presenter who preferred instead that Minister Gutu, in his own voice, read to the waiting public.
And herein was the climax to all the silliness begging to be flushed out of our socio-economic emancipation crusade. Staring at the written law and its glaring truth shown clearly under the light of this writer’s very smart phone, Honourable Gutu mysteriously went blind.
The spectacled man at law told the patiently and quietly listening nation that he could not see properly.
The writer kids you not.
Blinded by the written truth’s glare, much like Saul on the road to Damascus, in this case never transforming to Paul, Gutu murmured that this writer read the text in his stead.
Before this writer could read through the entire provision of law, he was stopped in his tracks by the learned colleague who had apparently heard enough of the written word at law, that community trusts have legal persuasion.
No sooner was our debate concluded and the lines opened to eagerly awaiting indigenous Zimbabweans did the first caller bemoan the silliness of it all, of learned men feigning ignorance of the law.
Indeed the MDC-T should have some respect.
Can it not define itself best in its own economic voice?
JUICE must be heard speaking loudly for itself, if it has any content, arguing itself to be the alternative to indigenization it claims to be.
The discerning people that we are, we must find it odd then that we have not heard much about the alternative content within JUICE, not from the likes of Gutu and Biti.
Instead we only hear them loud and clear, see all their zeal, not for the authenticity of JUICE, but only when they maliciously demonise indigenisation.
They have all adopted a strategy of contaminating the only drinking well drilled in an economically thirsty village, the indigenization well, with the hope that the entire village will be forced to abandon it and turn to the bucket that is JUICE.
The writer will rest his case here; hoping to have laid it bare before a discerning Dare ReEmpowerment.
It is for you now, the people, to skin it to the heart of its matter.
But carefully so, you must surgically remove the gallbladder, nduru, that is this silliness which if left without rebuke will leak its poisonous JUICES into the village well.
Before the writer finds his seat and awaits adjudication; allow him to note another matter of silliness. We are reading daily, of this alleged NIEEBGATE scam, the worst after independence we are told.
What gates at NIEEB do the Maweres of this world believe they have opened that will, to their now anticipated pleasure, cause indigenisation’s gains to flee?
But this writer will not seek to pursue the matter of this silliness.
He takes heed to the forewarning by the wise among his totem, that one should never chase a mad man that steals one’s clothes while bathing by the river, least the village thinks your naked self in pursuit to be the mad one.
Let fools run free then, unchallenged, chasing the wind to what ends they think it may take them.
Sanity shall calmly speak for itself, find voice from you the people when the reality of your economic empowerment begins to manifest with time, as does passage of time ripen truthful endeavours.
Land reform is ripening isn’t it, after a decade of vilification. My wise folk again remind me, that “badza harinyepi parakarima”.
If Manheru will allow plagiarism, just this once. . . . Icho!
Rangu Nyamurundira is a lawyer and indigenisation/empowerment consultant based in Harare.
Online Reporter