Zimbabwe’s Parliament is refusing to cough up funds for a new international airport following ascandalous award by the tender board, reports Iden Wetherell
ZIMBABWEANS may have to wait several more years before they get the new international airport they were promised in 1980. Rebellious members of Parliament have been refusing to cough up the funds because they say the project will be an unnecessary burden on the taxpayer.
Instead, they argue, the appropriately named Hazy Investments, which has been contracted to build the airport, should organise the funding.
The Cyprus-based company secured the contract when it offered a control tower modelled on the conical tower at Great Zimbabwe near Masvingo, a national symbol. Having the president’s nephew Leo Mugabe as their representative also helped.
Hazy won the contract only after Zimbabwe’s Cabinet reversed a decision by the government tender board to award it to a more experienced company, Aroports de Paris.
Much the same appears to have happened with a lucrative tender to supply a cellular phone service. The tender board recommended a joint award to entrepreneur Strive Masiywa’s Econet, and Telecel, a United States/Congolese company represented in Zimbabwe by a consortium of interests linked to the ruling Zanu-PF party.
But, according to an affidavit just filed in the Harare High Court, Cabinet secretary Charles Utete then intervened to direct that the tender go exclusively to the Telecel group, a decision which, according to one estimate, could cost the country R4- billion in management and franchise fees over the next 10 years.
The leading local member of the consortium, James Makamba, is a former business associate of Minister of Information, Post and Telecommunications Joyce Mujuru’s husband, General Solomon. Masiywa has been bypassed apparently because he had the temerity to submit an account for wiring work his company carried out at President Robert Mugabe’s rural mansion in Zvimba. And he has refused to accept patronage. All this contributes to a growing picture of sleaze in the upper echelons of government.
Earlier this month it was disclosed that a former permanent secretary in the Ministry of National Housing had diverted substantial sums to an illegal “VIP housing scheme”, in which the ministry built houses for senior government officials and relatives, including first lady Grace Mugabe who had a R3-million home built in Harare’s swish Borrowdale suburb.
Funds used in the scheme had been taken from housing projects for lower-income groups.
The diversion of state resources also came under the spotlight after recent reports revealed that R200-million set aside for casualties in Zimbabwe’s liberation war had been systematically looted by senior ruling party officials, including ministers, who helped themselves to sums of up to R500 000 each.
Mugabe’s brother-in-law, Reward Marufu, currently heads the list of recipients of the scandal-tainted War Victims Compensation Fund with nearly R400 000. Further down the list, Mujuru received R160000, according to disclosures made by independent MP Margeret Dongo in Parliament recently. Most of the recipients are not disabled, though some claim to be psychologically disturbed.
“A minister running a government ministry with a 65% or 75% disability? Something is wrong there!” Dongo said of glaring anomalies in the award process.
When the authorities attempted to investigate the scam, female ex-combatants threatened to reveal details of wartime rape by people who today occupy high office. It worked. Now Zanu-PF’s politburo has appointed an internal committee composed of senior ministers to probe the scandal.
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