Defiant Zanu-PF MPs are refusing to toe the party line, putting the president’s position in jeopardy, reports Francis Murape from Harare
ZIMBABWE’S ruling Zanu-PF party faces a growing anti-corruption rebellion from within its parliamentary ranks in the biggest challenge in President Robert Mugabe’s 17 years of uninterrupted rule.
The Parliament, dominated 147 to 3 by Zanu- PF and hitherto regarded as a rubber-stamp of executive decisions emanating from Mugabe’s office, is alive with discontent over the party’s nonchalant attitude towards corruption in high places.
At the centre is popular independent MP Margeret Dongo who was expelled from the party for standing against Mugabe’s unpopular candidate in the 1995 parliamentary elections.
Zanu-PF hardliners watched in dismay as more than 100 MPs supported Dongo’s motion calling on the auditor general to probe the Z$450-million War Victims Compensation Fund looted by senior party officials in the biggest scandal to hit Zimbabwe since independence in 1980.
Senior party officials had earlier tried to thwart the motion, fearing a full disclosure of how party leaders stole funds meant to compensate victims of the war of liberation could do irreparable damage to the party.
The civil servant who blew the whistle on the scam died a few weeks after the disclosure in what was officially reported as suicide, but what relatives say was murder.
After the Dongo-led rebellion won in Parliament on May 28, the defiant Zanu-PF MPs struck again the next day, humiliating Vice-President Simon Muzenda in his bid to force them to endorse a total of Z$975- million in loans secured abroad for the construction of a terminal at Harare airport.
“We are accountable to each other as Zimbabweans and also to our constituents. We do not want to be in the history books as having taken decisions that destroyed our country,” said one MP
The tender for the design of the airport was won by a controversial businessman, Leo Mugabe, nephew of the president, after the project was re-tendered to accommodate him and his Cypriot partners.
The MPs say bidders with funds available to finance the project were made to lose to accommodate Mugabe family interests.
Leo Mugabe has in the past won tenders for Harare’s sewage treatment works, government- building projects and the first privately run mobile cellular telephone system.
The MPs, who suspected that Leo Mugabe could be a front for his uncle, have an unlikely ally in retired general Tapfumaneyi Mujuru, whose phenomenal wealth, acquired in less than 15 years, has baffled observers.
Insiders say that by supporting the MPs’ refusal to endorse the airport project loans, Mujuru is trying to have a go at the president, who has blocked his bid to acquire a third of the chrome-mining giant Zimasco.
Mugabe has threatened to nationalise Zimasco should Mujuru’s bid go ahead, alleging the US-based owners of the company acquired it fraudulently when the government still had shares in it.
However, insiders say the MPs suspect Mugabe wants it to parcel out shares to his favourites under the guise of black economic empowerment or indigenisation.
The government has promised to re-table the controversial loans for endorsement, but the Zanu-PF MPs are unlikely to budge in what could bring about a crisis of confidence in Mugabe’s government.
The 100 MPs have it within their power to force new presidential and parliamentary elections as only a two-thirds majority is required to throw out the government.