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Source: Zinara bosses grilled over graft allegations | Newsday (News)

BY VENERANDA LANGA

THE new Zimbabwe National Road Administration (Zinara) management led by chief executive officer Mathlene Mujokoro yesterday came under fire from Parliament over corruption allegations exposed in the Auditor-General (AG) Mildred Chiri’s audit reports.

Chiri’s 2016 and 2017 audits revealed gross flouting of tender procedures, misuse of a $71 million special roads fund, and milking of the institution by their contractors, including Univern.

Mujokoro and other Zinara executives appeared before the Tendai Biti-led Public Accounts Committee, where they had a torrid time responding to allegations of gross mismanagement of funds during the tenures of former chief executive Frank Chitukutuku and Moses Juma.

Biti said the AG’s 2016 audit reports revealed that $1 million worth of projects did not meet tender procedure requirements and did not specify the jobs to be done.

He said most of the contracts did not specify the performance, timelines or completion of the roads, with $71 million and R31 million also dished out for shoddy projects to certain named companies.

“The audit report also said that letters would be sent by Zinara to rural district councils (RDCs) to say that a road would be done, when the RDC did not request for that job, and without following tender procedures,” Biti said. “How does it happen that you can come to my house and order that it be painted without me ordering it, and who is really running Zinara? You were using Zinara as a slash fund.”

Dzivarasekwa MP Edwin Mushoriwa (MDC Alliance) said contractors did shoddy jobs, while Harare North MP Normal Markham (MDC Alliance) said Zinara must explain some roads that they repaired in Harare purportedly for very, very important people (VVIPs) and whether the projects properly went for tender.

Mushoriwa read a list of companies which seemingly continued to benefit from Zinara, which included Bitumen, Baddon, Fossil, Drawcard, Henan Tencraft, Twalumba and Transida.

Precious Murove, the Zinara director for administration, was said to have signed most of the letters on behalf of Zinara.

“I know the names of some of the companies, but not the owners. I only know them when they come to claim their payments at Zinara,” Murove said.

Mushoriwa said Zinara was actually writing to local authorities ordering them to do projects not requested by them.

He also alleged that $8 million was paid to Baddon, $10 million to Bitumen and $7 million to Forit without going to tender.

Biti said Univern supplied Zinara with defective snow graders so that it became a feeding trough and they continued charging for repairs.

Zinara director for technical services, engineer Wishes Mauwa, said of the 80 snow graders, only 10% broke down.

Mujokoro was then grilled over why Zinara awarded several contracts to Univern, owned by prominent businessman, Sage Levy, since 2012, that included contracts for graders, vehicle number plates, tollgate revenue collection system, fuel transfer fees and vehicle licence fees.

The committee was more worried that the fees that Univern was getting from the contracts were suspiciously high, while contracts were automatically renewed.

Mushoriwa asked: “In my view, Univern has captured Zinara because they developed a software for you, supplied graders without going to tender, and worse still, are you aware that for every dollar paid by a vehicle, they get 21,27%, and at tollgates, 18,4% per vehicle, and for fuel transfer fees,
they get 16% and those are very exorbitant fees and Zinara is captured?”

Mujokoro said the contracts were signed when she was not yet CEO.

She told the committee that her management had now appealed to the Finance minister to ensure they meet with Univern to re-negotiate the contracts and normalise the rates.

The post Zinara bosses grilled over graft allegations appeared first on NewsDay Zimbabwe.

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Source: ‘We don’t have anything’: the fight for survival after Cyclone Idai | Global development | The Guardian

The main road connecting the cyclone-devastated Mozambican city of Beira to neighbouring Zimbabwe comes to an abrupt end. A section almost 100 metres long is almost entirely under water, an angry muddy gash where the tarmac was ripped away by the floods and raging currents.

A week after the onset of Cyclone Idai, as the waters have receded in some places, some of those trapped in villages in the midst of the flood waters have at last managed to get out.

Near a cluster of wood canoes pulled up on a ‘beach’ next to the road, Pedro José, 47, emerges from the waters with a bag on his head. He says he walked 12 kilometres from his hamlet of 45 people to reach the road. He indicates back the way he came.

“There are still many people back there.”

Shattered by his journey, he is unwilling to say more.

The waters that hit villages like Pedro’s poured down from the higher elevations across the border in Zimbabwe, overwhelming the Pungue and Buzi rivers that crisscross this area of low plains, carving new channels and creating an enormous inland lake more than 125km (78 miles) long.

Survivors tell similar stories of being trapped or driven from their houses, many of them now angry at the slowness of the rescue effort.

They have heard the rescue helicopters fly over, sometimes seen the few boat rescue teams that have been dispatched, but what they need most – food, clothes and shelter – has yet to arrive, despite the mounting international rescue effort centred on Beira.

The further you drive away from Beira the worse it gets. At first crowded food distribution centres are visible in the larger settlements, the ground littered with uprooted trees and the metal torn off the roofs of the more solid structures.

But by the time you reach the village of Tica, where the road to Zimbabwe abruptly ends, it is a much bleaker picture. The villagers – washed out of their roadside homes – have set up makeshift shelters made from black plastic sheeting and corrugated roofing on the hard shoulder.

Their houses are still just about visible, with walls collapsed and roofs caved in where anything has survived at all.

“We don’t have anything,” says Josef Marius Jafate, a 29-year-old farmer who, like many of those in this impromptu roadside camp, is surviving solely on the river fish he can catch.

“We don’t have rice, or flour or any clothes. We need shelter. When is the help going to come?” he says.

Josef explains that he fled his small grass-roofed house on Saturday just over 24 hours after the cyclone had struck.

“The water started coming in and we had to escape with what we could carry to the road. We have been here ever since.”

The villagers’ complaints reflect a rescue effort that is still chaotic and under-resourced, short on helicopters and boats.

And while Beira remained a scene of widespread damage on Thursday, the real question is what devastation has occurred in the floodplains of places like Tica, which have been affected by a disaster some senior aid officials are comparing to Hurricane Katrina.

Even those involved in the aid effort admit they are far from having a proper picture of conditions in large parts of this densely populated rural region.

Drone footage captured by a photojournalist travelling with the Guardian hinted at what lies beyond the road: water for as far as the eye could see and a line of simple houses flooded to the rooftops.

The scale of the disaster has been hard to comprehend even for those who have been flying aircraft over the affected areas.

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Satellite images released on Thursday morning show a vast lake 125km in length and 25km wide, where rescuers continue to struggle to reach many areas, where an uncertain number remain on rooftops and in trees.

According to rescue coordinators almost 1,000 people were rescued on Wednesday, including 700 by boats made up in part by the Indian navy.

Describing the scale of the disaster, Gerry Bourke of the World Food Programme tells the Guardian that the growing international rescue effort still does not know how many people remain trapped in the flood waters.

“That’s the question. This was one of the most densely populated areas in Mozambique when the cyclone hit.

“There is huge urgency now to get to people. Given the size of the lake we are seeing on the satellite images we need to ask where are the people who were living there?”

Those with the closest view have been the rescue helicopter crews flying out of Beira’s airport.

Gerhard Louw, a winchman on a helicopter run by Rescue South Africa, an NGO involved in the rescue efforts, described what he had seen in days of flying over the flooded plains.

“The waters have started to recede now, it is waist deep rather than touching the rooftops. As you fly you see clusters of people everywhere. Twenty on the solid houses. Fifty plus on the bigger roofs.”

Louw flew rescue mission around Buzi, one of the worst affected towns, which he described as having only a single dry area.

“Where canoes have got to areas we leave them to get on with it and lift people in the most need.”

And the need is massive. Out of 600,000 people assessed to require assistance, many may be in life-threatening circumstances.

Underlining the scale of the problem is the plans being examined by the UN agencies and Mozambican authorities to build two massive reception areas to accommodate 400,000 people.

But the biggest unanswered question is the death toll. Villagers who spoke to the Guardian told of fatalities but could not estimate how many aside from saying that whole villages had disappeared.

Only when the floods recede will that accounting finally take place.

The post ‘We don’t have anything’: the fight for survival after Cyclone Idai  appeared first on Zimbabwe Situation.

Source: Dead in the water; back to square one – NewsDay Zimbabwe March 22, 2019

Guest Column: Pearl Matibe

Not one, but two perfect storms hit Zimbabwe last week during Finance minister Mthuli Ncube’s visit to Washington DC – the extension of United States sanctions which vexed President Emmerson Mnangagwa and news of the Ballard Partners lobbying firm, hired by him, which made the people he was elected to serve livid.

On February 13, Foreign Affairs minister Sibusiso Moyo signed a contract, hiring a team of US lobbyists on behalf of Zimbabwe, which means $150 000 quarterly payments until February 2020 must be paid externally. The country has 30% of its rural population (2,9 million people) facing severe food insecurity and the United Nations has put out a flash appeal seeking $234 million urgently in humanitarian aid. If that is not baffling, there is more to be confused about. It boggles the mind why the Mnangagwa-led government would celebrate a $100 000 donation from Botswana, yet spend $500 000 to “buy” US policy change. This level of fiscal spending makes Ncube’s keyword phrase “we walk the talk” seem laughable.

Yet, some reforms could be implemented at very little cost.

While in the US, Ncube was interviewed by Bloomberg where he talked about Zimbabwe’s currency, fiscal position and changes to local ownership rules for mines.

He found time to speak to Zimbabwe’s US diaspora, who wanted to know about progress, or the lack of it.

The stark reality is that the majority of the diaspora is waiting to see more.

Problem one: Honesty

Honesty is still the best policy. Yet, during the question and answer session, Ncube rejected the claims, stating repeatedly: “There is rule of law in Zimbabwe. Cases are being heard,” he said. Since the start of 2019, extra-judicial killings, numerous self-enforced disappearances, mass arrests of trade unionists, civil society leaders, citizens and opposition activists and the raping of girls and women escalated. Almost all of the government of Zimbabwe’s institutions, including the police and Judiciary, have lost their autonomy.

He also offered suggestions on how the diaspora could aid in helping the Foreign Affairs ministry, saying: “You can donate a carpet to the embassy. That’s what they did in South Africa.” It was also suggested that they form consortiums as the Ethiopians and other African diaspora had done in the US
The tone seemed to make light of some serious concerns. Ncube is making a tactical mistake not to be truthful to the diaspora he hopes will invest in infrastructure projects back home.

Problem two: No memorable message

If you have ever watched the movie, The Manchurian Candidate, you will know the premise of the film that years ago, iniquitous powers turned a man into a candidate for president. Once he would hear a certain word phrase, the man would do what he was told to do. In sales, as in the world of public speaking, the same principle applies. If you want to create buzz, create a memory that triggers a future action. This action then produces the outcome you desire, whether it be a closed sale, a raise or for your audience to return to hear you speak again. It’s also true that if you have a weak, fuzzy message your audience would find difficult to believe in, people wouldn’t do anything that you want them to do.

I’m not advocating for Ncube to be manipulative, but in successful public speaking, the speaker has to focus his audience’s attention with care and clarity, and do so earnestly.

Assuming that he wished to meet with the diaspora and leave a distinct message, one they would spread to others, his message should have been more specific and distinctive to be successful. For those new to the Zimbabwe diaspora investment world, it might seem like a foreign concept to bank on the performance history and reputation of a single portfolio like Zimbabwe. That’s the wall many would run up against in deciding whether or not to invest. It is possible that a shift may be seen in the future, but for now, the idea received a lukewarm reception.

Problem three: Diaspora vote

In the run-up to the July 2018 elections, lack of money was cited by Mnangagwa as one of the reasons why the diaspora would not be able to fulfil their civil right and vote.

During the visit to Washington, DC, I asked Ncube about what financial planning was in place and if there were any efforts to increase it towards 2023 to enable the full realisation of citizenship participation.

He confirmed that while there was no budgetary planning for the diaspora vote, dual citizenship was on the horizon, promising to take this concern back to Harare. Before 1979, the country excluded citizens from voting, based on race. Today, being in the diaspora excludes you from the polls.

Clearly, there is much still to be done.

For the diaspora to be sold on the idea of investing in infrastructure and development projects in the country of their birth, substantive legislative reforms will need to be in place, repatriation of funds and property rights notwithstanding.

The diaspora is inextricably linked to Zimbabwe culturally, economically and politically. Eventually, the government in Harare will need a sustainable plan that yields returns on their investment and provides confidence.

Where to from here?

Ncube promised to return to the US in April, so time will tell. In particular, the repealing of the Public Order and Security Act and Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act, which he said would happen by the end of April, is awaited with much anticipation.

The government needs a believable message that is sincere with its diaspora because this group has diverse perspectives, backgrounds and experiences.

I left the meeting with Ncube with one distinct takeaway: Dead in the water; back to square one.

Pearl Matibe has geographic expertise on US foreign policy, think tank impact, strategy and public policy issues. You may follow her on Twitter: @PearlMatibe

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Source: Warriors locked out – NewsDay Zimbabwe March 22, 2019

BY HENRY MHARA

The Warriors were yesterday barred from accessing the National Sports Stadium by some government officials where they intended to hold their training session ahead of their crucial Africa Cup of Nations qualifier against Congo Brazzaville on Sunday, in an unprecedented and embarrassing move that dampened the mood in the camp.

The team was scheduled to play a preparatory match against Premiership side Yadah FC at the match venue, but were locked out by officials from the Department of Public Works, who administer the stadium.

Warriors team manager Wellington Mupandare confirmed the incident claiming that certain forces were trying to sabotage the team in their quest to qualify for the finals set for Egypt in June.

The team eventually moved to the Yadah Village for their training match.

Since they started training on Tuesday, the Warriors have not used the match venue and they intended to make use of it yesterday, but their plan was scuppered by officials who made a number of unreasonable demands.

“This is the worst treatment that I have seen the team receiving. To imagine that we are barred from accessing our own stadium, a facility that is owned by the government, is gutting. I have never seen this anywhere in the world where a national team is denied to have a feel of their own stadium, it’s shocking,” Mupandare said. “When we went to the Democratic Republic of Congo and Congo Brazzaville we were given free access to the match venue, but in our own country we can’t train in the match venue. We are barred from using our own stadium by the people who should be supporting us, and you begin to wonder if this is not sabotage.”

Mupandare said the government officials demanded a reconciliation of the tickets that have been sold so far for the match before they could allow the team to train.

“The most disappointing thing is that yesterday we went to an all-stakeholders meeting were all the logistics for the match were discussed. All the relevant authorities were represented and they never raised the ticket issue. And now they are raising it, which is quite disturbing.

“And what is most annoying is that the players don’t have anything to do with the tickets and the levies that the ministry will get. They will eventually get the money after the match anyway, but how is the team going to be compensated for the lost time?” Mupandare quizzed.

Interestingly, President Emmerson Mnangagwa has invited the squad for a pre-match dinner at State House today.

“The President is getting out of his way to make the team comfortable by hosting the squad. But someone down there is trying to sabotage the team. And he is not sabotaging the team only, but the President as well. We have had sponsors who are supporting us. Prophet (Walter) Magaya has stood with us throughout, providing accommodation and food at his hotel and we have just received suits from 4May, and when everyone is trying to make the team succeed, it’s disturbing that the people who should be supporting us are the ones who are throwing spanners (into the works).”

He said yesterday’s events also gives a bad impression to the new players in the team, especially those from Europe.

“Imagine what is going through their minds right now when they are denied entry to their stadium. We are making efforts to negotiate with more players dotted around the globe so that they can come and play for the national team. And when they hear this, do you think they will agree? The players and everyone in the team is disappointed.”

The post Warriors locked out appeared first on Zimbabwe Situation.

Source: RTGS$ weakens 16% in first month – NewsDay Zimbabwe March 22, 2019

BY TATIRA ZWINOIRA

ZIMBABWE’S local currency, the RTGS dollar, has plunged by as much as 16% since it was introduced last month.

The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe scrapped its discredited 1:1 dollar peg for surrogate bond notes and electronic dollars last month, merging them into a lower-value transitional currency called the RTGS dollar as part of monetary policy measures to address the country’s currency challenges.

The RTGS dollar made its debut at 1:2,5 to the greenback on the official interbank platform, but on the parallel market, rates were as high as 3,5 to 3,8.

While parallel market rates have somewhat held steady, the official rate for the RTGS dollar has dipped to 2,8 to the greenback.

Economist Ashok Chakravarti said every new market takes time to settle in order to be fully functional, which is why the market was performing the way it was. But he called on the market to be free of controls that were determined by traders.

“When we proposed the interbank foreign exchange market, we did so with the mind that it would be liberalised in the sense of allowing the market to determine the rates free of controls,” he said.

“But I think those are issues that will be sorted as time goes on. But we need to have transference rules that can govern the interbank platform, like how the stock exchange has trading rules. This is because some banks have nostro accounts, while others do not have. I would encourage the Ministry of Finance and the central bank to quickly put these rules.”

Chakravarti added that transfer rules would also encourage trust among exporters and sellers so that they come onto the market in order to trade their foreign currency.

“The rate has devalued as a result of the Reserve Bank just increasing the exchange rate because all banks are depending on them for the supply of foreign currency. The bulk of foreign currency is being supplied by the Reserve Bank because generators of foreign currency are holding onto their foreign currency,” financial expert Persistence Gwanyanya said.

“The reason why they are holding onto their foreign currency is because the exchange rate would be deemed to be less attractive compared to the exchange rate they have been getting from their individual structures. So the Reserve Bank has deliberately increased the rate at which the banks are accessing foreign currency from it because the market is not releasing foreign currency; suppliers are not ‘coming to the party’.”

Gwanyanya said the central bank was not too keen on the “big bang” approach in dealing with currency distortions as the bank believes this would negatively impact the economy.

“As I have advised previously, we are reaching equilibrium on the interbank forex market. I think you are using the term ‘devaluation’ in the wrong context. Equilibrium between the supply and demand for forex based on willing buyer, willing seller basis,” Mangudya told NewsDay.

However, Gwanyanya was of a different view about the effect of foreign currency on tobacco sales, as buyers and sellers were already trading among themselves using the more lucrative parallel market rates.

“To me, it is not about the availability of foreign currency. It is about the attractiveness of the rate to the suppliers of foreign currency.
Remember, the suppliers are going to supply into the interbank market from their retentions. They are retaining the foreign currency and others are continuing to hold onto the foreign currency,” Gwanyanya said.

“Until the price discovery mechanism is arrived at, we shall see a situation where we have foreign currency that may seem to be enough to cater for the needs of the market, with generators of foreign currency continuing to hold onto their foreign currency.”

Gwanyanya said too much control from the central bank was exacerbating the problem.

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