We won’t return cars: Zanu PF candidates

Politics
SOME Zanu PF candidates who contested in the harmonised elections have vowed to defy a directive to return campaign top-of-the-range Ford Everest vehicles

SOME Zanu PF candidates who contested in the harmonised elections have vowed to defy a directive by party secretary for administration and Presidential Affairs minister Didymus Mutasa to return campaign top-of-the-range Ford Everest vehicles they were allocated in the run-up to the July 31 plebiscite.

DUMISANI SIBANDA/ JOHN NYASHANU

Mutasa on October 29 wrote to all Zanu PF provincial chairpersons ordering them to collect the vehicles which had been allocated to the party’s National Assembly candidates.

In the letter, Mutasa stated that he was making a “final call for the surrender of vehicles”, a position that placed him on a warpath with some of the party’s candidates who have disregarded the directive.

Yesterday, some MPs told our sister paper NewsDay on condition of anonymity that they would not return the vehicles.

“Why were we given the cars in the first place?” queried one MP.

“Mutasa has issued the directive for us to surrender the cars, but Mutasa is not the party. We will not return the cars in the same manner that the Joint Monitoring and Implementation Committee officials refused to hand over the cars they were using when their term of office came to an end.”

But Zanu PF spokesperson Rugare Gumbo on Tuesday said there was nothing amiss about Mutasa’s directive.

“As a party, the understanding was that these cars were for their use during the election campaign. Now that they are in Parliament, we expect Parliament to buy them cars. But talk to Mutasa about the issue.”

Mutasa could not be reached on his mobile phone yesterday.