FORMER State Enterprises and Parastatals (SEPs) minister Gorden Moyo yesterday made sensational claims that he once nearly landed in trouble when he gave President Robert Mugabe a dossier implicating 11 Zanu PF and four MDC ministers in corruption.
VENERANDA LANGA SENIOR PARLIAMENTARY REPORTER
Moyo made the disclosure in Harare while addressing delegates attending a Transparency International Zimbabwe-organised workshop.
The workshop was meant to help stakeholders brainstorm on how to conduct a 2014 annual state of corruption study.
The former MDC-T minister said corruption was institutionalised and difficult to deal with.
“State enterprises and parastatals are now new sites of factional politics where ministers will appoint people from their factions to head them,” Moyo said.
He said Mugabe knew that corruption had now been “State-institutionalised”.
“In 2011, I got a report with details of what ministers got in terms of double-dipping when claiming allowances, in terms of getting vehicles from parastatals and in money in terms of travel allowances and the issue was published in a South African newspaper,” Moyo said.
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“When Mugabe got hold of the newspaper, he did not like it and former deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara told me that I was in trouble.”
Moyo claimed he then briefed Mugabe and former Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai who both said the issue of corruption should never be “a newspaper thing”.
“They said it was an executive issue because I was not a super minister. The president was going to deal with the 11 ministers and the PM with the four,” he said.
“We had records of kleptocracy that was going on at SEPs — the president knew, but unless the executive deals with corruption at our SEPs we will have this thing going on.”
Both Mugabe and Tsvangirai’s spokespersons George Charamba and Luke Tamborinyoka could not be reached for comment yesterday.
Moyo described how some good propositions and documents to revamp SEPs were shot down because they would give leverage to the party that proposed them. He said some investment deals got stalled because “some ministers did not get under-the-table cuts”.
“We came up with good documents with the State Enterprises Regulatory Authority to use for restructuring of Zisco and the minister responsible said the idea should be brought to him first,” Moyo said.
“For you to get one company restructured, the ministers would want under-the-table cuts and if they did not get that nothing happened. Zisco restructuring was taken to the Industry and Commerce ministry. They did everything they could, but they did not realise that (a certain ministry) needed to have a cut.
“Up to today Zisco is not working because the ministers wanted to get $10 million or $20 million from the Indians.”
He said another big problem was that laws governing SEPs allowed Cabinet ministers to be players as well as regulators.
“Militarisation of SEPs and politicisation are the twin evils that bedevilled SEPs,” the Makokoba MP said.
“Former ambassadors, MPs, or politburo members who were not assigned positions found homes at SEPs. That does not augur well with trajectories of economic development acceptable in the 21st century.”
Speaking at the same function, former chairperson of the Parastatals Commission, Ibbo Mandaza, said ministers in the inclusive government which ended in July last year preferred taking their documents directly to Mugabe instead of referring them to Cabinet.
“That gave leeway to corruption and led to policy paralysis. When SEPs are failing, management must be recalled and the chief executive officer and minister must be relieved from the job,” he said.
“There is lack of a standard enabling Act that governs all SEPs. We should look at the whole question of governance structures and how the Constitution can restore governance of national institutions.”
He said a Parastatals Commission was set up in 1988 to categorise parastatals, commercialise and privatise them, set up systems in parastatals and to empower boards in charge of parastatals and the commission managed to curtail the powers of ministers over SEPs.
