Zimbabwe: Everything new is old
Zimbabwe's newly elected president has just announced a three-month amnesty for corrupt individuals and companies to return stolen funds that have been stashed abroad.
With his hand on his heart President Mnangagwa said, "Those affected are thus encouraged to take advantage of the three-month moratorium to return the illegally externalised funds and assets in order to avoid the pain and ignominy of being visited by the long arm of the law."
Common sense dictates that the accountants and prosecutors need to look no further than the men and women who are close to President Mnangagwa himself.
President Mnangagwa played a leading role in Zimbabwe’s politics and financial affairs for well over thirty years. For a long time, he co-governed a country in which every social stratum was riddled with Zanu-PF loyalists. Every single institution contained Zanu-PF informers whose livelihoods and lives depended on them passing every scrap of relevant information onto the Zanu-PF leadership. The notion that such a powerful figure was unaware of any significant amount of money moving illegally out of Zimbabwe is not believable.
Mnangagwa would have had to be incompetent or unprofessional to allow such massive theft and plundering to slip by under his nose. Is a man who can organise a full-scale rebellion against Robert Mugabe - while exiled in South Africa – truly careless enough to allow wide scale plundering of Zimbabwe's resources to take place under his watch?
No doubt, any post-amnesty investigation of corruption would require a tremendous amount of money and time. The new president has already said he wants to cut down on government waste. Mnangagwa could save the struggling Zimbabwean tax payer a great deal of money by sitting down at his favourite oak desk and writing down a list of names he has done business with over the past thirty years. He might well end this process by opening his black book and calling a few current heads of African states who profited sweetly from Brother Mugabe's long reign.
Mnangagwa doesn't have to threaten his fellow heads of state. All he must do is ask them to play along with the new "dispensation". The conversation might well go like this:
"Brother Jacob, this is all quite simple. The elections are coming in 2018. Don’t be silly, I'm not asking you to return all the money you took. No, I wouldn’t dream of coming after you directly. But I'll need a few sacrificial lambs. Someone's got to go to jail. I don't care who it is as long as they look and smell like a big fish… Don’t raise your voice to me, Jacob. I’m not playing with you. I didn’t go through the hell of getting rid of the old man and that awful creature of his to lose the election to a bunch of maids and nurses. I'm glad you understand. Okay, say hello to your wives for me. Next time, when I'm in town, I'll make this up to you. Yes, yes. No worries. Kisses and all that. Bye for now.”
Lo and behold a few unscrupulous criminals living the life of luxury in South Africa will be swiftly arrested and deported to Zimbabwe at great speed.
Zanu-PF supporters will hail Mnangagwa as “a true reformist who has forged Zanu-PF into an open, transparent force for change and therefore fit to rule in perpetuity.”
All Zimbabweans and beloved international partners will understand the message: Mnangagwa has changed everything.
For the opposition parties, nothing will have changed. Once again, they will have been brilliantly and ruthlessly outmanoeuvred by Zanu-PF and its elitist, anti-democratic, ruling liberation party allies.
Twas ever thus.