‘Zanu PF captured’

ZANU PF’s politburo members have allegedly been captured and were no longer keen on fighting corruption, a former Zanu PF youth league political commissar has claimed.

Former youth league political commissar Godfrey Tsenengamu said the Zanu PF top brass received topof-the-range vehicles, ministerial perks and endless supply of fuel from wealthy benefactors who continue to be awarded with lucrative government contracts.

“The majority of them are getting salaries from these wealthy benefactors, they are given cars and the fuel they use. How do you expect people to go against someone who is sponsoring them?” Tsenengamu asked.

Tsenengamu was fired from his post and the party after a Press conference where he named businessmen Kudakwashe Tagwirei, Billy Rautenbach and Tafadzwa Musarara among alleged corrupt individuals and called on the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission and Zanu PF leaders including President Emmerson Mnangagwa to act on them. Instead, he was suspended from the party together with politburo members Lewis Matutu and Pupurai Togarepi who remains in the central committee but was dropped from the politburo.

Tsenengamu, who later formed a pressure group Front Economic Emancipation of Zimbabwe which he says is a citizen’s initiative to fight corruption, said there was a group of individuals in the party which was corrupt to the core, but holding massive power to avoid being probed.

“It is not about the whole party, it is about a clique of people who are in the leadership, who instead of being leaders, they have turned themselves into looters. Whenever you challenge looting, you are always going to face the music whenever you challenge corruption. Because corruption is in their DNA, they will deal with you,”Tsenengamu said.

Despite not having evidence of Mnangagwa’s involvement in corruption, Tsenengamu accused him of being an accomplice.

“I would not want to say President Mnangagwa is corrupt or not, but what I can say is, in one way or the other, the President is an accomplice in all the corruption that is happening around him. He has failed to act decisively and he finds himself in the company of those who are corrupt all the time. He appointed a commission to investigate internal allegations of corruption but it suffered a stillbirth up to now,” he said.

But Zanu PF national political commissar Victor Matemadanda dismissed the allegations by Tsenengamu.

“Those are lies. What happens if I show you evidence that I bought my car? I have the papers of that car and I keep them because I know that some people are going to make these allegations,” said Matemadanda who is also Defence deputy minister.

Matemadanda said there was need to give Zacc the chance to fight corruption following laid-down legal procedures.