GOVERNMENT’S decision to dispossess former Local Government minister and Zanu PF political commissar Saviour Kasukuwere of his Mazowe farm is a clear demonstration of President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s administration’s failure or reluctance to operate above and beyond petty politics at a time they should be seized with more pressing economic issues to better the lives of ordinary citizens.
Editorial Comment
While it is an open secret that Kasukuwere was a key member of the G40 cabal that had fought bitterly against Mnangagwa’s Lacoste faction before the November 2017 military coup, the President should have demonstrated political maturity by letting his opponents be rather than engaging in such petty fights.
There is absolutely no reason why the government should engage in such cheap politicking as it speaks to intolerance of opposition. The fact that Kasukuwere and other former G40 kingpins like former Higher Education Minister Jonathan Moyo and many others do not agree with the Mnangagwa government is no reason to engage on a persecution crusade against them by grabbing their properties.
Obviously, many frivolous reasons are going to be given for reclaiming these farms, but Zimbabweans are educated enough to read through the flimsy claims as the real reason behind it all is clear for everyone with a little bit of sense to see. What planning purposes have suddenly dawned on them that they would require the farm for “planning purposes” after all these years? And would it really be a coincidence that his particular farm has been found ideal for the said planning purposes?
It is time that this new government seriously considers the way it conducts its business if the citizens are to believe that they are indeed a new government with a new vision and new trajectory. Vindictiveness was second nature to the late former President Robert Mugabe’s regime, and it would appear as if Mnangagwa has simply picked up from where Mugabe left despite all the rhetoric to the contrary.
It is so openly obvious that this is a targeted attack, and unnecessarily so. It smacks of the lack of respect for property rights in the country, itself a legacy from the Mugabe era.
