THE latest instalment by State media columnist Nathaniel Manheru, headlined Mujuru: The story of scattered wisdom, made very sad reading through its misogynistic views as well as denigration of those among us without university degrees.
guest column: JEALOUSY MAWARIRE
George Charamba, President Robert Mugabe’s spokesperson, who hides behind an effigy called Nathaniel Manheru, did not only attack Joice Mujuru, the politician and leader of Zimbabwe People First, in the instalment, but all the women in the country, when he chose to base his attacks on what Mujuru was wearing and what he imagined about her anatomy beyond what was visible.
Charamba chose to ignore the political symbolism that Mujuru’s gesture to Guy Watson-Smith brings to the issue of the land reform and geopolitics, but had the presence of mind to fix penetrative eyes beyond Mujuru’s skirt.
On a day Donald Trump reached a new low in his denigration of women in the American election campaign, one would certainly have thought Charamba knew pretty well the bigoted nature of his analysis of Mujuru’s meeting with Watson-Smith was infuriating to decent and right-thinking Zimbabweans.
Charamba, in his Manheru instalment, comes across not only as a misogynist, uncouth and sex-obsessed bloke, but as a spoilt brat, whose perchance for ribaldry is alarming.
Rather than dwell on his equally misplaced belief that paying compensation to white former commercial farmers was reversing the land reform exercise, Manheru hit a new low, choosing to imagine what could have been beyond the skirt Mujuru was wearing.
When Charamba says “Joice has ungainly revealed her bearded political innards too much ahead of 2018”, before telling her “to sit like a woman”, you sense you are listening to a pervert with a reckless sexual disposition that might, as well, explain the calamities that have befallen him lately, which had him cut short a visit to Japan.
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We have degreed but certified maniacs, who do not know what to say, when and where. People who think since they control State media, they can write obscenities because their reprobate minds command them thus. That is George “Manheru” Charamba for you, a man personifying some real darkness, a clear indication of the absence of light (knowledge) as suggested by his nom de plume.
In a typically unwise move, Charamba chose to engage his mouth (pen) even when he didn’t have full facts on events at the meeting between Mujuru and Watson-Smith, the former owner of her Ruzambu Farm in Beatrice.
It is public information that Finance minister Patrick Chinamasa agreed to use Treasury Bills and a land levy to compensate former commercial farmers whose land government grabbed during the chaotic land reform exercise.
Presenting the Mid-Term Policy Review statement on September 8, 2016, Chinamasa revealed that: “To date, $42,7 million has been paid out for 43 farms, notwithstanding fiscal constraints being faced by government.”
While Charamba finds reason to attack Mujuru for starting negotiations to pay Watson-Smith compensation, maybe in the region of $1m, he sees nothing wrong with the $43m that Chinamasa has paid for 43 farms. Doesn’t that translate to $1m per farm? So what’s the hullaballoo about the purported $1m that Mujuru is said to have agreed to pay Smith? Is Mujuru’s $1m more in value than the $1m per farm that Chinamasa is paying? Why is it that what is good for the goose should not be good for the gander?
Didn’t we see in The Herald, which Charamba micro-manages, a statement by Lands permanent secretary Ngoni Masoka, saying Mugabe’s government had invited more than 1 000 white farmers to engage the ministry for their compensation? In the statement, Masoka said: “The former owners or representatives should contact the Ministry of Lands, Land Reform and Resettlement as a matter of urgency in connection with their compensation.”
Mugabe’s government has made a commitment to pay compensation to white farmers and with its serious looming insolvency, it should thank Mujuru for offering to help with the compensation for her farm than chide her. Charamba should be applauding Mujuru for her patriotism through the offer to help compensate Watson-Smith at a time Cabinet ministers are notorious for looting State coffers.
There is nothing extraordinary with Mujuru’s memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Watson-Smith on October 6, 2016 where the two parties [Ruzambu Farm (Pvt) Limited and Hanagwe Farm represented by Guy Watson-Smith] agreed to resume negotiations for compensation. The parties agreed to negotiate cognisant of “the laws of Zimbabwe governing use of farm land and ownership and the need to abide by the rules of natural justice”.
The MoU also states clearly that the parties to the agreement are cognisant that “Ruzambu Family Trust lost two farms in Shamva under the Land Reform Act and that what is presently the subject of this MoU is a compensation for loss of the two properties in Shamva” and that “ordinarily Ruzambu Family Trust laid a counterclaim with the government (Zimbabwe) on the loss of their ancestral home of Chivero clan, it being the same property owned by both Hanagwe and Guy Watson-Smith.”
It also indicates that the parties agreed that “both Hanagwe and Mr Guy Watson-Smith are entitled to compensation as prescribed by the Land Reform Act directing that compensation shall be given for land improvements, movable assets and reasonable consideration for lack of income arising out of loss of the above assets”.
The above agreed facts form the basis around which the negotiations are supposed to commence and the parties agreed that “this agreement shall become legally binding once their respective lawyers have crafted the final agreement”.
So Mujuru is within her rights, as a law abiding citizen and a politician who respects the rule of law, to consider not only paying compensation to Watson-Smith, but also to respect the court ruling by Justice Mary Dube in August 2015, which ordered her to pay compensation to Smith, a decision that was greeted with ululation among her Zanu PF detractors, like Charamba, who are now vilifying her for meeting the same person the courts ordered her to pay compensation to.
Charamba is aware that Mujuru’s political star is growing by the day, hence, his desperate bid to label her as an enemy of the land reform.
Mujuru is on record categorically stating, at Chatham House, that the land reform is irreversible, but its irreversibility does not absolve government from paying the white farmers their compensation in order that we can get title deeds to the pieces of land.
It is disingenuous on the part of Charamba to say government can cancel title deeds that the white farmers are holding. If it was true, why then did Mugabe and many of his Cabinet ministers pay for the farms they grabbed? We have incontrovertible evidence that Mugabe and most of his ministers paid large sums of money, during the Reserve Bank money-printing era, to white commercial farmers in return for title deeds.
Attempts by Charamba to dissuade others from doing the same is not only hypocritical, but cruel, as it means only the Zanu PF chefs enjoy security of tenure, while the majority of those that benefited from the land reform exercise continue under a false illusion of land ownership, when, in fact, they are landless.
As it stands today, those that are on the farms where no compensation has been paid, land compulsorily acquired under Chapter 20:10 of the Land Reform Act, do not own land since, at law, every piece of land they purport to own belongs to Mugabe, the President of Zimbabwe and Zanu PF.
Surely, if we had problems with 4 000 white commercial farmers owning 70% of our prime agricultural land, what of one man owning 70% of the whole of prime land in Zimbabwe?
The issue of security of tenure has to be addressed to ensure productivity on the farms and to do that, we can never escape without paying compensation. No amount of Victorian English can substitute paying compensation.
No amount of obscenities hailed on Mujuru by an uncouth Charamba can exonerate Mugabe’s government from its obligation to pay compensation to the white farmers. That’s the way it is.
Jealousy Mawarire is the Zimbabwe People First national spokesperson. He writes in his own capacity.
