AS Zimbabweans continue to gather guts to challenge President Robert Mugabe’s administration, a Harare man has written a scathing letter to the 93-year-old Zanu PF leader demanding he cuts on foreign trips and his bloated Cabinet.
BY RICHARD CHIDZA
Grievance Sipikita delivered his petition at Mugabe’s Munhumutapa Building offices yesterday. In the letter, a copy of which NewsDay has in its possession, Sipikita accuses Mugabe of abetting rampant corruption.
“I write this letter, Mr President, to express my democratic rights enshrined in the Constitution, the Constitution you signed into effect, to air my displeasure and disgust over certain issues that you, as the Head of State, have failed to deal with, leaving Zimbabweans questioning your capability to take the nation forward,” he said.
“Mr President, I am not fighting you, but a system in which you operate, a system that has left 90% of the population unemployed, half the population scavenging abroad and a country with no national currency, 37 years from independence (sic).”
Missing journalist and democracy activist, Itai Dzamara raised the same issues before he was allegedly abducted by suspected State security agents in March 2015, never to be seen again despite mounting local and international pressure for the Zanu PF government to return him.
Sipikita said Mugabe had allowed constitutionally-created bodies to be bullied by his corrupt officials.
“Instead of taking a hard stance on perpetrators of corruption, you publicly defend them. In addition, those implicated in corruption are walking free and those with the constitutional authority to investigate corrupt officials are threatened and perceived to be enemies of the State,” he said.
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Sipikita said Mugabe’s government, with 31 Cabinet ministers, 31 permanent secretaries and 10 Provincial Affairs ministers, among other officials, was bleeding the country.
“The appointments are not based on merit or qualifications, but on patronage, cronyism and nepotism … you appointed thugs and looters to run the affairs of Zimbabwe,” he said.
Sipikita described Mugabe’s frequent travels as “evil” in a country in which families were “surviving on less than a dollar a day”.
He added that he would embark on a one-man demonstration in Harare’s Africa Unity Square today.
