By Prof. Jonathan Moyo

FOLLOWING the publication of Mutumwa Mawere’s article, “My problem with Jonathan Moyo” by this website on June 5, 2006, the editor of New Zimbabwe.com asked me to respond in the interest of balanced public debate.

My initial view was that it was unnecessary for me to respond because Mawere has taken an apparently personalized and even defamatory approach with no self-evident public relevance or value.


Also, as my article on the Budiriro by-election dealt with Zimbabwean politics, I did not see why I had to respond to Mawere who has made a declaration under oath before the courts in South Africa denying that he is a Zimbabwean and claiming that he is a South African in order to avoid extradition to Zimbabwe.

I therefore did not think I had to bother myself debating a South African over Zimbabwean politics. But after some further nudging from the editor, I have reluctantly agreed to respond in the interest of promoting transparent debate against what I still believe is my better judgment.

Because the issues raised by Mawere in his convoluted article are many, varied and very serious in so far as some of them are even defamatory, my response is necessarily elaborate and rather long.

Although Mawere’s article purports to be reacting to my piece, “Beyond the Budiriro by-election: the state of opposition politics in Zimbabwe” published by this website last month, I don’t think anybody who has read his article would dispute that it has anything to do with the Budiriro by-election or the state of opposition politics in Zimbabwe which were the focus of my piece.

There is an explanation for this. Reading between the lines of his article, I think the reason why Mawere took a personalized approach is not necessarily because he wanted to write about me as his main focal point. Rather, it is because he realized that my piece on the Budiriro by election generated considerable interest and debate among Zimbabweans and was thus a talking point.

Being the ever wily pyramid schemer that he is, Mawere wanted to appropriate that debate and interest by shifting its attention away from the critical issues around the challenges of opposition politics in Zimbabwe towards himself and his problems. In other words, he wanted the debate to be on him and about him as a paranoid attention seeker. This explains why his article is aptly entitled, “My problem with Jonathan Moyo”. The essence of his focus is Mawere’s problems and not Zimbabwe’s problems which were the focus of my article.

Therefore, although his article is all over the place and does not seem to have a coherent running theme beyond its unprovoked personal attack on me, Mawere’s unmistakable mission in the article is two pronged: Yet again for the umpteenth time he is presenting himself not only as an allegedly wronged business mogul whose alleged assets have been illegally expropriated in Zimbabwe but also as an alleged long standing champion of democracy in Zimbabwe whose exemplary efforts through his short-lived National Development Assembly (NDA) were thwarted by those he claims also expropriated his alleged assets.

It is this two pronged thrust of Mawere’s article which I wish to address first before dealing with three specific issues that are personal to me arising from his article in question.

Why does Mawere continue to shamelessly pose: (1) as a wronged business mogul who has been robbed of his alleged assets and (2) as a frustrated human rights activist who has been denied the opportunity to bring democracy to Zimbabwe by building the nation through NDA’s television and radio programs?

I think the answer is simply because he is a compulsive yet idle attention seeker who is prone to extreme bouts of paranoia during which he tells pathological lies that are shocking to decent and well meaning people. A case in point is his outburst not too long ago when he falsely claimed that the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) had used proceeds from his alleged companies to pay off Zimbabwe’s arrears to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

We all now know that nothing of the sort happened. The RBZ by its own admission printed with the knowledge of the IMF more than ZW$21 trillion which was used to purchase forex from the parallel market to settle the IMF arrears. But as a paranoid attention seeker, Mawere tried to use the RBZ’s efforts to payoff the IMF debt to draw attention to himself by writing to the IMF and by making his letters public with false claims that proceeds from his alleged assets had been raided.

In the ensuing developments Mawere was for quite sometime in the news and sensationally so because if his claims had been proven true there would have been big time trouble for the RBZ. Yet Mawere’s claims were a pack of pathological lies told by a paranoid attention seeker and that is why the IMF ignored him. As a direct result of his pathological lies on this matter, the IMF as well as many other reputable and honorable people in society now view Mawere as a nuisance given to saying anything about himself, his alleged assets and victimization.

The paranoid attention seeking behind Mawere’s IMF debacle can also be seen from his false claims about the NDA. Because he is now presenting himself as a victim Mawere wants Zimbabweans, especially those in the opposition, to believe that the NDA was an institution designed to promote democracy in Zimbabwe against Zanu PF. Yet nothing could be further from the truth as I will show below.

I am also aware that Mawere has tried to give the impression that he was above Zanu PF politics and now claims that he snubbed the ruling party when he was offered a provincial position by the Zanu PF Masvingo provincial executive that wanted to co-opt him along with Daniel Shumba. But really there is no story here because the invitation was for Mawere to join village politics by clansmen since he was not being offered a national responsibility at ministerial level or a position in either the central committee or the politburo which he definitely would have accepted because he wanted and campaigned for positions like that.

There are only two major reasons why Mawere has sought to distance himself from Zanu PF by giving the false impression that he has always been a champion of democracy through the NDA. One is that there has had been a fallout with his Zanu PF political principals. The other, after making a lot of public noise in support of Zanu PF through the NDA and other forums, his name was included among individuals on the targeted sanctions list by Western governments, starting with the Americans, as a Zanu PF businessman benefiting from Zanu PF misrule.

This inclusion shocked him and he used his fallout with his Zanu PF political principals to start attacking the ruling party as a specific strategy of wanting to be removed from the targeted sanctions list. That’s when he started flirting with some MDC parliamentarians and making donations to the MDC which subsequently helped him to be removed from the sanctions list. If this is what Mawere means by fighting for democracy in Zimbabwe then he has a rather strange if not cynical view of politics.

Otherwise those who care to examine the record without prejudice will learn that Mawere’s NDA had nothing to do with fighting for democracy in Zimbabwe as it was formed as a Zanu PF political NGO with three overriding strategic purposes.

The first ZANU PF purpose of the NDA was to counter the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) in the hope of ultimately rendering it superfluous in national politics. This is why the NDA’s name was very close to the NCA with the difference that Zanu PF inserted a “D” for development in place of a “C” for constitutional reform. This difference was supposed to be important in demonstrating or calling attention to the fact that Zimbabweans were more interested in having national development than in having a new democratic constitution.

As such, the NDA was supposed to set a developmental agenda in place of a constitutional reform one. In this sense, it is ludicrous for Mawere to now claim that his NDA had anything to do with bringing democracy to Zimbabwe because that is a pathological lie. Also, unlike the NCA which is a membership based organization the NDA was a top down political creation with no membership support. That is why the NDA died with Mawere’s ditching of his Zimbabwean citizenship.

The second strategic purpose of the NDA had to do with creating some space for Mawere himself as an individual. At the time of the setting up of the NDA, Mawere’s Zanu PF political principals, whom he does not now want to be associated with, wanted him to be eased out of the business empire that he now says was his and his alone. This was not for political reasons as such but mainly because Mawere was said to be then interfering with business operations that were being run by salaried professionals on the ground.

Also, the professionals running the business empire were apparently increasingly viewing Mawere as a dangerous loose canon who was making all kinds of reckless political statements that were beginning to harm the businesses by attracting negative publicity as a paranoid attention seeker. The idea was that the business empire would make funds available to the NDA for Mawere’s convenience so that, as chairperson of NDA, he would use that platform to make political statements that would not damage the business empire he had become associated with as a front.

The third strategic purpose of the NDA, designed by Mawere, is that it was supposed to serve the political interests and agenda of his political principals, especially regarding the succession battles within Zanu PF, because at that time he was still in good books with them and they did not then see him as a political threat or impediment. In this third strategic sense, Mawere had promised his political principals that the NDA would play a pivotal role in Zanu PF’s succession politics.

It was during this NDA period, and in connection with the third strategic purpose, that Mawere then setup the Tribune newspaper. In his article, Mawere opportunistically tells a pathological lie that the Tribune newspaper was banned to give it the same fate as the NDA. Yet he knows only too well that he sold the Tribune to Kindness Paradza as a direct result of his fallout with his Zanu PF political principles due to conflict of the control of the business empire that had been built through Mawere’s pyramid scheming. It is a matter of the public record that the Tribune newspaper fell foul with the law because of the failure by its new owners led by Kindness Paradza to declare that there had been a change of ownership after Mawere abandoned the NDA project as he prepared to wrestle the corporate loot away from his political principals.

In any event, none of the above three strategic purposes behind the creation of the NDA succeeded because that NGO flopped like a dead duck. While Mawere’s article gives the impression that the NDA failed because of what he says was my banning of its television and radio programs, the truth of the matter is that the NDA project flopped under the weight of the folly of its own strategic purposes. In particular, NDA flopped because Mawere and his Zanu PF political principals, not partners but principals, started fighting each other as Mawere sought to run away with the business empire for which he had been a front, claiming that it was his and his alone.

While the rest about the NDA saga is history, I must address the question of why the NDA television and radio programs were discontinued by ZBC. Mawere’s article gives the impression that I banned the programs because I did not want to see democracy and nation building. That is plain crazy.

I wish to state categorically that I fully supported the permanent discontinuation of the NDA programs on television and radio and I stand by that decision even today without any qualms whatsoever. When one has a public responsibility such as I had, you are not there to appease people like Mawere who are paranoid attention seekers by allowing them to do whatever they want just because they have powerful political principals in the ruling party or just because they have a lot of money in their wallets.

It was wrong for ZBC then to have allowed those NDA programs to be aired in the first place. This is because the NDA was a Zanu PF political NGO, and within Zanu PF itself it was a factional project, that was intended to counter the NCA and prop up Mawere’s political principals outside the rules of fair and democratic play. In the circumstances, we could not have been able to justify having NDA running weekly television and radio programs and not giving the same opportunity to the NCA

THE fact mentioned by Mawere in his article that the NDA had money to offer cash strapped ZBC is absolutely irrelevant because that is not the only important deciding factor in public or private broadcasting for that matter. After all, even the NCA had money just like the NDA. There are many other business people who also could afford to pay.

Even worse, the mafia and other criminals have lots of money too but that is no reason why they should be allowed to buy airtime to pursue factional and personal agendas through public airwaves under the pretext of nation building or promoting democracy.

Besides, Mawere had no known public broadcasting credentials to pose as a journalist or some kind of a Larry King on television. The whole affair was a terrible circus. Mawere would appear almost weekly as a guest on Radio One with Pat Manala answering all kinds of meaningless questions and leave that to become an anchor on television in the weekly NDA program “Talk to the Nation”. While this circus was consistent with the strategic purposes of the NDA as described above, it was not consistent with the professional and ethical standards of public broadcasting. So it had to be stopped and it was.

Yet Mawere wanted to be allowed to run amok on the airwaves simply because the NDA was a Zanu PF political NGO. He was understandably surprised and annoyed when he was given an emphatic no. He then took his case to his Zanu PF principals and complained bitterly against me, alleging that I was there to destroy Zanu PF from within and started campaigning for my removal as minister.

Matters came to a head when Mawere’s political principals brought the matter to the politburo where I was taken to task for “banning our own (Zanu PF) program on television and radio”. The allegations and attacks on me were very ugly and they were followed by a vicious whisper campaign impugning my personal integrity and character including idiotic claims that I am gay. But I stood my ground for the reasons I have explained.

When Mawere realized that he was not going to get any joy from using his political principals to put pressure on me through the politburo and their whisper campaign against me, he went to the High Court of Zimbabwe and cited ZBC and myself as respondents. The case was heard before fugitive Justice Paradza, a close ally of Mawere and confident of his then political principals, who ruled in Mawere’s favor and surprisingly ordered that the programs should be reinstated on air.

While the fact that Mawere won the case in court was not a problem at all because that was one of the two probable outcomes of the case, Justice Paradza’s order to reinstate the programs on air was surprising and in fact totally absurd. Since Mawere was alleging a breach of contract, upon finding in his favor, the Court was expected to then award him damages for that breach but not to order a specific performance such as that the programs should be put back on air as if the Court has competence to enforce that kind of performance.

All broadcasters around the world have a right not to air any material that conflicts with their standards or practices or which they cannot control. The decision as to which material to broadcast or not to broadcast cannot reside with any court. It is for this reason that we appealed against Justice Paradza’s strange judgment in the Supreme Court of Zimbabwe. That appeal, which at law had the immediate effect of suspending the enforcement of Justice Paradza’s judgment, is yet to be heard. Mawere foolishly claims in his article that the program was not aired after he won in court because of what he alleges was my interference only because he is too ignorant to know that an appeal in the Supreme Court has the effect of suspending the judgment of a lower court until the appeal is heard and decided by the superior court. That is the rule of law and not interference.

Then there is the issue of Mawere’s endless claims that his alleged assets in Zimbabwe have been illegally expropriated. In his article, he astonishingly writes that “I am convinced that the Prof may have more to do with the expropriation of my assets in Zimbabwe than anyone else”.

This is scandalous defamation. Mawere should at least try to be more serious than this if he wants to be taken seriously by others. I honestly think this paranoid attention seeking claim alone is an example of the kind of combined ignorance, malice and stupidity that proves that Mawere’s hallucinations have taken his paranoid attention seeking syndrome to new levels that may end up requiring him to receive medical treatment.

I know that I have my own faults, and I also know that I have my own influence as an individual, but how on earth can I more than anyone else be said to be solely responsible for the expropriation of Mawere’s alleged assets? Is Mawere or anyone else close to him, not aware that these alleged assets have been expropriated, if that’s what has happened, by the Government of Zimbabwe that is led by Robert Mugabe?

If Mawere is convinced, as he claims in his article, that I more than anyone else am responsible for the alleged expropriation of his alleged assets, why has he not cited me as a respondent in any of his numerous court battles over the assets in question? Why has he not taken me to court given that he has dragged people to court all over the place in and outside Zimbabwe? Surely, it would have been in Mawere’s interests to have taken me to court a long time ago and not to wait until now to make such a scandalous and defamatory claim on newzimbabwe.com.

It is true that I was a member of the cabinet committee that was setup to look into the welfare of workers at SMM sometime in 2004. The reason I was a member of that committee is simply that, throughout my tenure as minister and because information was then seen as a crosscutting portfolio and because the department I headed was directly under the Office of the President and Cabinet, I used to sit in every cabinet committee. This ensured that my public statements were always correct in terms of articulating the position of the government on any issue. Therefore my being a member of any cabinet committee did not mean anything special or make me a key member as claimed by Mawere.

By the time a cabinet committee was set up to look into SMM welfare issues, something which was necessary because the workers were going unpaid and thus suffering causing political problems for the government, the legal process regarding the alleged expropriation of the alleged assets had long started. That legal process, which involved the courts, was handled through the offices of the Attorney General and the Ministry of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs and not by any cabinet committee. I believe this is still the case and I have never had, nor will I ever have, anything to do with what goes on in the office of the Attorney General or Ministry of Justice over Mawere’s alleged assets.

I am aware of references to Mawere, especially among New Zimbabwe.com forumites, as an exceptional entrepreneur or a wizard in business engineering. Well, those references could be coming from people from outer space who know something that mortals on earth do not know. Otherwise, I for one have never been aware of Mawere’s exceptional prowess as a businessman or an investor. I do not know of a single asset that Mawere has ever acquired through his own labor or through an honest business dealing using his own assets or resources.

Zimbabwe has over the years seen some true entrepreneurs who have used the little they had whether by way of their knowledge or personal savings to build business empires or real enterprises to admire. Among them I would include Strive Masiyiwa who first had Retrofit Engineering and later Econet Wireless driven by Masiyiwa’s engineering background and business acumen; Nigel Chanakira whose Kingdom financial enterprises speak for themselves; James Makamba who built Telecel and Shingi Mutasa who is doing wonders at Cresta hotel group and TA Holdings in general. I have also admired the sterling business efforts of bankers like Mthuli Ncube, Leonard Nyemba, Enoch Kamushinda and hard workers like Ben Mucheche whose buses we have all been able to see and use.

Without any prejudice, I believe these are examples of true and honest Zimbabwean entrepreneurs among many others. Mawere is not one of them. Anyone who believes that, through his own personal resources as an entrepreneur, Mawere ever owned SMM or any of the various other companies in the pyramid chain he schemed needs to have his or her head examined by a competent psychiatrist.

In the fullness of time—and that does not appear to be too far away—the full story of how Mawere came to be associated with such assets as SMM to the point of claiming their sole ownership will be told. There are a number of people who are beginning to tell the story from Mawere’s former political principals in Zanu PF, to his former business associates and workers and to his former several spouses such as his ex wife from Kenya who has been singing the blues of late.

While I have no doubt that their accounts will differ in terms of detail, they are nevertheless all painting one common picture that many already know: that Mawere is an expert at corporate raiding and corporate looting which he mastered from his days at the IMF where he worked for several years. After leaving the IMF, Mawere shared that knowledge with some leading Zanu PF politicians starting with the late Edison Zvobgo whom he quickly ditched in favor of Emmerson Mnangagwa and Robert Mugabe himself to whom at one time in the early days between 1996 and 2000 he had unlimited presidential access. There are witnesses to all this and more.

The passage of time will show that Mawere used these and other high ranking Zanu PF connections to set up all kinds of pyramid schemes through which companies like SMM were acquired and through which he used false pretenses and empty promises to collect monies from Zimbabweans in the Diaspora, some of whom are still angry with him to this day, as part of the building of what he now calls his sole assets.

Therefore, I don’t think there can be any doubt that Mawere is an outstanding pyramid schemer with an exceptional talent for corporate raiding and looting sometimes with the help of the State through his political connections in Zanu PF. Mawere deserves an award for his corporate looting skills.

Also, I don’t think there can be any debate that pyramid scheming requires business engineering, creative accounting and playing dirty politics through the media and whisper campaigns. I remember Mawere coming to me in 2000 with files on the insurance industry in Zimbabwe which he wanted me to use to write negative articles in the press for a fee to smear Old Mutual whose assets he was then keen to loot as part of pyramid scheme building through corporate raiding. There are witnesses to this including some people who were then very close friends of Mawere but who now are not. I refused to cooperate and told Mawere that I write from my mind and conscience and not from anybody’s wallet. I still have those files and his notes on them and I had a chuckle going through them just before writing this response.

In Zimbabwe, a key strategy of pyramid schemers and corporate looters—like Mawere who use or rather abuse State resources under the political security of patronage from their political principals—is to setup an intricate network of shelf and offshore companies around the world. That network is then used to extract and export key natural resources, especially minerals such as asbestos in Mawere’s case, and other commodities from Zimbabwe. Within this network of pyramid schemers, companies trade with, or export to and import from, each other. It is a network of under invoicing, transfer pricing, money laundering and outright smuggling all of which is otherwise known as financial or business engineering.

When pyramid schemes flop, they collapse like a deck of cards. Cases in point are Enron in the United States, Goldenberg in Kenya and ENG in Zimbabwe. Also, because financial or business engineering is basically a glorified criminal activity, its political and business perpetrators often end up in jail and the American Enron, Kenyan Goldenberg and Zimbabwean ENG cases bring home this truth.

One does not have to be a robotic scientist to realize that Mawere’s alleged business empire was an ill-conceived pyramid scheme that has collapsed with devastating effects on Mawere who foolishly thought he had become a business mogul when he was a mere front or face of political gladiators from whom he tried to steal the loot and run away.

What I think is fair as poetic justice about the Mawere saga is that some of the looted assets, such as SMM, have been reclaimed by the State and are no longer in either Mawere’s hands or those of his Zanu PF political principals who had conspired with him in the first place. A future democratic government will inherit these assets for the nation.

Let me now turn to three specific issues that are personal to me arising from Mawere’s article.

First, he claims that he initial attracted my wrath immediately after I was appointed as a government minister in 2000 after he declined to advance me a personal loan of R300, 000.00 to finance a mortgage in South Africa because I refused to disclose a repayment plan. Significantly, he does not say what wrath it was because he is inventing it in the typical fashion of a paranoid attention seeker.

Otherwise it is indeed true that a mutual friend, Musekiwa Kumbula who first introduced me to Mawere in 1985, approached him on my behalf over the mortgage issue. There was no problem with the repayment plan at all. However Mawere, through Africa Resources who were going to advance the payment, wanted some security in foreign currency and I offered an equity investment in the United States but it was not possible to do and get the required paperwork within the very short time the mortgage financing in South Africa had to be finalized. In the circumstances, I had to find an alternative which did not require a collateral arrangement based on my equity investment in the United States and the matter ended there.

Second, Mawere cynically claims that the reason I wrote my article on the Budiriro by-election and the state of opposition politics in Zimbabwe is because I desperately want to be accommodated by the opposition. His cynicism is based on either ignorance or malice or outright stupidity or all of these things rolled into one. This is because everyone else knows that I am an elected opposition member of parliament who ran and won as an independent candidate against candidates from Zanu PF and the MDC in the March 2005 parliamentary elections.

As an elected opposition parliamentarian, I am already working with my colleagues in the opposition on a number of legislative and other issues of mutual interest or national concern in and outside parliament. It is therefore an oxymoron, and in fact rather silly, for Mawere to imagine that I should want to be accommodated into something that I already am part of. Some people are breathtakingly naïve.

If Mawere really read and understood my article on the Budiriro by-election and the state of opposition politics in Zimbabwe, he would have noticed that my plea and emphasis was that the opposition forces in Zimbabwe should forge a united front with reform minded elements in Zanu PF. I made it clear that simply uniting forces that are already in opposition would not be of strategic value in the current scheme of things given the prevailing national and international balance of social forces along with the opportunities created by Zanu PF’s succession conflicts and the economic meltdown.

Only a mad person would take this plea to mean I desperately want to be accommodated by the opposition. Ironically, while Mawere says I am desperate to be accommodated by the opposition, he also says in the same article that I have been working to create an opposition from within Zanu PF and that I want Mugabe to be succeeded by a non Zezuru from Zanu PF! This obvious and rather glaring contradiction can only come from a person like Mawere who does not know what he is writing about.

Third, and last on issues personal to me arising from Mawere’s article, he claims that “…before the entry of the Prof in Zanu PF, Mugabe did not have the balls to enact POSA and AIPPA”.

I honestly wonder whether this is a sick way of cleansing Mugabe from his atrocities or it is another example of Mawere’s ignorance, malice and outright stupidity all put together.

Can Mawere tell us where Mugabe got the balls to unleash the Gukurahundi atrocities in which more than 20,000 Zimbabweans in the Matabeleland and Midlands provinces were massacred and where many more lost their livelihoods and had their homes destroyed between 1980 and 1987? Was I in government then to give Mugabe the balls that Mawere is talking about?

In May last year Mugabe unleashed the so-called Operation Murambatsvina that destroyed the homes and livelihood of 18% of the population and internally displaced some 570,000 households. Did Mugabe get the balls to be that inhuman from me given that I was not in government then?

If Mawere was a serious person who thinks before he says things, I would accuse him of revisionism but that would be giving that word a bad meaning. Here is somebody who wants to be taken as a learned person who also happens to be a skilled business mogul foolishly trying to get us to believe that the dreadful provisions of POSA are new in Zimbabwe and that they were made possible by my entry into the Zanu PF government.

This kind of stuff sounds like the kind of rubbish that traditionally comes from a person like Bornwell Chakaodza who foolishly thinks people have forgotten that he used to work in the heart of Zanu PF’s propaganda machinery and that he was a hopeless editor of the Herald when the MDC was formed and during the run up to and campaign for the 2000 parliamentary elections when he routinely used to call the MDC all sorts of dirty names. Chakaodza, like Mawere, now wants the world to believe that he has always supported the MDC and that he has never called it silly and dirty names because that is allegedly the preserve or monopoly of people like me.

Perhaps Mawere is one of those who do not know that before POSA Mugabe used the notorious Rhodesian Law and Order Maintenance Act (LOMA) until the Supreme Court struck down key provisions of that dreadful Act to render it impotent? Can Mawere tell us where Mugabe got the balls to use LOMA virtually throughout the independence period when I was not a government minister?

In the same vein, can Mawere tell us where Mugabe got the balls to inherit the evil Rhodesian State of Emergency and to use it from 1980 to 1990, again when I was not a minister? Does Mawere know what the deadly impact of that state of emergency has been not only generally on governance in Zimbabwe but also and particularly on Mugabe’s commandist leadership style and his absolute political dependence on State security agencies?

Right now there is an evil bill before parliament that seeks to empower State security agencies to routinely snoop into and intercept telephone, email and other telecommunications of individuals and businesses, including and particularly those of journalists. The effects of this bill that is certain to be law are, to say the least, staggering. Can Mawere care to tell us where Mugabe has gotten the balls to bring such ominous law since I am not a minister?

I suppose by claiming that Mugabe did not have the balls to enact POSA and AIPPA before I became a minister, Mawere is opportunistically trying to join and profit from the ridiculous bandwagon of some opposition voices that have been making the same foolish allegations that I authored POSA. To this day, many rational people cannot understand how a minister of information can be claimed to have authored a security law such as POSA when there were ministers of national security, home affairs and defence.

While it is provocative, and maybe even interesting for some, to link me with POSA the undeniable fact is that Dumiso Dabengwa and John Nkomo know how and why POSA was drafted to replace LOMA because that was done under their watch as ministers of home affairs. But even so, Dabengwa and Nkomo cannot shoulder the responsibility as individuals because of the clear history of the making of security laws in Zimbabwe that precedes both of them.

As for AIPPA, it was indeed drafted under my watch as minister of information and I take full responsibility for that. It is a matter of the public record readily available through the Hansard which captures parliamentary debates and proceedings that the AIPPA law as it stands was drafted by agreement between Patrick Chinamasa and Welshman Ncube after the original draft had been thrown out by the parliamentary legal committee then chaired by the late Edison Zvobgo.

Furthermore, it is a matter of the same record that the AIPPA bill was unanimously supported by all Zanu PF and MDC parliamentarians present on the day during its third reading and was therefore passed without any opposition. Against this background, everyone else involved should own up and accept their responsibility or role over AIPPA. There has been too much opportunistic posturing on this matter as if people are not aware of the public record. The time for the opportunists to put up or shut up has come.

While I know that AIPPA has some shortcomings chief of which arises from the notoriously selective application of the law by Zimbabwe’s law enforcement agencies, I am also prepared to say to this day that having AIPPA is far better than having the brutal state of emergency that gave security forces a free hand to regulate the media in our country between 1980 and 1990. Since then the media in Zimbabwe has remained a security issue. There is no security briefing by State security agencies that is not media based and that is a tragedy. This explains why the Central Intelligence Organization (CIO) formed in Rhodesia has taken over two out of three remaining independent media houses. They even tried to takeover Mawere’s Tribune but found it to be too useless.

I believe the foregoing fully responds to all the key issues raised by Mawere in his New Zimbabwe.com article, “My problem with Jonathan Moyo”. As I mentioned at the beginning, this is a response I would have rather not made for the reasons I gave. I am however grateful to have had the opportunity to respond.