Tagwirei a victim of patriotic allegiance
Nevanji Munyaradzi Chiondegwa
Recent spirited attempts to cast the country’s highly successful Command Agriculture in bad light Is not a coincidence. It is a well calculated assault on the country’s efforts at sanctions busting as the program achieved food self sufficiency for the first time in 2016, a feat that exposed a lie that black farmers are incapable.
The concerted scrutiny has little to do with fighting and exposing corruption but its mainly to fight the land reform success and prevent a revolution in Africa.
There has always been a fight to keep the black man down and shackled. There is the Western view that the black man cannot get himself out of the pit they have dug for us.
Zimbabwe is one country they had cleverly and keenly created such an impression that we still have some among us who believe we cannot build on our own and we cannot do without the white man. This kind of thinking has been grounds for shooting down and attacking any pro-black and majority policies. Any policies to empower the people, there are those who have pushed the line of thought that we as Africans can not achieve it.
The fact that now it is black quibbling among us who continue to push this Western view of our people means that unfortunately, the white world successfully mentally disempowered us. The ‘Nyika inovakwa navene vayo’ mantra is attacked the most by our own people.
The worst we have seen is the targeted and unrelenting attack on a man called Kudakwashe Tagwirei. The media-shy petroleum mogul has been since his entrance as a partner to government for Agricultural production via his Sakunda Holdings been under fire.
Tagwirei put up funds to sponsor the then First Republic Agricultural flagship Command Agriculture to increase maize production. He put up the funds necessary for government to enrol maize production on a large scale.
However, that did not go unnoticed by those whose wish has been and will always be to hold the black man back and keep him down. Tagwirei defied the odds. He was then a man with little known history, no known political backing, no fancy white man linked to him, no big bank nor even a big name. But suddenly, he was on the front page of every newspaper and on television screens. He is a recluse and therefore most only knew his name but never the man himself.
Yet, he had become the single most important person in the country. He had come up with a rescue package for an economy teetering on the brink. His involvement, first in procuring fuel and then funding Agriculture became rescue packages for the country and therefore propped up the government and became a hindrance against regime change machinations. He supported the land reform and made it a big success, much to the chagrin of the erstwhile naysayers.
The attack on Command Agriculture has been so well-coordinated and made to sound as if there was looting and corruption on a grand scale to justify even the placing on sanctions of Sakunda Holdings and Kudakwashe Tagwirei and yet the actual issue is its an attack on land reform!
Tagwirei and his Sakunda Holdings did the unforgivable. Most of us do not understand that banks like Barclays and Standard Chartered grew from lending money to among other things colonial white farmers. Lending to farmers was big business to them. It allowed them to control the Economy or the means of production as it were. For them, the land reform meant death of business.
Agriculture needs funding and as such, to block the success of the land reform, the European Union and USA and other Western nations including Canada, Australia and New Zealand placed Zimbabwe under sanctions.
Among the sanctioned were banks involved in funding Agriculture like Agribank and ZB Bank. The idea was to starve the Land Reform Programme which Zimbabwe had embarked on of funding. This then would discourage other African countries from embarking on Land Reform.
But Tagwirei through Sakunda Holdings came in with a funding mechanism, making the Land Reform a success and ensuring that Zimbabwe attains food sustainability, lifting it out of the basket case status and charting an Economic recovery trajectory
Then the allegations started and Tagwirei became a target of many an unsubstantiated claims of looting on a grand scale. The allegations made against the simple man would make one think he was a criminal mastermind pulling off the biggest heist in the world.
He was accused of looting the Treasury as it were with some outlandish figures thrown around that defy all odds. The question has always remained; how much did Sakunda Holdings get?
According to Hopewell Chin’ono, a political activist for Nelson Chamisa’s CCC who based his allegations on the 2021 Sentry Report, Sakunda got $6 billion from Treasury Bills for Command Agriculture. In the same year, Sentry Report then revised their figure down to $3.4 billion in a supplementary report and Bloomberg, an internationally acclaimed news agency ran with the same figure.
However, in the 2022 Sentry Report, the figure has climbed further down to $1.4 billion illustrating that they are not sure of the correct number and yet have always maintained they had impeccable sources.
They lampooned Tagwirei using fictitious figures plucked from thin air and nothing else.
So the question becomes; what is the truth and what can be ascertained?
Recently, the opposition led Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee (Pac), in its report said total payments to Sakunda for 2017 was $378,739,319.75 and for 2018 it was $235,954,143.85.
It also pointed out that several other companies had also benefited from the Special Cabinet Authority to participate in improving agriculture.
Part of the report read, “Total payments in 2017 and 2018 for presidential scheme is $573,392,887.33 paid to FSG, – $392,853,180.22, to Quton – $19,753,638.00, to Pedstock – $7,538,441.69, to Cottco – $30,898,812.65, Sakunda – $51,205,481.25, Sable Chemicals – $4,900,00; Seedco – $40,150,000.00; Valley Seeds – $8,700,000; Windmill – $17,800,000; and ZFC – $17,750,000.”
The PAC said the government-issued TBs were paid to at least 10 companies contracted for Command Agriculture and the Presidential Inputs Support Scheme. The committee also said the issuance of TBs to Sakunda was above board.
So one then wonders where Sentry Report, Daily Maverick, Bloomberg, Hopewell Chin’ono and Africa Research Consult among other publications who have published on Sakunda get $6 billion, $3.4 billion or $1.3 billion from?
It’s clear the intention has never been fighting corruption but merely to attack the Land Reform and since Tagwirei funded the success of the land reform, he had to be taught a lesson. As a business person, his reputation has been battered and worse placing him under sanctions meant lost business.
It requires a good eye to see. To expect Tagwirei to not get a profit from his investment in Agriculture is akin to calling him a fool which the man certainly is not.
Tagwirei is just a victim first of his success and loyalty to his country, thus his patriotism!
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