It was reported this week that some thieves broke into the offices of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) and got away with a couple of laptops.
According to the police: “The Zimbabwe Republic Police confirms that it has received a report of an alleged break-in at Zimbabwe Electoral Commission offices. Investigations are now underway. More details to be released in due course.”
The reports say one of the stolen laptops belongs to chief elections officer Utloile Silaigwana, a man who has been running our alleged elections since the Pioneer Column arrived at Fort Salisbury. The other belonged to his secretary. Officials are not saying what else was stolen.
However, Muckraker can confirm that among the items stolen were the results of the upcoming election.
Dirty, dirty Harare
Harare is set for a massive clean-up, after the country’s owner decided it was too dirty. President Emmerson Mnangagwa has decided that the people who are supposed to be cleaning it up have no idea what they are doing. So, because his government is well known around the world for doing a good job, he is giving that job to his government.
Mnangagwa said the government had “noted with great concern the deplorable state of cleanliness of the Harare Metropolitan Province, characterised among other things by litter and waste dumps accumulating in business and residential areas of the province, open burning of garbage and indiscriminate illegal dumping of solid waste and littering.”
Because of the opposition-led council’s failure, “a state of disaster exists in that province with effect from the promulgation of this declaration,” the President said in a statutory instrument. The nation waits to hear when we will have a statutory instrument declaring the whole country as “a state of disaster” and calling on someone else to fix it.
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While all of you wait, Muckraker, being a wise citizen, is ready to lodge a tender to make money from the clean-up exercise. After all, this is what it’s really about – tenders. The clever ones are already roaming the Munhumutapa offices with their tender documents – which we all know comprise leather bags full of US dollar notes.
Unpatriotic police officer
Remember that unpatriotic police officer who dared to do his job and got in trouble with a deputy minister? Well, if reports are to be believed, the chap is learning his lesson very well.
It is reported that the officer has gone AWOL after he was transferred from his station in Charandura, Chirumhanzu, to Shurugwi. He had leaked a conversation in which Barbra Rwodzi, the deputy minister of tourism, berated him for daring to arrest one of her party minions for breaking the law.
According to reports, a warrant of arrest has been issued after the man decided he was too unpatriotic to report for duty.
“Be advised that the above-mentioned member went Away Without Official Leave (AWOL) on 24 July 2023 and has not reported for duty to date. Efforts to locate him at his known address were in vain. If located arrest, detain and advise this LOC escort,” according to a police notice reported in the press.
This is a reminder to all cops. They should be reminded of one cardinal rule of being a policeman – it is illegal to arrest a Zanu PF official in this country.
Nyathi missed memo
Speaking of the police, someone should have a word with the ZRP spokesman, Paul Nyathi.
At a rally this week, our owner raged at what he called violence by the opposition CCC in Shurugwi.
He instructed the police to find the perpetrators without delay.
“I heard CCC burnt houses in Shurugwi. We don’t want that. I have instructed the police to track them down,” Mnangagwa said.
“They need to tell us who told them to burn the houses, then we also ask those that sent them where they got those instructions from.”
Yet, our ZRP spokesman dared to tell us that the arsonists were, in fact, “not aligned to any political party”. What is more, the suspects “had already been accounted for”, and their names were announced.
Clearly, someone forgot to send the memo to Nyathi, reminding him that any random criminal act committed between now and the election is to be attributed to the Western-sponsored CCC. They should talk to him quickly before he loses his job or joins that other cop from Chirumhanzu on a rusting desk somewhere in Shurugwi.
Jobs, jobs, jobs
Recently, a debate was held in which Zanu PF and opposition officials were asked to debate elections. The reeling party was represented by one Taurai Kandishaya, who is trying to be the Member of Parliament for Epworth North.
He was asked where the over two million jobs promised by his party had evaporated to. If the people who asked him that question thought they had cornered him, they were in for a surprise. The man told them that his party has, in fact, surpassed that number of new jobs. Never mind that the Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency says over half of our young people are out of work and out of school. They are probably funded by the West.
Kandishaya brought out the calculator and told his detractors: “The government bought 800 buses from Belarus, one bus requires a driver and a conductor that is 1600 jobs created. These buses are manned by inspectors, that is one inspector plus an assistant for every 10 buses. There were also mechanics who were hired to repair these buses so that is even more jobs.”
All this, he said, means we have created more jobs than what we promised. What a mathematics genius we have here.
For those who may not know this Kandishaya fellow, the last time he made headlines, he was threatening to travel to Murehwa to steal goats from a journalist. Obviously, running off with goats is one of the many jobs created under his party.
Mphoko's case
The entire nation was relieved to see former deputy owner Phelekezela Mphoko in fine health. The man appeared at a rally in Nkayi last weekend.
The last time he was on a stage, he was begging our former owner, Robert Mugabe, to appoint Grace Mugabe as the nation’s Vice President. This was in celebration of Mnangagwa’s firing from government for lacking “probity”. Before that, Mphoko released a very important statement in which he denied claims that one can use ice cream to poison others.
Naturally, some people are wondering what brought Mphoko out of the woodwork. Some detractors will point out the fact that his son is out on bail on rape charges. Others will tell us that the man may no longer be as comfortable as he was when he stayed for ages at Rainbow Towers, and is desperate for a little help from his former nemesis. All these would be lies used by his enemies.
It is obvious that the man simply could not resist taking the brand-new Ford Ranger Wildtrak that he recently got from the government for a spin.
Russian guns
African leaders were last week camped in St Petersburg, Russia, for the Russia-Africa Summit hosted by Vladimir Putin. Combined, Africa has a bigger GDP than Russia, but our leaders were there begging for breadcrumbs. It was a massive success.
Just when people were saying that our owner has a habit of travelling to foreign trips and returning with nothing, he shamed his naysayers.
The nation congratulates our leader. He did not come home empty-handed. He is bringing home a second-hand helicopter and photos of himself testing Russian guns. This is all you can ask for from a leader.
