Zimbabwe: starting from scratch
Updated on 24 March 2009
As Zimbabwe's MDC MPs and municipal officials put their feet under desks occupied by Zanu PF for the last 29 years we can only imagine what is being uncovered.
Possibly because of the fragile state of the unity government or perhaps under the guise of "national healing", not much is being exposed on a national/ministerial level yet.
With the country in such a bankrupt state and because law and order has been politically selective for so long, everyone knows that looting on a grand scale has been underway.
Worst of all for the Zanu PF officials is the fact that Zimbabwe's collapse over the last decade has been meticulously documented with affidavits, court papers, witness testimonies and hundreds of thousands of eye witness reports giving the names, government or political positions, photographs, even car makes and number plates of the perpetrators.
Basically, the ordinary people of Zimbabwe want accountability and punishment because they know exactly 'whodunit'.
Basically, the ordinary people of Zimbabwe want accountability and punishment because they know exactly 'whodunit'.
One little fish got caught last week. The state controlled media have been having a field day about what a Reserve Bank official had pilfered during one of the banks numerous handouts of farm equipment to beneficiaries of the country's land seizures.
Included in the hidden booty uncovered at three different premises were: 41 tonnes of fertilizer, 30 tonnes of soya bean, 11 generators, 10 motorbikes, one grinding mill, and three New Holland tractors.
With all this brand new farm equipment stored in urban homes in Harare it is little wonder that Zimbabwe is starving and Zimbabweans are surviving almost entirely on imported food and international aid.
Nine years after the start of the land redistribution exercise, most farms stand derelict and weed infested, and well over 60 per cent of the population are eating world food aid.
Unbelievably, even as the new government tries to get the country working again, a new wave of invasions on the few remaining commercial farms has got underway just as we approach harvesting time.
It is a familiar case of people reaping what they did not sow, something we've become all too familiar with. It is beyond belief that these land seizures are being conducted by the most senior people in Zimbabwe's new unity government.
At municipal level there are also more questions than answers about what has been going on, as the new MDC Mayors and Councillors are finding out.
Senator Edna Madzongwe, president of the Senate, is trying to take over a highly productive citrus farm whose owner has the protection of an SADC Tribunal ruling.
How ordinary Zimbabweans, let alone fellow legislators and Senators, can be expected to show any respect to Mrs Madzongwe or her position is a complete mystery. The fact that the new unity government has apparently done nothing to sanction the Senator is a very bad sign.
The photograph of Senator Madzongwe sitting next to Mrs Mugabe at the President's 85th birthday party recently is explanation enough for most people of who is really still in charge in Zimbabwe.
At municipal level there are also more questions than answers about what has been going on, as the new MDC Mayors and Councillors are finding out. 
An overgrown car park in Zimbabwe.
Challenged about an entire town having had no water for 6 days recently, the new Mayor said there were no chemicals to use, despite recent purchases.
This wasn't the only problem. As the Mayor explained to residents: "Of the eight water pumps belonging to the town, only one is to be found. The rest have disappeared."
The Mayor said that lawyers had been hired and investigations were underway to ascertain where the water pumps and other tools and equipment belonging to the ratepayers had gone to.
When residents demanded that the outgoing Zanu PF Mayor be held to account, they were told that the man in question could not be found.
In desperation the new MDC Mayor had even resorted to engaging the help of the CIO (secret Police) to try and track down the ex Mayor and all the town's missing assets.
Challenged about huge potholes in the roads, blocked sewer pipes and uncut roadside grass, the incoming MDC Council said sewage rods had disappeared and that the entire municipality was having to virtually start from scratch.
