Why Bennett will never be deputy agric minister

Written by Chenjerai Hove

Monday, 26 October 2009 10:48

Zimbabweans must be wondering why President Robert Mugabe will never swear-in beleaguered mainstream MDC treasurer-general, Roy Bennett, as deputy Minister of Agriculture. (Pictured: Minister Joseph Made, President Mugabe’s private farm manager.)
While the reasons are quite clear to some, they remain rather obscure to others. But what everyone seems to know, including Bennett himself, is that he will never occupy his designated office. In the complex network of reasons, some are obvious while others are obscured by Zanu-PF and its propaganda machinery. I have a clear picture of the scenario both from experience, simple observation and also from instinct.
Bennett had a scuffle with Justice Minister, Patrick Chinamasa, in which he shoved the Minister down onto the carpeted floors of Parliament. Bennett went to jail for it, undergoing harsh prison conditions in far away Mutoko where it was intended to isolate him from his family.
Normally when a prisoner has served his sentence, the case is closed. But Bennett’s case has been different. Chinamasa and those who dismally tried to intervene and rescue him from the parliamentary humiliation are still angry. Had they succeeded in their bid to punch Bennett and floor him, perhaps the former Chipinge farmer would have been forgiven by now.
It is an open secret that Bennett was a strong supporter and a funder of Zanu (PF) at some point. It is alleged that he became frustrated by how Zanu (PF) chiefs squandered his donations to the party at the expense of the projects he wanted to fund for his area. He became a popular politician in the area due to his community involvement in projects which he funded to benefit his workers and the surrounding community.

Bennett’s defection
Zanu (PF) did not take kindly to Bennett’s defection to the new MDC party and waited for the opportunity to punish him. Bennett’s farm was illegally seized and his property vandalized in broad daylight. I wonder what has become of the farm now.
Mugabe knows that Bennett is a grieving farmer, and if sworn-in, he would have the right to go round the country inspecting farming activities on the stolen farms, including his own. Some new farmers such as Joseph Chinotimba, have confessed to ‘farming people’ instead of crops on those disused farms where lavish bush now abounds.
Somebody would have to explain what ‘farming people’ means as the phrase seems loaded with imagery too ghastly to contemplate. As it is, the Ministry of Agriculture is one of the most abused of all in Zimbabwe. The current Minister of Agriculture, Joseph Made, has no proven record of successful farming. As former head of the Agricultural and Rural Development Authority(ARDA), Made made a big mess of the parastatal over many years.
Many of the state-owned company’s estates now lie in ruins due to the incompetence of senior staff in the Authority, but also due to the traditional nepotistic practices of the ARDA administration. It is a well-known fact that ARDA is one parastatal run as a monopoly by one ethnic group. At one time, nearly all staff in ARDA head office, from director down to floor cleaners, was allegedly of Manyika origin. One director even used a small ARDA aircraft to fly his father close to the village. Not to be outdone Dr Made once inspected the national maize crop while flying over the farms. He immediately declared a forthcoming ‘bumper harvest.’ The starvation that followed his misguided declaration was not enough to cause his instant dismissal, however!

Dismally failed ARDA
Bennett knows about this and would probably fight to reverse that tradition in the dismally failed ARDA. As a serious practicing farmer, Bennett knows clearly the mission of ARDA as a parastatal established by government for the sole purpose of producing food in abundance and not to involve itself in political games far removed from food production.
Most ARDA estates now lie idle. Little production takes place there. The man responsible for the decay was none other than Made who was nevertheless rewarded with appointment to the post of Minister of Agriculture.
If Bennett is sworn-in President Mugabe would have to deal with a situation in which the not-so-successful minister is deputized by a highly competent? and successful farmer. In the turmoil of the chaotic land grab, ARDA has been completely privatized. Farms are grabbed as ARDA estates and then ARDA workers and machinery are brought in to work the land which in fact belongs to some minister.
The President himself has never denied stories that his own farms have benefited from ARDA inputs and management by none other than Made himself. So we now have ARDA Gushungo Dairy Estates, as it were. There are similar reports of a number of ARDA Mutasa estates in Manicaland. ARDA employees will no doubt one day narrate the full story to a nation anxious to know where else ARDA has been plundered and by whom.
But I have a strong feeling that the purpose of using ARDA as a source of personal wealth is based on a simple strategy which assumes Zimbabweans are so stupid they cannot unravel hidden agendas. The ARDA strategy is like this - should the political game change, the land grabbers can always protest: “This is not my farm. It is an ARDA farm. I was only renting it from ARDA. I am not a multiple farm owner.”

Mugabe’s farm manager
Having worked on farms all his life, Bennett knows how ARDA should operate and would not tolerate the abuse of the state enterprises for personal gain as is happening now. Bennett would probably be uncomfortable with the idea of the Minister of Agriculture being reduced to being President Mugabe’s farm manager. Pictures of Dr Made wearing overalls, while on duty on one of President Mugabe’s farms have been published.
There are reports that prisoners as well as soldiers and other state employees are forced to work on the farms of the Zanu-PF bigwigs. Mugabe knows Bennett will obviously seek to put a stop to that. The Ministry of Agriculture has become the epicentre of Zimbabwe’s national corruption.
Using the patronage system perfected by Mugabe, the ministry no longer serves the national interest. Those in the field say that even the director of veterinary services has become President Mugabe’s personal vet who visits and tends to his livestock.
It is likely that the state-of-the-art dairy equipment at Gushungo Dairy Estates was imported through funds made available by Gideon Gono at the central bank under the guise of the farm mechanization programme whose hidden agenda was clearly to distribute sophisticated equipment to the farms of Zanu-PF leaders.

Loyal and ignorant
Meanwhile peasant farmers received donkey carts and ox-drawn ploughs. President Mugabe’s appointees are usually carefully selected solely on the basis of their loyalty as well as being totally ignorant of the business of their ministries. That way he can easily manipulate them.
The last Zanu-PF Finance Minister seemingly had no idea what a national budget was all about. Poor man, he was so intimidated by Gideon Gono he could not stop him from usurping the functions of the Ministry of Finance as well as those of the Ministry of Agriculture.
The late Witness Mangwende (May his soul rest in eternal peace) once woke up one day to be told he was now Minister of Agriculture. Journalists joked that the only logical reason why he was allocated that particular ministry was that he was the only one without a farm.
While it can be argued that the Ministries of Defence and Mines have been transformed into other centres of corruption and looting, the Ministry of Agriculture remains the one where it is easiest to amass illegal wealth without too much sweat or risk.
All that the Zanu-PF politicians need to do is hire a few thugs to sell someone else’s tobacco, maize, oranges or mangoes. In these circumstances Bennett will obviously continue to be locked up, released, tried and locked up again in a plan well orchestrated and executed by the Attorney-General whose interests and priorities are well-known.

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