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Anti-graft crusade or succession purge?
Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
Extracted from Weekly Media Update 2004-13
Monday March 29th - Sunday April 4th 2004

The publicity over government's anti-graft campaign assumed a new dimension in a week that saw government gazette an Anti-Corruption Bill seeking to establish a commission to fight graft (The Herald, 29/3).

The Herald and Chronicle (1/4) revealed that ZANU-PF's supreme decision-making body, the politburo, had appointed a committee to investigate companies owned by the ruling party. However, the papers did not go beyond the official pronouncement, merely presenting this news as part of government's genuine determination to stamp out corruption. For example, they did not question why the ruling party should now suddenly investigate its companies whose operations have been shrouded in secrecy for two decades. Neither did they furnish readers with the full list of the companies, their backgrounds or directorship.

A whiff of this information appeared in The Sunday Mirror (4/4), which revealed, for the first time, the identities of the directors in ZANU-PF's holding company, ZIDCO, as Jayant Joshi, and his brother Manharlal Chunibal. The two were said to have fled the country, following the politburo's decision to probe the businesses. The paper suggested that the probe might also suck in Speaker of Parliament Emmerson Mnangagwa, who, as the ruling party's former finance secretary "was instrumental in weaving the intricate web of ZANU PF's business interests locally and regionally". Mnangagwa was reported to have worked closely with Joshi. But the paper failed to view this development in the context of Mugabe's succession, especially in view of previous media reports alleging intense lobbying by some ZANU PF bigwigs designed to derail Mnangagwa's ascendancy to the helm of the party.

This angle only found currency in the international media. For instance, Business Day (6/4) reported some ruling party officials as questioning the composition of the committee investigating the companies saying it was targeted at Mnangagwa whom Mugabe apparently now wants eliminated from the succession topic.

SW Radio Africa (29/3) presented similar views during its analysis of other cases of corruption, in which Mnangagwa has been implicated. As if to counter such moves, Mnangagwa recently appointed the embattled self-proclaimed black empowerment guru, Philip Chiyangwa, to chair the parliamentary portfolio committee on anti-corruption and anti-monopolies (Zimbabwe Independent, 2/4).

Interestingly, media reports have previously linked Chiyangwa to a camp that supports Mnangagwa's candidacy for the presidency of the ruling party. Besides, Chiyangwa is currently on bail facing charges of obstructing the course of justice in a fraud case involving ENG Asset Management directors, accused of swindling their clients of $61 billion. But none of the media fully explored this development or related it neatly to the current in-house fighting within ZANU PF, sparked by the scramble for Mugabe's position.

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