Mazowe \u2014 Bargain hunters yesterday morning thronged former president Robert Mugabe\u2019s dairy farm to buy equipment and other farming implements at a private auction.<\/p>\n
Gushungo Holdings\u2019 dairy enterprise, trading as Alpha and Omega, is on a recapitalisation drive, according to its human resources manager Farai Jemwa.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are not shutting down, but simply clearing out old equipment such as tractors and other junk so that we are able to do our job properly. There is a lot of junk around here, hence this auction,\u201d said Jemwa as he showed TimesLIVE new tractors parked outside a shed.<\/p>\n
Buyers in their hundreds were looming outside the farm before the auction could go ahead. Bidding for the property was pegged at US$2 000 or RTGS $5 000 for entry cards.<\/p>\n
An employee at the farm said selling the equipment was the best option since repairing it had become costly because most of it had become obsolete.<\/p>\n
While Mugabe\u2019s Gushungo Holdings is a private company, Ricky Mukonza, a political analyst, said there was a perception that the wealth owned by Mugabe and many other current and former Zanu PF politicians was ill-gotten.<\/p>\n
Mukonza pointed out that during Mugabe\u2019s era there was rampant abuse of public resources for private gain, which would justify the general perception that what may appear to be their private property in actual fact belonged to the public.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis conflation between private assets of politicians in positions of power is a cause for concern. What could be a solution going forward is for public officials and politicians to declare their privately-owned assets for accountability purposes,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Maxwell Saungweme, a development analyst, said whatever operational problems were bedevilling Mugabe\u2019s company proved that black empowerment anchored on abuse of political power, violation of property rights, theft and plunder was not sustainable, especially when entrepreneurship skills were not developed or imparted.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is a typical case of a business empire built on a mirage of political power fizzling out and fading when political power departs. It\u2019s now clear who was sustaining and bankrolling that business venture \u2014 the taxpayer,\u201d said Saungweme. \u2014 Timeslive<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mazowe \u2014 Bargain hunters yesterday morning thronged former president Robert Mugabe\u2019s dairy farm to buy equipment and other farming implements at a private auction. Gushungo Holdings\u2019 dairy enterprise, trading as Alpha and Omega, is on a recapitalisation drive, according to its human resources manager Farai Jemwa. \u201cWe are not shutting down, but simply clearing out […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":4481,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,8,12],"tags":[38,174,28,149],"class_list":{"0":"post-8729","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-all-news","8":"category-head-lines","9":"category-policy","10":"tag-zanu-pf","11":"tag-finance","12":"tag-mugabe","13":"tag-president"},"yoast_head":"\n