BULAWAYO – President Emmerson Mnangagwa has rolled out a succession of empowerment schemes pitched as economic relief for war veterans, vendors and rural communities, as his loyalists push to amend the constitution and extend his second and final term by two years to keep him in power until 2030. But mounting evidence suggests the programmes are being implemented with little accountability, creating fertile ground for abuse and large-scale looting, often carried out in the president’s name and increasingly under the political cover of the controversial term-extension campaign. One such initiative, the War Veterans Mechanisation Programme, was launched with much fanfare, promising to deliver 3,000 tractors to veterans of the 1970s liberation war.
In September last year, the first batch of 100 imported tractors arrived in Harare. Each province was allocated 10 tractors, with assurances that more consignments would follow. The scheme is being financed through AFC Bank, with government covering half the cost while qualifying war veterans pay the balance following a means assessment.
What followed, however, exposed the dysfunction and opacity that critics say now define Mnangagwa-era “empowerment”. Eventually, war veterans approached the National Railways of Zimbabwe (NRZ), which agreed to transport the machinery from Harare at no cost. But when the veterans arrived to collect the tractors, some were missing.
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“We were given 100 tractors and we were supposed to receive 10 tractors per province, but unfortunately the three provinces gathered here did not receive those tractors as per President Mnangagwa’s wish,” Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans Association national chairperson Cephas Ncube told a gathering in Bulawayo days before Christmas. “Matabeleland North received five tractors, Matabeleland South five tractors and Bulawayo received seven tractors. Of the seven tractors for Bulawayo, something happened, four tractors ended up missing,” he said.
Ncube revealed he was forced to personally intervene to recover the missing tractors. “I had to chase those four tractors until we recovered them to make seven again, a very sad situation. The president gives us things, but greed takes over.
It pains me,” he said. Ncube stopped short of naming those responsible, but his frustration mirrors a growing national unease: that the proliferation of presidential schemes has opened vast opportunities for self-enrichment, with little evidence of punishment for abuse. “The president launched the borehole scheme but it was mismanaged. He launched the interest-free loan scheme and it was also mismanaged,” Ncube said.
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