ZIMBABWE — As President Robert Mugabe and Prime Minister-designate Morgan Tsvangirai continue in a stalemate over the sharing of cabinet ministries, virtually all government operations are either at a halt or limited to very low levels, making the country craw along like a ship without a rudder.

 

Investigations by ZimDaily reveal that only a few of Mugabe’s previous cabinet members are still involved in affairs of the ministries they worked in and there is no budget still available for operations of government departments.

 

 

Most former ministers, although still occupying office and enjoying all the packages now spend much of their time attending to personal businesses and projects and at most only resurfacing for Zanu-PF ceremonies and events.

Only a few, notably former deputy minister of Information, Bright Matonga, former Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa and former Local Government and National Housing minister Ignatius Chombo are committing themselves to operations of the Mugabe military junta currently running Zimbabwe to mainly play the roles of spokespersons as well as fight to prevent the functioning of rural and urban councils now controlled mainly by the MDC, in the case of Chombo.

Our investigations revealed that virtually all ministries and government departments exhausted their budgets long back, and have for a long time been operating on what a top official described as “handouts” from the treasury. It is understood that the treasury has resorted to handing out funds as per requests by government departments or ministries but at most giving regrets due to the unavailability of funds.

We established that Mugabe now no longer holds the regular cabinet meetings, previously on every Tuesday but instead consults with the few former ministers as well as members of the military junta.

“There are no longer cabinet meetings and Mugabe summons individuals as and when he feels like it and depending what in specific he would be wanting to deal with,” a former government minister said. “The truth of the matter is most of us have not been doing duty due to the uncertainty as well as basically lack of funds, we exhausted our budgets long back. We therefore have not been having any programmes running.”

This former minister revealed that he now spends much of his time attending to his private business and deals.

ZimDaily’s investigations at the ministry of Health and Child Welfare revealed that the minister, David Parirenyatwa and his deputy, Edwin Muguti now only attend to some small events and commemorations yet most of health advocacy training and capacitating programmes have come to a halt.

One of the programmes that have been affected is the delivery of Anti-Retro Virals to HIV/AIDS victims, with reports there have been close to five months without any ARVs being made available by the ministry.

Another example is the ministry of Education, Sports and Culture where there is noone even pretending to be in charge after former minister Aenias Chigwedere became a chief when he lost the March parliamentary elections.

 

There is total confusion over this year’s public examinations following probably the worst season ever in terms of students attending lessons. There are reports the beleaguered Zimbabwe Schools Examination Council (ZIMSEC) is considering scrapping off final Grade Seven, O Level and A Level exams.

 

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