Jonathan Moyo off the mark, Mnangagwa cannot abuse money he never received

Newsday columnist Conway Tutani described former Higher Education Minister Jonathan Moyo as a spinner of yarns, fabulist, fibster and falsifier is his column yesterday about denialists.

And Moyo seemed to have lived that that description when he tweeted that his arch-enemy Emmerson Mnangagwa might abuse the $2.5 million that was donated by the United States government for Cyclone Idai.

“Mnangagwa, calling the collapsing local RTGS$ currency “ma RTG”, excited like a toddler who’s had a lollipop for the first time, talking about receiving USD 2.5 million from the US Ambassador in Harare for Cyclone Idai victims. This has raised fears the money will just disappear!” he tweeted.

There was a media frenzy over Mnangagwa’s so-called trashing of his own currency but what was lost in the melee is that US aid as well as British aid does not go through the Zimbabwe government, even during the inclusive government when the then Movement for Democratic Change secretary-general Tendai Biti was Finance Minister.

Though Biti was voted the best finance minister in Africa, the British did not trust him to handle their aid money.

The United States embassy was quite clear that the $2.5 million that was being given to the people of Zimbabwe by its charity arm, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), would be channelled through the World Food Programme, not through the Zimbabwe government.

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