By May 2018, Gumbo was singing a different tune.
Citing changed circumstances following Mugabe’s ouster and his replacement by President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who vowed to re-engage the international community and dispossessed farmers, Gumbo told Parliament that Zim Airways was indeed a government entity and that the state had paid $41 million towards the $70 million purchase price for the second hand Malaysian aircraft.
Gumbo defended his subterfuge, saying he had come up with an elaborate ruse to wrong-foot creditors who had threatened to impound the planes. The creditors included the Swiss-German von Pezold family, which won a $65 million international arbitration award for the seizure of its prime farm and forestry land in 2005.
Whatever justification Gumbo has for the well calculated deceit, it is hard to imagine a government official, anywhere in the world, emerging with any credibility from the Zim Airways debacle.
As if that was not enough, more Zim Airways controversy was to follow Gumbo. It emerged that the fledgling company had set up office at a property owned by the minister’s niece, Mavis Gumbo. Mavis Gumbo is a former employee of the Premier Service Medical Aid Society (PSMAS) where she, along with other executives, drew huge salaries and allowances which bled the health funder dry.
After initially denying that Zim Airways was renting a property from her, Mavis Gumbo conceded, but argued that a realtor had set up the deal in a commercial coincidence. The realtor she cited, Letbill Realty, ceased operations in 2017, but its director denied its involvement in the Zim Airways deal. Letbill had dealt with Mavis Gumbo many years back in an abortive deal to sell one of her Harare properties.
The minister was, however, less circumspect.
“Mavis is my niece. She has her house and she wanted to lease it out through estate agents. The Zim Airways guys stumbled on the house without her or my knowledge and they liked it. It was a purely business deal,” Gumbo told the weekly Standard newspaper.
In an interview with ZiFM, Gumbo said he saw nothing wrong with the Zim Airways office arrangement:
“I don’t think anybody who is a Gumbo or related to a Gumbo or related to somebody in any position will be barred to do any business because there is a relationship. It’s not by me, it doesn’t benefit me, it’s her house, it’s being rented out, it’s taken from estate agents. What’s wrong with that?”
In 2012, with Nicholas Goche as Transport Minister, Univern was awarded an $8 million contract to supply 40 graders to ZINARA. The company’s suppliers decided to include a front-dozing plate on the earthmovers, which is used as a snow-plow.
Earlier this year, Gumbo said there was nothing to be done anymore about the rotten deal. The government just needed to forget and smile.
“It is true that some of the graders are not for road-making at all. They are for snow grading. But we have them, we have to use them. They were bought by us, that is corruption between us, that is what we did, that is how we failed. Those who bought them erred. But let us forget about it. Let us move forward,” he said. – newZWire
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