ED Regime Looters Preying On Hopewell Chin’ono Investment, Says Magaisa

UK-based Zimbabwean academic and lawyer, Alex Tawanda Magaisa, has weighed in on the alleged attempts by President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s Zanu PF Government to grab the private investment of rabble-rousing activist and award-winning investigative journalist, Hopewell Chin’ono.

According to the University of Kent law lecturer, the Harare administration envisages leaving Chin’ono’s Murehwa investment aground, much in the same manner they pillaged Edwin Moyo’s then flourishing Kondozi farm during the reign of deposed late Zimbabwean dictator, Robert Mugabe.

Read the full text of Magaisa’s thread posted on Twitter:

I’ve read the distress call from journalist @daddyhope arising from the Zimbabwean regime’s attempt to grab his private investment at his rural home. As usual, the regime uses surrogates to create false narratives to justify the confiscation & plunder of private property.

For experienced Zimbabwe watchers, looting and plundering is a regime favourite. Edwin Moyo’s flourishing Kondozi Estate was run aground by regime looters. Business people live in fear of losing their investments which is worse if they reveal their political preferences.

A businessman who was suspected of funding the opposition found himself facing an unreasonable and vindictive tax bill from ZIMRA. Many more are choked into silence if ever they are suspected of siding with or helping the opposition.

The regime’s elements spent years mocking Hopewell for his Boer goat project, calling him names like “Mbudziyadhura”. But these infantile tactics didn’t work. He carried on & kept holding the regime to account. Now they have shamelessly decided to grab the project from him.

This is the same regime that goes around the world claiming “Zimbabwe is open for business”. Apparently not open for business to Zimbabweans like Hopewell! How do you convince a foreigner that your business is safe when a citizen’s business can be violated in this manner?

The regime likes to blame everyone for the country’s ongoing economic calamity. But if truth be told, it is the principal author of this disaster. Today it is Hopewell’s property, but yesterday it was someone else’s and tomorrow it will be another Zimbabwean’s property.

As with all dictatorships, the irony is their repression produces heroes out of ordinary people. Far from silencing Hopewell, its crude strategies are constructing a heroic figure out of the relentless persecution. The more it persecutes him, the greater a figure they create.

Zwnews