‘Why didn’t you Call me before Defaming us?’ angry Gideon Gono to Alex Magaisa

If there’s, probably, one person who is an angry man right now, it can only be former Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) Governor, Dr Gideon Gono!

Hardly 24 hours after political commentator Alex Magaisa had unearthed the corruption typifying the Government’s Farm Mechanisation Programme undertaken between 2007 and 2008 in an exclusive piece of investigative journalism, Gono who was also fingered in the scandal, has reached out to Magaisa via WhatsApp.

Magaisa’s Big Saturday Read (BSR) fingered past and current Zanu officials, including President Emmerson Mnangagwa, amongst individuals who received varying amounts of money through the farm mechanisation programmes, which they never paid back.

“My brother, your article of today is so unlike you to make such damning conclusions without checking and clarifying with the one man (alive) who was in charge of the RBZ-driven Farm Mechanisation Programme 2007/8,” Gono charged in a string of messages sent to Magaisa, seen by the state media.

“I thought that since I’m alive and surely capable of enlightening anyone with interest in matters that happened under my watch … a simple phone call or WhatsApp to verify the authenticity and background to the issues of your interest would have served everyone from all the wrong interpretations and erroneous, defamatory conclusions contained in your BSR.

“You are usually very careful with your facts and I wonder what happened here? Anyway, I hope that you will have the courage to tell your readers the facts of the matter as I shall put them down and apologise for tarnishing their images before getting all the facts that allow anyone to form their own opinions,” Gono wrote to Magaisa on WhatsApp.

However, Magaisa was yet to respond to the former central bank boss as of last night.

In a statement Saturday evening, Gono had questionably contended that the farm mechanisation programme was not a loan scheme and beneficiaries were not required to pay for the equipment they received.

state media
Additional Reporting: Zwnews