OUTSPOKEN Independent Member of Parliament Temba Mliswa, Monday dropped a bombshell accusing National Assembly Speaker Jacob Mudenda of seletive application of the law as well as protecting corrupt lawmakers that he said were in the habit of demanding bribes from parastatals.
In a short video that revealed a verbal altercation among MPs in the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Mines that Mliswa exploded into a rant accusing Chegutu West lawmaker Dexter Nduna of siphoning $11 million from Zimbabwe National Roads Administration (Zinara). Mliswa questioned why Nduna has been allowed to continue as chairperson of a parliamentary committee while Mudenda was quick to establish an internal team to investigate what he described as “media reports of corruption” against the Norton MP.
“Nduna, a thief who stole $11 million from Zinara is given a committee to chair, because he used to eat with the Speaker (Mudenda),” said Mliswa.
After the unrestrained rant in which Mliswa claims the committee on Mines “is captured because some of us like you (MP) Zhou and Svuure you got tickets from Cape Town. You can go on and record. This committee is captured.”
The man Mliswa identifies as Zhou and who seemed to have been recording the altercation retorted: “And you chair you also got a ticket.”
Mliswa later told journalists confirmed that Nduna was being implicated in the Zinara $11 million scandal which he claimed Mudenda had ignored.
“With us only a newspaper article then a committee has already been set, it is an agenda that they have, the committee has to be independent and with people who do not fear to ask questions like me. I have never stolen and I have never taken a bribe,” said Mliswa adding state media is being used in Zanu PF factional fights.
Mliswa and members of his Mines Committee have been accused of demanding a $400 000 bribe from investor James Ross Goddard of JRG Contracting (Pvt) Ltd. Mliswa has since resigned as committee chairperson in order to allow Privileges Committee to investigate allegations made against him in the media. Mliswa is not new to accusing people of taking bribes, he recently accused Vice President Kembo Mohadi and is now facing a $10 million lawsuit.
