Thousands of scotch carts that were acquired by the ruling party from various local and international companies are being distributed to village heads in the rural areas while chiefs are also getting grinding mills in a clear vote-buying move ahead of the March 2008 parliamentary and Presidential elections.

ZanuPF Buying Votes For Upcoming Elections With Scotch Carts

The Zimbabwe Gazette visited one of the hand over ceremonies in Mount Darwin and the heads were openly told that they were supposed to tell people to vote for the ruling party.

Speaking at the event Mt Darwin South Member of Parliament Saviour Kasukuwere said the village heads should make sure that the enemy does not ‘infiltrate’ the constituency.

“We have taken this move to show you that we have the people at heart. This is part of the mechanisation programme aimed at empowering the blacks to use their land profitably. The MDC and their White masters want to take the land from you. They want to colonize us once again and make us slaves in our own country.

“We say ‘No’ to such advances. We are independent and we have our land. Now the government is giving us machinery and inputs to work our land and produce yields.

“Go and tell the people that the ruling party has them at heart. They should not listen to traitors,” said Kasukuwere the applause of hundreds of village heads that were gathered at Mutungagore Business Centre.

Each village head went away with a scotch-cart that Kasukuwere described as property for villagers.

The Zimbabwe Gazette is reliably informed that billions of dollars were blown on acquiring these ‘campaign’ scotch carts.

Close sources indicate a Harare engineering firm, Edisan Group of companies is manufacturing 10 000 carts whilst some undisclosed numbers are being manufactured by Brown Engineering, McDeman, among other companies. Another unidentified firm has also been courted to supply the party with 6000 carts whilst other carts are being manufactured at the Harare Polytechnic College

Sources at Edisan say the boss Edward Sim, who is a filthy rich dude (owns a private jet) has already been paid an undisclosed huge amount to do the job and is importing material to be used from neighbouring South Africa. The manufacturing of the carts have since been made the major project by the firm.

Currently Zimbabwe is experiencing severe shortage of food especially basic commodities such as mealie-meal, bread, milk and cooking oil. Many locals have gone for up to 5 months now without even tasting bread which is only available on the black market at an exorbitant cost of $500 000 a loaf.

"Last week, two haulage trucks arrived at the company from South Africa. One off-loaded brand new tires whilst another one off-loaded tins of paint to be used in making the scotch carts," said a source who preferred anonymity.

"The company has also recently hired new staff so as to cope up with the work. There are also rumors that we might not be breaking for the festive season holiday because Zanu PF wants all the carts before the beginning of next year," he said.

Edisan group of companies is a well-known engineering firm specializing in the mass production of heavy duty and light metal products including repairs and also manufacturing of plastic products. The company is also linked to doing a lot of Zanu PF jobs as it used to manufacture number plates for the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP).

The firm also supplied chairs for the Harare International Conference Centre (HICC) and the President's office. Musician, Prince Tendai also used to frequent the firm as he would come to collect Zanu PF metal badges.
Zanu-PF has a tendency of using maize seed and fertilizers to buy voters in the rural areas. The party has always used some blackmail in addition to using military force to have people cast votes for it. Village heads in form of chiefs are used to coerce villagers to vote for the party candidates or have no maize or mealie-meal given to that person, family or village.

The source says soon after the company ventured into this project, employees noticed some magnificent changes. Suddenly, they are now given transport allowances in cash and on a weekly basis.

"Work shifts which were recently banned were re-introduced as some people now come to work overnight," he added.

The grinding mills that were given to chiefs last month were reportedly acquired from a Chinese manufacturing company.

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