BY DESMOND CHINGARANDE

The trial of businessman Wicknell Chivayo, who is facing bribery allegations after he allegedly transferred $10 000 into former ZPC board chairperson Stanley Kazhanje’s bank account to influence him not to cancel a power contract won by his company was postponed again to allow the State to summon Kazhanje as a co-accused.

Chivayo, who appeared before magistrate Hosea Mujaya, was remanded to May 24 for trial.

Kazhanje is already on trial on allegations of not declaring his interests to his superior after he was given a contract by Chivayo’s company, Intratrek Zimbabwe, which had won the ZPC tender to do consultation work on a 100 Megawatt Solar Panel Station project.

Allegations are that sometime in 2013, ZPC called for bids for the construction of the Gwanda Solar Project and Chivayo, through his company, Intratrek Zimbabwe, responded.

The State alleges on October 22, 2015 the ZPC board held a meeting in which Kazhanje was the board chairperson and during the board meeting, he directed the ZPC management to proceed in signing a contract with Intratrek Zimbabwe on the Gwanda Solar project.

It is alleged on October 23, the contract was signed between ZPC management and Intratrek Zimbabwe, with Intratrek Zimbabwe not providing a bank guarantee.

The State alleges on January 21, 2016 Chivayo, who well-knew Kazhanje was the ZPC board chairperson and had actually deliberated in favour of awarding the contract to Intratrek Zimbabwe, transferred $10 000 bribe money into Kazhanje’s personal Barclays Bank account.

It is alleged after the payment of $10 000, Kazhanje later influenced the ZPC board to pass resolutions in favour of the accused in connection with the ZPC contract.
Brian Vito appeared for the State.

By Stephen Chadenga

Gweru City Council has moved to revamp its beer concern, Go-Beer Breweries, after unbundling it into three business units expected to be operational by the end of the year, a senior council official has revealed.

Acting finance director Owen Masimba said the three business units had since been registered as subsidiary companies.

“The first stage of unbundling of former Go-Beer company into strategic business units has been completed with the registration of three companies,” Masimba said during the first quarter budget review meeting last week.

“The three (companies) are Go-Beer Farming Private Limited, Progress Private Limited and Progress Manufacturing Private Limited. All the strategic business units are to be operationalised during this year.”

In 2017, council announced that it was looking at partnering a private investor to revive Go-Beer Breweries, which closed five years ago after facing viability challenges.

Since the country’s economy was dollarised in 2009, the cash-strapped council has to date bankrolled the beer concern to the tune of $2 208 914, money channelled towards payment of former Go-Beer creditors and employees, who had sued the council.

The beer concern also lost equipment and cattle, which were attached to cover retrenchment costs, although council last year, however, managed to pay packages for all the retrenched workers.

Masimba said council would develop a world-class vegetable market to accommodate the growing number of informal traders in the city.

He said the local authority had since signed a memorandum of understanding with a private partner and the project is expected to start in the second quarter of the year.

BY BBC

Boeing has admitted that it knew about a problem with its 737 Max jets a year before the aircraft was involved in two fatal accidents, but took no action.

The firm said it had inadvertently made an alarm feature optional instead of standard, but insisted that this did not jeopardise flight safety.

All 737 Max planes were grounded in March after an Ethiopian Airlines flight crashed, killing 157 people.

Five months earlier, 189 people were killed in a Lion Air crash.

The worldwide fleet of 737 Max planes totalled 387 aircraft at the time of the grounding.

The feature at issue is known as the Angle of Attack (AOA) Disagree alert and was designed to let pilots know when two different sensors were reporting conflicting data.

The planemaker said it had intended to provide the feature as standard, but did not realise until deliveries had begun that it was only available if airlines purchased an optional indicator.

It said it had intended to deal with the problem in a later software update.

Boeing maintained that the software problem “did not adversely impact airplane safety or operation”.

Analysis

Theo Leggett, business correspondent

Boeing has admitted it was aware of a flaw on board the 737 Max months before the first accident, involving a Lion Air jet off the coast of Indonesia.

But was that flaw a factor in that accident? Would a working “AOA Disagree” alert actually have made any difference?

It’s highly unlikely.

All it would have told the pilots was that the two angle-of-attack sensors aboard the plane were giving very different readings.

This mattered, because the MCAS system, which has been implicated in the crash, relied on data from a single sensor. A fault in that sensor may well have been the trigger for the crash.

But the pilots were not even aware that MCAS existed. It was a system designed to improve the handling of the aircraft and to operate in the background.

So the knowledge that a sensor had failed would probably not have helped. In fact, it might even have increased confusion in the cockpit.

Nevertheless, this will add to the pressure on Boeing – because despite being aware of an issue with the 737 Max, it initially chose not to inform airlines.

Boeing insists the AOA Disagree alert was not necessary for safe flight.

But critics will be asking whether the company was complacent – and whether there is anything else which the company has chosen not to pass on to its customers, affecting this type of aircraft or its other models.

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The US Federal Aviation Administration told Reuters news agency that Boeing had not informed it of the software issue until November 2018, a month after the Lion Air crash.

The FAA said the issue was “low risk”, but said Boeing could have helped to “eliminate possible confusion” by letting it know earlier.

The flight angle of the plane has been identified as a factor in the disasters. Boeing has said that in both fatal crashes, erroneous AOA data was fed to the jet’s Manoeuvring Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), an anti-stall system which has come under scrutiny since the crashes.

Boeing is developing new software for MCAS.

BY AFRICANEWS

South Africa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC) will kick-start the economy and deal with corruption, it vowed on Sunday, three days before elections at which its overwhelming majority faces its sternest test since the party rose to power.

Less than 30 km (18.6 miles) away, the country’s second-biggest opposition party, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), challenged the ANC’s governance record and promised a tougher stance on corruption and economic policies to target racial inequality.

Though the ANC has won each parliamentary election since the transition from apartheid in 1994, recent opinion polls predict that it will bleed support to opposition coalitions that have gained ground as the ANC has been dogged by political scandal and a flagging economy.

We are determined that those found guilty of corruption or involvement in state capture will not be allowed to occupy positions of responsibility, either in the ANC, in parliament or in government.

President Cyril Ramaphosa, who took over from scandal-plagued Jacob Zuma as ANC leader in December 2017, told about 70,000 supporters packed into Johannesburg’s Ellis Park Stadium on Sunday that the party would punish members guilty of stealing public money.

A judicial corruption inquiry that began in 2018 has heard chilling evidence of how top officials took bribes from local and multinational companies in exchange for lucrative contracts from state firms.

“We are determined that those found guilty of corruption or involvement in state capture will not be allowed to occupy positions of responsibility, either in the ANC, in parliament or in government,” Ramaphosa said at Sunday’s rally.

“The era of impunity is over. We are now entering the era of accountability.”

The torrent of allegations has hit ANC support, especially in urban areas.

The EFF, formed by former ANC youth leader Julius Malema in 2013, has built its agenda on highlighting state graft and championing radical economic reforms the ANC has avoided, such as mine nationalisation and land expropriation without compensation.

“The reign of thieves must fall, the reign of Ramaphosa must fall,” Malema chanted at a rally of about 40,000 supporters in Johannesburg township Soweto. “The EFF doesn’t have tolerance for corruption.”

Three opinion polls in recent weeks show the ANC’s support ranging between 51 and 61 percent, compared with the 62 percent it won in 2014.

Kingmaker

The EFF won 10 percent of the vote in 2014 national elections. In local elections in 2016 it captured 12 percent, allowing it to play kingmaker in urban regions where neither of the top two parties managed to get past 50 percent.

Analysts said it was telling that the ANC, as well as the two largest opposition parties – the Democratic Alliance (DA) and EFF – held their final campaign rallies in Gauteng.

Despite being the province with the smallest land area, Gauteng generates more than a third of South Africa’s gross domestic product (GDP) and is the most populous province with a population of 14.3 million.

In 2016 local polls the ANC lost control of the three largest metropolitan municipalities – economic hub Johannesburg, administrative capital Pretoria, both in Gauteng, and Nelson Mandela Bay in the eastern province.

Ramaphosa said the ANC would revive economic growth and ease unemployment, which sits at more than 27 percent, by hitting an investment target of 1.4 trillion rand ($100 billion) and limiting policy uncertainty.

“It has never been done before in South Africa and only the ANC will be able to mobilise these kind of resources,” Ramaphosa said.

South Africa’s economic growth has slowed sharply in recent years, averaging about 2 percent in the past decade, while medium-term GDP is seen around 1 percent, well below the 4-5 percent needed to dent rising poverty and joblessness.

Malema said the EFF would grow the economy in favour of black Africans and the youth by doubling child grants, offering free university education and nationalising key industries.

“Political freedom without economic freedom is meaningless,” Malema said, referring to wealth and income inequality that has remained racially skewed and the slow progress of the ANC’s policies of affirmative action and macroeconomic orthodoxy.

“We are not fighting white people. We are fighting to eat from the same dinner table,” Malema said.

BY BBC

Forty-one people died after a Russian plane made an emergency landing and burst into flames just after takeoff from Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport.

Dramatic video shows passengers using emergency exit slides to escape the burning Aeroflot aircraft.

Survivors suggest the plane was struck by lightning, but Russia’s national carrier said only that it returned to the airport for technical reasons.

Two children are among the dead. The jet had 73 passengers and five crew.

Initial reports suggested the plane had landed on fire, but sources quoted by Russian news agency Interfax said the jet caught fire after a very bumpy landing.

The aircraft landed with full fuel tanks because the crew lost contact with air traffic controllers and decided it was too dangerous to dump fuel over Moscow, Interfax added.

“There are 37 survivors – 33 passengers and four members of the crew,” said Yelena Markovskaya, an official involved in the investigation of the crash.

A flight attendant was also reportedly killed in the incident. Five people are in hospital. One witness said it was a “miracle” anyone escaped.

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has ordered a special committee to investigate the disaster.

What happened to the plane?

The aircraft, a Sukhoi Superjet-100, left the airport at 18:02 local time (15:02 GMT), bound for Murmansk.

Its crew sent a distress signal when “malfunctions” occurred in bad weather shortly after take-off.

After making an emergency landing at the airport, the plane’s engines caught fire on the runway, Aeroflot said, adding that the crew “did everything to save the passengers”.

One passenger who survived the crash, Petr Egorov, was quoted by the Komsomolskaya Pravda daily newspaper as saying that the flight “had just taken off and the aircraft was hit by lightning”, adding: “The landing was rough – I almost passed out from fear.”

BY BBC

Stock markets in China and Europe have been hit after US President Donald Trump threatened new tariffs on China, putting a trade deal in doubt.

He said on Twitter the US would more than double tariffs on $200bn (£152bn) of Chinese goods on Friday and would introduce fresh tariffs.

Recent comments had suggested both sides were nearing a trade deal.

A Chinese delegation is preparing to travel to Washington for negotiations aimed at ending the trade war.

It is not clear whether Beijing’s top trade negotiator Vice-Premier Liu He will be part of those negotiations that are due to resume on Wednesday.

“We are currently working on understanding the situation,” foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said during a regular news briefing.

Earlier, US media reported that Beijing was considering cancelling the talks. Reports said the Chinese were due to send a 100-person delegation to the negotiations.

In China, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index closed 2.9% lower, while the Shanghai Composite tumbled 5.6%.

European stock markets fell in early trading, with the main Paris and Frankfurt indexes down more than 2% by mid-morning. Particularly hard hit were the makers of cars, car parts and steel.

US stock futures pointed to a lower open on Wall Street. Markets in London are closed for a bank holiday.

Michael Hirson, Asia director at Eurasia Group, said: “His [Mr Trump’s] move injects major uncertainty into negotiations, which now face a rising risk of an extended impasse – perhaps even through the US presidential election.”

What did Mr Trump say?

The US president tweeted that tariffs of 10% on certain goods would rise to 25% on Friday, and $325bn of untaxed goods could face 25% duties “shortly”.

“The Trade Deal with China continues, but too slowly, as they attempt to renegotiate. No!” he tweeted.

After imposing duties on billions of dollars worth of one another’s goods last year, the US and China have been negotiating and in recent weeks, appeared to be close to striking a trade deal.

Last week US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin described talks held in Beijing as “productive”.

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White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow told Fox News that the president’s tweet was a warning.

“The president is, I think, issuing a warning here, that, you know, we bent over backwards earlier, we suspended the 25% tariff to 10 and then we’ve left it there.

“That may not be forever if the talks don’t work out,” he said.

Is the deal over?

So far, the US has imposed tariffs on $250bn of Chinese goods, having accused the country of unfair trade practices.

Beijing hit back with duties on $110bn of US goods, blaming the US for starting “the largest trade war in economic history”.

Workers wait to unload shipping containers on a port in Qingdao in ChinaGetty Images
The US is the biggest export market for Chinese goods
According to reports, in recent days US officials have become frustrated by China seeking to row back on earlier commitments made over a deal.

Sticking points have included how to enforce a deal, whether and how fast to roll back tariffs already imposed and issues around intellectual property protection.

Tom Orlik, chief economist at Bloomberg Economics, said: “It’s possible talks are breaking down, with China offering insufficient concessions, and an increase in tariffs a genuine prospect.

“More likely, in our view, is that this renewed threat is an attempt to extract a few more minor concessions in the final days of talks.”

What will the tariff rise affect?

Mr Trump’s latest move will raise duties on more than 5,000 products made by Chinese producers, ranging from chemicals to textiles and consumer goods.

The US president originally imposed a 10% tariff on these goods in September that was due to rise in January, but postponed this as negotiations advanced.

However, both US and international firms have said they are being harmed by the trade war.

Fears about a further escalation caused a slump in world stock markets towards the end of last year.

The IMF has warned a full-blown trade war would weaken the global economy.

develop me Tapiwa Gomo

Finance minister Mthuli Ncube seems to be coming to terms with the realities of the institution he has accepted to serve.

I am sure by now he has learnt that Zimbabwe’s lack of economic growth is not because there is a shortage of good ideas and resources. There is a depraved attitude that permeates from the political leadership that continues to undermine progress.

The level of selfishness and greed stinks. His opinion editorial in The Herald of May 3 speaks volumes of some of his frustrations, though he chose to be frugal in pin-pointing the real
stumbling blocks to achieving his reforms.

His attempt to paint a positive economic picture based on the implementation of the Transitional Stabilisation Programme is undermined by his attribution of the slow progress or lack,
therefore, to natural disasters, external economic factors and what he terms “restricted access to international financial markets”, which in my view means sanctions. These factors are
beyond his government’s control and yet he calls for patience and discipline among suffering and frustrated Zimbabwe. What happened to working with what you have in order to achieve
what you want?

I guess Ncube is aware that the real impediments to economic growth are some of his counterparts who reportedly demand huge kickbacks from potential investors. And the economy cannot
grow if those responsible for facilitating investment are throwing spanners in the works. He also knows that it is the same people who have the mastered the art of political
indiscipline that have created uncertainty in the country to the extent that even local investors do not have confidence to keep their money in the country.

Corruption, too, continues to bleed the country of its resources, diminishing chances of economic revival. This is where discipline is required than asking people, who have endured two
decades of hunger and suffering, to continue to be patient and disciplined. No matter how excellent one is in economics, you cannot rule out the basic fact that it is economic and
political confidence plus opportunities that attract investment. And investment breeds industrialisation, which is the engine of economic growth.

Without these, any talk of creating employment opportunities and economic growth is a white lie. Some investors consider Zimbabwe a high risk investment climate because the political
and economic environment does not inspire confidence, which is a threat to investment and their capital. Investors prefer to put their money where they are guaranteed of present and
long term stability, which is the precursor for returns.

We can faff about patience and discipline among the suffering Zimbabweans, when the real problem is our politicians and the environment they have created, particularly those in power
today. Revelations from some of the parliamentary portfolio committees’ investigations on the mismanagement of parastatals point to the involvement of senior politicians behind the looting.

This is evident from the arrogance with which some of the senior management of those parastatals have approached these committees. Some of them have admitted before the parliamentary
portfolio committees that they cannot respond to certain questions because that would implicate senior people. And that is supposed to be right.

It is that growing impunity by those in public service, whose duty is to protect and manage national resources with modesty, accountability and transparency, that has eroded confidence.

There is a serious lack of honesty on matters related to corruption. In public arenas, politicians sound determined to weed out corruption and yet their threats amount to nothing.

Speaking in his special Independence Day interview with the State broadcaster, President Emmerson Mnangagwa admitted that, he “now realise(s) that corruption is deep-rooted. I thought that by pronouncing that let’s fight corruption those who are corrupt will fear and stop; it’s not like that. It’s so rooted that you have to fight it from A to Z. (In) most systems, structures and institutions, there is an element of corruption.”

He added that there is corruption within the police force and the prosecuting authority. It is good that the President is aware, but sad that even with that level of detail at his disposal, no one in these institutions has been arrested. In addition, he did not assure the nation that he will deal with these issues decisively.

Maybe corruption is a hot potato. If not, why is it that we do not see the authorities acting when serious cases of corruption are raised? Most of the high-profile corruption cases have been acquitted and the reason for this is that, as some would argue, convictions would implicate the powerful behind the accused. Similarly, cases raised by the various parliamentary portfolio committees have not been pursued further for unknown reasons.

Political activists are, meanwhile, traced and apprehended easily and sent to jail for expressing an opposing view, while those who sabotage the economy and cause poverty are left to walk freely.

These situations are enough evidence to suggest that the threats we hear from those who lead us are nothing, but political grandstanding, despite that corruption continues to undermine their own efforts to rebuild the economy and country.

Once there is political will to weed out corruption by the political leadership, the fight against corruption will be won, Ncube’s ideas will see the light of the day and investment will grow — opening up employment opportunities. That day will mark the birth of a new Zimbabwe ready to unleash its potential giving hope to its millions of disparate citizens.