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Lloyd Gumbo Senior Reporter
The Affirmative Action Group has rapped Government parastatals and enterprises for snubbing indigenous Zimbabweans when awarding tenders notwithstanding that they have the capacity.

AAG president Mr Chamu Chiwanza (pictured) said some of the reasons heads of these parastatals preferred foreigners was because they wanted kickbacks.

He said this while addressing delegates who attended the AAG national conference in Harare yesterday.

Mr Chiwanza said it was important that Government parastatals and enterprises deliberately awarded tenders to locals with capacity.

“Chief executives in parastatals, and this I hope His Excellency gets, which Government are they serving?,” queried Mr Chiwanza.

“Which master are they serving? Our parastatals have become enemies of our Government who they are supposed to be serving. We see them every day wining and dining with white people.

“Even tenders that local people can do, they prefer dealing with white people and we know the reason is because they want kickbacks.”

Mr Chiwanza said while some of the Government-owned companies pretended to be transparently calling for tenders, the majority of them were fixed.

He implored Government to closely monitor some of these parastatals to ensure that they operated transparently in words and deeds.

“All these adverts that we see being flighted in the press, it’s all cosmetic. We know they would have already done the logistics to give the tenders to their people and they would have received their kickbacks.

“We are saying to Government, we are watching you very closely especially on the tenders for road construction. We want to see locals empowered because they have the capacity,” said Mr Chiwanza.

He said while his organisation supported Zanu-PF, they would not allow politicians to arm-twist them so that they get into factional politics.

Mr Chiwanza said they supported President Mugabe whom they wanted to be Life President given that he had the energy and intellectual capacity to continue leading the country.

He said the Head of State and Government and Commander-in-Chief of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces was an empowerment icon who still had a lot to do in empowering indigenous Zimbabweans.

AAG founding president Dr Philip Chiyangwa said it was important that indigenous business people supported Zimbabweans because it was the only party that wanted to empower its people.

“There are three degrees of freedom for affirmative action in the context of our African culture. You should get your politics right if you want things to work out for you.

“The second degree of freedom for affirmative action, is culture, ubuntu. You should learn to respect. You cannot go about insulting President Mugabe and expect the system to smile? You should also respect traditional leaders.

“The third and final thesis on the degrees of freedom for affirmative action is the law, with upheavals of course. At times when you want to change the law to give advantage to the masses, you will find that there are others who fight hard to make sure that law isn’t passed,” said Dr Chiyangwa.