HARARE – Non-governmental organisations (NGO) have asked Zimbabwe’s cash-strapped power-sharing government to return money seized by controversial central bank governor Gideon Gono and allegedly used to prop up President Robert Mugabe’s old government.

The National Association of NGOs (NANGO) said it had written to Finance Minister Tendai Biti demanding that he should outline a repayment plan when he announces a mid-term national budget statement to Parliament on Thursday.

“The government should highlight the government’s strategy in trying to return the money that it owes the local NGOs whose funds were taken by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) in 2008,” the NANGO said in a statement shown to ZimOnline yesterday.

Gono last year seized millions of dollars in hard currency belonging to NGOs including more than US$7 million that belonged to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria that the RBZ was holding in trust.

The central bank chief allegedly used the funds to shore up Mugabe and his ZANU PF party, including – according to some accounts – paying for Mugabe’s violent campaign to retain the presidency in a bloody second round presidential election in June 2008. 

The veteran leader had lost the first round ballot in March of the same year to then opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai but who failed to muster the number of votes required to avoid a second round run-off poll.

Mugabe won the second ballot as sole candidate after Tsvangirai withdrew from the race citing state-sponsored violence against his supporters that he said had killed more than 200 members of his MDC party and displaced thousands of others.   

The two rivals have since formed a unity government to end the political crisis ignited by last year’s disputed election and to try to end Zimbabwe’s long running recession.

The NANGO said returning money grabbed from its members – all of which had been provided by foreign funders – would help mend relations between the Harare authorities and civic society as well as foreign donors.

“(Returning) the money is critical for the organisations and also for the mending of relations between the government and the donors,” it said.

Biti was not immediately available for comment on the matter.

But the Finance Minister is on record as saying the unity government is bankrupt after years of recession, while rich Western nations are reluctant to provide direct financial support to the government insisting on more reforms first including at the central bank. – ZimOnline