How The Presidential Heifer Program for Youths Was Abused

By Staff Reporter

A Presidential heifer distribution program was launched at a farm belonging to Douglas Kwande, a businessman domiciled in Gweru and a close associate of HE.

This was in Kwekwe district in February 2022.
The launch was attended by ZANUPF bigwigs from all over the Country and the Youth leadership, Provincial leaderships from all the 10 Provinces.
At this occasion healthy heifer cattle were paraded in front of the delegates and they were pedigree heifers.

Each Provincial Youth leadership was to get 80 herd to be distributed in their various districts after identifying the the beneficiaries in those districts. This was a revolving distribution program.

It took almost 2 years for the youths to access these heifers and when they did, it was found out that the original heifers had been swapped with rural undernourished heifers.

A far cry from the heifers presented to them at the launch of the program.

Put under duress the various youth leadership collected those undernourished heifers though many never reached their destination as they died along the way.

Investigations to verify what happened to the original heifers revealed the following:

The lengthy period of not distributing the heifers to the youths was to allow Douglas Kwande, July Moyo in consultation with HE to buy cheaper rural heifers to swap with the original healthy pedigree heifers. These rural heifers cost far much cheaper than the pedigree heifers.

A farm was acquired by the first family in the lowveld through the office of the Minister of State for Masvingo Province Ezra Chadzamira .

Douglas Kwenda then approached an indigenous cattle breeder based In Somabhula to receive the original heifers at his farm and turn it into a holding area before they could move to their final destination in the lowveld at the first family’s acquired farm.

The name of the Indigenous farmer is Victor Mhanga.

Those heifers were later moved to the lowveld and were transported there by Mhanga who has been charged with the duty of managing these heifers. He was given a Toyota 4X4 Truck to enable him to be traveling between Gweru and the lowveld.

A good number of these heifers were taken by Kwande whilst the bulk went to the lowveld .

Kwande and HE have since bought pedigree bulls to start a cattle breeding program using ill gotten cattle which was earmarked for the youths .

Observation
Any presidential program which comes up benefits the President in person as that allows him to syphone state resources for his own use by purporting to be empowering people yet he would be empowering himself.