Zimbabweans in the diaspora feel cheated by Home Link scheme

By Tererai Karimakwenda
20 January 2006

The Zimbabwean newspaper has revealed that several Zimbabweans in the diaspora feel that the Reserve Bank's Home Link project to build houses back home may have been a scam. The scheme attracted many Zimbabweans in exile last year because they could send money home through the Reserve Bank, which would then release the local equivalent to participating businessmen for the construction of homes. But now many who responded believe they were cheated because the Reserve Bank has failed to deliver.
They told The Zimbabwean the houses are not in Borrowdale as promised but miles away in Domboshawa, and the bricks are cheap home-made ones that crumble. The paper had not been able to get the other side by the time it went to print, but publisher Wilf Mbanga finally caught up with the businessman at the centre of the controversy and he denied the accusations. Desperate to raise foreign currency the Reserve Bank sent a team around the world in 2005 urging Zimbabweans to use legal channels to send money home. Many refused to even attend the seminars insisting they did not want to support the Mugabe regime, but others saw it as a way to build a home they could go back to.
According to The Zimbabwean businessman Masimba Msipa, son of the Midlands governor Cephas Msipa, is being blamed for failing to deliver after he took people’s hard-earned foreign currency. The paper spoke to Tendai Mauchaza, who has sent money home under the scheme for nine months, but says plans for his Spanish villa were changed without his knowledge and the house has not been finished. Mauchaza has still not received the keys nor the title-deeds which were promised within six months. He told The Zimbabwean a relative who inspected the property said that the bricks being used were sub-standard home-made bricks which have crumbled in the rain. Msipa told Mbanga on Friday the charges were not true and promised to explain what is happening in next week’s edition of the paper.
Other alleged victims chose to remain anonymous. One of them told The Zimbabwean he had paid £388 a month for 6 months. But he had walked away from the scheme due to constant problems. He lost everything he had invested.