Letter: Chiefs must be apolitical

Letters
Chiefs should never interfere in the political choices of their subjects.

Dear President

YOUR Excellency, how can you sink so low to the extent of attempting to force traditional leaders to commandeer their subjects to vote for Zanu PF?

Forcing traditional leaders to order their subjects to vote for Zanu PF has been the government’s way of imposing itself on the people since the days of the late former President Robert Mugabe.

This tradition has continued under your leadership when the people of Zimbabwe had hoped democracy would prevail. The recent remarks by Chiefs Council president Chief Fortune Charumbira in the video which has gone viral in which he tells chiefs to command their subjects to vote for the ruling party Zanu PF is a violation of our Constitution.

Chiefs have been pampered with state-of-the-art cars and other items in a bid to bribe them to use whatever means they can employ to campaign for Zanu PF, but good chiefs know that they are not supposed to be used in that manner. A good example being Chief Mathema, who has come in the open and said chiefs should be apolitical as seen in the video shared on social media recently

Hats off to Chief Mathema and many other who uphold the values of chieftainship. Chiefs should never interfere in the political choices of their subjects.

Your Excellency, be a leader and do the right thing and stop using traditional leaders to campaign for you and your party. Allow Zimbabweans to exercise their constitutional right to vote for whoever they think is the rightful person to lead the country.

Don’t you feel ashamed when footage of you smiling at Charumbira as he tells chiefs to campaign for you are shared with your peers across Southern African Development Community and the African Union states, and with the international community at large?-Kennedy Kaitano

Citizens must take action, help stop plunder

THE Zimbabwe Coalition on Debt and Development (Zimcodd) is a socioeconomic justice coalition established in February 2000 to facilitate citizens’ involvement in making public policy more pro-people and pro-poor.

As such, citizen agency is a crucial indicator to our cause.

Following the strengths of the #HowFar campaign (2021) which asked duty bearers key accountability questions, we are launching the next phase, the #TakeAction campaign and the CitizenApp.

The #TakeAction campaign is a call to action for all citizens to raise their agency through demanding transparency and accountability.

Beyond asking duty bearers to account (#HowFar), the current campaign is a call to action for citizens to go the extra mile.

Citizens can utilise the CitizenApp to upload reports in video, picture and narrative formats.

Zimbabwe continues to face serious public accountability and transparency questions seen through the corruption scandals that break every day.

These cases occur at all tiers of governance and life, including central and local government.

This persistent loss of public resources has caused citizen’s lives to get harder as service delivery becomes poorer and the economic indicators continue to fall.

The brunt of this crisis is faced by the poor and vulnerable!

The CitizenApp and #TakeAction campaign require all stakeholders to come together to develop a culture of accountability and integrity.

This is to say, citizens, civil society, the media and, indeed, government can accrue value through the application.

Citizens can upload reports, journalists can gather evidence for investigative pieces while public institutions such as the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission and Zimbabwe Republic Police can investigate the reported cases.

The application receives reports on mismanagement of public resources, service delivery issues, corruption etc.

The application goes further to provide citizens with utility services such as job posts, the Maintenance in Action programme.

Further to that, we are calling on all stakeholders seeking to plug into the application with their services to reach out.-Zimcodd

Youth must emancipate themselves from bondage

IT is a fact that the late former President Robert Mugabe brought extreme damage to the country during his days in power. This is why we opposed him without fear during his days because we didn’t agree with his misgovernance.

We had the courage to confront him while he was alive. When we did that, some people didn’t take the same courage for reasons best known to themselves.

Now that he is dead, some of us now appear to be more courageous in lashing out at him as he lies motionless.

We are now confronted with a new era, an era comprising of a living tyrant who needs the same effort and action from us to deal with him.

The country currently has a “President” who finds joy in suffocating the democratic space by disrupting opposition party gatherings, among others.

All these are signs of an undemocratic person presiding over the affairs of this country.

This calls for us to unite, stand up and reject these desperate attempts to take Zimbabwe to the days of a one-party State as we approach the watershed elections set to be held in August this year.

To the young people of this great nation, let us all remember that we have so many issues that must unite us than those which may divide us.

We are jobless, jobless and jobless in our multitudes, lives have been claimed due to ailments that could have been avoided and because of an ailing healthcare system, people are dying needlessly.  Many of the youths have turned to drug abuse in order to find solace.

So many of my peers are out of school because tuition fees have been pushed beyond the reach of many. We are witnessing the ruralisation of urban areas due to shortages of power and water. Corruption has made most of us poorer in a country endowed with natural resources. This is the time to gather, not scatter; to reflect, not to deject. We have to emancipate ourselves from the hands of this tyrannical system which has brought more harm than good.-Citizen

 

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