Lawyer and MDC Alliance vice-president Tendai Biti said he was looking at SI99 of 2020 with a view to challenging discriminatory measures put in place by Mnangagwa’s government, allowing Zupco buses and formal businesses to operate, while systematically closing out commuter omnibuses and the informal sector.

MDC Alliance leader Nelson Chamisa said the lockdown’s new rules allowing the formal sector, which only constitutes around 10% of the economy to operate, while exposing the majority in the informal sector to vagaries of the lockdown, violated the Constitution.

“There are issues to do with taxes, there are issues to do with the informal traders, who are basically the bulk of our society. You can’t just say we will continue with the lockdown where informal traders are not trading. You are paying a blind eye and a deaf ear to their concerns of livelihoods. Livelihoods are very important, you know you can’t just cage an animal and not give it food and oxygen, unless if you either want to suffocate it out of cruelty, suffocate people, but you have to give mechanisms of survival for the informal traders and the workers, even for the unemployed,” Chamisa said.

Zimbabwe Hospital Doctors Association president Tawanda Zvakada said the cushioning allowance government wanted to give informal traders and other vulnerable groups was not enough.

“We commend the government for their efforts, however, the funds which they announced are a small gesture. It is not enough to cater for the people for a long time. They also need to start thinking of their long-term plans as to what the informal sector is going to live on after the lockdown,” Zvakada said yesterday.