By A Correspondent- Of the country’s 3921 COVID-19 cases, more than 1227 of them are in Harare and its satellite towns.
The matter emerged after it was reported that 337 Covid-19 cases, out of the 490 cases recorded on Saturday who tested positive for COVID-19 were from Harare and its satellite towns.
According to the publication:
Figures from the Ministry of Health and Child Care show that a record 490 new confirmed cases were recorded for the whole of Zimbabwe on Saturday and 262 yesterday, but of the weekend total of 752 new cases there were 719 people infected inside Zimbabwe and a relatively small 33 were among returning residents in formal quarantine. Out of those 719 local infections, 437 were in Harare taking the total of those infected within the city and most of its satellite towns to 1 227.
Bulawayo which has the second-highest number of cases has 897 cases other provinces have less than 2000 cases combined.
Zimbabwean authorities on Tuesday 28 July 2020 arrested a 32 year-old man and charged him with criminal nuisance and incitement after he allegedly denigrated President Emmerson Mnangagwa on Twitter.
Zimbabwe Republic Police members on Tuesday 28 July 2020 arrested George Makonzo who resides in Mwenezi in Masvingo province and charged him with incitement as defined in section 187(1) of the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act alternatively criminal nuisance as defined in section 46(2)(v) of the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act.
Prosecutors told Mwenezi Magistrate Honest Musiiwa when Makonzo appeared in court on Wednesday 29 July 2020 that the 32 year-old man used an unknown gadget to post some comments on Twitter on Friday 24 July 2020 saying; “It’s no longer business as usual for E.D, now the whole world knows the true colours of a crocodile we are dealing with.”
Makonzo also reportedly tweeted that; “Hopewell will be remembered for the great job he is doing while those corrupt ones trying to run but they will have nowhere to run to. That day will come.”
The prosecutors charged that by allegedly posting the tweets Makonzo, who was represented by Collen Maboke of Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights, intended to cause nuisance and disrupt peace and to demonstrate against President Mnangagwa’s government.
On Thursday 30 July 2020, Magistrate Musiiwa set Makonzo free after granting him RTGS$1 000 bail and ordering him to report at a local police station once every fortnight until his matter is finalised.
Makonzo returns to court on 27 August 2020 for commencement of his trial.
By A Correspondent- Some residents in Bulawayo were left stranded after they could not purchase ZESA electricity tokens because ZESA online systems had a technical fault.
This, in turn, prompted electricity vendors who had access to the systems to capitalise on the situation as they reportedly charged buyers a 30% premium for all purchases.
When contacted for comment Deputy Energy Minister Magan Mudyiwa professed ignorance on the matter and said:
I’m sorry I am not sure of what could have been the challenge as I was in the constituency. Perhaps there is a problem with the system. I am driving to Harare and I will be able to give a response tomorrow after establishing the challenge.
Angry residents in the queue at the only ZESA outlet that was open said they had been in the queue for long and they were tired and afraid of contracting COVID-19 since social distancing was not being observed:
The Zesa banking hall in Nkulumane was shut down long ago. We can only buy power via EcoCash, supermarkets or at Zesa offices in the city centre. All other platforms are down except the offices in town. You know how difficult it is to get into town nowadays. Zesa should just get technicians to fix this problem.
There is no social distancing here. We may all get sick. If EcoCash was working, I could have bought tokens from home.
It is fishy that when no one else seems to be able to access the electricity token network, some electricity vendors are doing it. They are exploiting consumers by demanding 30 percent of one’s purchase on top of the regular price.
The energy minister, later on, tweeted that he was going to have a discussion with ZESA on the issue on Thursday after apologising for the glitch. In June the same problem occurred and it affected the whole country.
By A Correspondent- Renowned Journalist Hopewell Chin’ono who was denied bail by a Harare Magistrate and was remanded in custody till 6 August after he was arrested and charged with inciting public violence’s bail application will be heard at the High Court today.
Chin’ono’s application suffered a false start on Wednesday after recordings from the Magistrate’s court which denied him bail were not brought to the High court on time which prompted the judge to adjourn the case to today.
Chin’ono was the first to draw attention to the Drax International scandal in which the later was supplying medical sundries to the government at highly inflated prices.
A 40 Year old-man from Beitbridge was hospitalised on Saturday after police officers reportedly set dogs on him while enforcing lockdown regulations in the border town.
It is said that Edmond Chimusoro Zeyazeya was caught up in the melee as police officers chased after illegal foreign currency dealers.
He is currently admitted to Beitbridge Hospital with serious wounds.
Speaking to CITE, his sister in-law Eugenia Makura said Zeyazeya left home to buy food for his children when the incident occured.
“He left home in the morning around 8 to buy food for the children at the Engine garage, one of the children had said they wanted Chicken Inn,” said Makura.
“He said when he got to the Engine garage he met the police who were on an operation, when he saw them he was and he tried to move away.”
However, the police officers reportedly ordered him to stop and he obliged and they set their dogs.
He was savagely attacked and sustained deep wounds.
The police officers later took him to hospital.
Contacted for a comment, National police spokesperson Assistant Commissioner Paul Nyathi said the case is under investigation.
“That case is under investigation, we are quite aware there was an incident yesterday in Beitbridge where people were contravening Covid-19 regulations,” said Commissioner Nyathi.
“They were approached by officers, they tried to run away and unfortunately one of them was bitten by a police dog and the case is currently under investigation,” he said.
1. Senior MDC Alliance official, Michael Mubasa's house in Bulawayo's Sizinda Township attacked by eight "thugs" carrying AK 47s at or about 02:00 hrs. "Thugs" taunted his name after failing to gain entry. Mubasa threatened a suicide arson attack on the house if "thugs" entered
The Zimbabwe Stock Exhange is set to resume trading today, more than a month after activity on the equity exchange was suspended.
Three dual listed entities will, however, remain suspended.
On Friday the ZSE issued separate joint statements with Old Mutual, SeedCo International and PPC limited telling shareholders that the three will not be available when trading resumes today.
As widely reported trading of dual listed firms, Old Mutual in particular, was linked to exchange rate instability leading to the suspension of trading across the entire stock exchange. While the stock exchange has now been allowed to resume trading, Old Mutual, PPC and Seedco International will have to wait a little longer as the parties are still to agree on the way forward.
“Further to the announcement by the Minister of Finance and Economic
Development on July 28, 2020 that investigations into the dealings on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange Limited (“ZSE”) had been completed and that as a condition for the resumption of trading on the ZSE from August 3 2020, trading in, inter alia, the shares of Seed Co International Limited (“Seed Co International”) is to remain suspended, the ZSE and Seed Co International wish to notify the market as follows;“The press statement issued by the Minister of Finance and Economic Development noted that Seed Co International was not involved in any malpractice linked to the parallel foreign currency market.
The guards waiting for cars to pass through and pay their fees.
Shrewd ‘guards’ taking advantage of motorists evading the congested road block manned at Delport road turn off along Seke road, have erected a makeshift toll-gate where they are demanding between $10 and $20.
Interestingly, the now popular diversion is operating just a stone’s throw away distance from the police road block.
Yesterday the road was barricaded with heavy disused sewer pipes, large stones and heavy logs. There were two ‘smart’ guards who seemed to be always on high alert as they only allowed vehicles they were suspicious of to pass without any hassle.
The security details were wearing Stallion Security company uniforms (black in colour) alleging to be guarding Civil Aviation transmission antennas.
One of them had a reflector on top, but neither was wearing compulsory face masks. While the Herald unmarked car was exempted from paying, the journalists aboard saw two motorists paying $10 each, one that was behind and another in front.
The news crew managed to speak to one of the security guards who first asked if the news team had used the road the very same day.
“Have you used this road earlier today. This road is prohibited as it is a protected Civil Aviation area hosting aeroplane transmission antennas,” he said.
Asked if they were making a killing since the road had become busy due to congestion, the guard did not mince his words.
“It is quite tricky sometimes as the road is used by people of different backgrounds even high ranking officials. As we are talking to you we actually don’t know who you are.
“However, we have motorists who regularly pass by and mushikashika whom we charge,” he said.
The evading motorists endure a hard time as the road that leads to the illegal toll-gate is bumpy, dusty and long and winding as opposed to the official road.
However, during peak hours it remains popular due to the persistent long queues at the Delport road turn off roadblock were police verify documents for essential service and exempted workers.
The way is now the transit route for non-essential services people sneaking into town.
The road which is hive of activity is also synonymous with sand poachers that are causing massive land degradation around the area.
From Chitungwiza en-route Harare there are many such off routes that eventually passes through the illegal spot, among them just after Zororo cemetery park and another before the police roadblock.
After evading the legal route, the dodging motorists eventually join Seke road at Trek Service Station at the area commonly known as Chinhamo.
Meanwhile, along the Mutare-Masvingo Highway toll-gate, Zinara is reportedly losing potential revenue through an illegal bypass that goes though the field of a man identified as Padhina Dzumbira.
At the illegal bypass, the man is charging motorists varying sums of money which are below those gazetted by Zinara.
The man denied a team of investigating parliamentarians access through the bypass.
Some lawmakers tried to remove a wooden boom gate erected, but the man verbally assaulted the MPs.
“This is my farm and you do not have a right to enter the premises, I am now calling the lands commissioner,” he ranted.
Former Public Protector and founder of The Thuma Foundation Advocate Thuli Madonsela says the Zimbabwean government needs to be called to account for the recent arrests of activists following anti-corruption protests in the country last week.
A number of activists, including a journalist and media personalities were arrested after being accused by Zimbabwe’s government of inciting violence and breaking coronavirus restrictions during the protests.
A state media commentator has blasted the organisers of the July 31 “failed” protests claiming that they over relied on Western influence in planning for the demonstration and were resultantly easily countered by the ZANU PF government.
Ranga Mataire the author of the piece claims that the organisers also wasted time trying to use social media to mobilise for the protests claiming that social media has no appeal within Zimbabweans. This is contrary to goverment thinking as the state is holding in prison renowned journalist Hopewell Chinono for allegedly mobilising for the protest on Twitter.
The opinion piece reads as follows:
There were many lessons from the total failure of the Western instigated July 31 regime change planned demonstration.
The first lesson that must have dawned on local opposition, including their Western backers, was that social media, particularly Twitter, was not Zimbabwe. The majority of Zimbabweans are not avid followers of Twitter.
In fact, contrary to presumptuous attitude of some among us, the majority of Zimbabweans understand that the thing that really matters to them is the productive ownership of the means of production.
All they aspire for is central Government support to enable them to produce not just for subsistence, but for the nation.
The second take away from the glaringly embarrassing no-show was the lack of strategic thinking on the part of the opposition, which is more obsessed with the optics of creating chaos and mayhem ostensibly for the attention of their benefactors.
How does one explain the lack of emotion and no introspection on the part of opposition figures like Charlton Hwende and Tendai Biti, who in a matter of hours after the failed protests were already fervently tweeting about their favourite English team Arsenal’s FA Cup triumph over Chelsea?
It is clear that the two senior officials regarded the planned protests as inconsequential.
It also proved that what mattered more to them were their self-pleasures in the comfort of their splendid homes instead of the so-called anti-corruption protests they had spent almost a month harping about.
The third and most important lesson to be derived from the monumental failure of the planned demonstration was the fact that the majority is aware that outsiders cannot dictate how we should govern ourselves, particularly when such outsiders were on the forefront of opposing our fight for liberation from colonial repression.
We gleefully note the embarrassing desperate spin from some opposition supporters and their leaders claiming some morsel of victory over the no show.
Well, in Shona tinoti afirwa haatariswe kumeso. There is need for some serious introspection on the part of opposition leaders, including those that are daily harangued by delusional regime change dreamers.
Sensing a resounding no confidence show, some desperate opposition figures literally invited arrest by illegally picketing at some shopping malls while others indulged in some kindergarten tomfooling — provoking some security personnel for the camera’s attention.
Of course, the security personnel obligingly arrested them. The culprits will soon have their day in court.
What saddens some of us is the lack of shame on the part of some opposition figures who have literally become pliable regime change instruments. We are aware that like any other country, Zimbabwe is not heaven.
People are bound to have disagreements but as people of the same nation, we must be clear of our national interests.
We must have sacrosanct values that bind us as a nation.
We are aware that the West, particularly America, is averse to the reality of former liberation movements running the affairs of their respective countries.
We are aware of a perennial attempt to roll-back the map of liberation in Southern Africa.
We fervently pray that our brothers and sisters on the other side of the aisle realise that the West is motivated by their self interest.
It is surely preposterous to have the same countries that supported apartheid and opposed the liberation of Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Namibia and Angola and are still causing chaos in the DRC to suddenly prance about being champions of democracy and human rights.
The same countries that react with instantaneous moral indignation whenever something goes wrong in Africa are the same countries that enslaved and colonised us yesterday.
Is it not ludicrous for America to make boisterous and unremorseful comments when something happens in Zimbabwe, yet the same country that continues to treat African-Americans as second class citizens through systematic racism that perpetually relegates them to the fringes?
Is it not apparent even to some of our compatriots that they too need to question the unrelenting stream of patronising diplomatic self-righteousness peddled by America to young democracies in Africa?
The truth is the West does not care about human rights, especially the rights of Africans. If the West really cared about human rights, America would not be engulfed in nationwide protests we are witnessing today. Again, we wonder why the West is not condemning these human rights violations in America.
One thing that some of our compatriots might not be aware of is the continued disenfranchising of minority voters in America particularly Latinos and African-Americans who over the years have struggled to participate in national elections.
The hypocrisy stinks to heavens as Americans are fond of lecturing to Africa about free and fair elections and flaunting the American system as a model.
Why has America done nothing in prosecuting serious human rights violations and killings by its soldiers in Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan?
America has gone as far as intimidating the International Criminal Court (ICC) that opened an investigation into US crimes in Afghanistan.
We, the people of the South, reiterate the fact that the leading nation of the “free world” lacks the moral high ground to lecture us on human rights and this is precisely the reason why we will always take the American system not as a model, but something not to be assimilated.
The Embassy of the Republic of Zimbabwe to the Republic of South Africa read with consternation and utter disbelief the “EFF Statement on the Announcement by the President of Zimbabwe on Compensating White Farmers” issued on 31 July 2020.
The Embassy has, in the past, restrained itself from responding to the many provocative statements issued by the EFF about Zimbabwe.
On this occasion, we cannot remain silent in the face of the EFF’s pretentiousness to know more about the history and politics of Zimbabwe than the Zimbabweans themselves.
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Even more, the EFF has the audacity to dare teach Zimbabweans, even our Head of State, about the land question in our country.
Not only did thousands of our compatriots pay the supreme sacrifice for the return of the land to its rightful owners but even today our people suffer the burden of sanctions imposed by those opposed to our land reform programme.
For the record, the provisions of the Global Compensation Deed Agreement signed on 29 July 2020 between the Government of Zimbabwe and representatives of the former commercial farmers fully adhere to the Constitution of the Republic of Zimbabwe, in particular, Section 72 which deals with “Rights to Agricultural Land”.
That section stipulates in paragraph 3 (a) that where agricultural land is compulsorily acquired for a public purpose, no compensation is payable in respect of its acquisition, except for improvements effected on it before its acquisition.
This is what the signed compensation agreement of 29 July 2020 provides for. The government of Zimbabwe will compensate the former farmers for the improvements on the acquired land ONLY. No more. There is nothing treasonous in upholding one’s own national constitution.
It will be recalled that the Constitution of Zimbabwe was approved by 95% of voters
in a referendum held in 2013 and was assented to and signed into law by the then Head of State, the late Comrade Robert G. Mugabe, on 22 May 2013.
It is highly mischievous of the EFF to attempt to rewrite history by seeking to distance the legacy of the late Head of State from the 2013 Constitution whose provisions circumscribe the agreement signed on 29 July 2020.
The government will work in close partnership with the farmers and multilateral and bilateral donors in mobilizing the $3.5 billion required in compensation for the improvements on the acquired land.
His Excellency President Emmerson D. Mnangagwa has been consistent and firm on the land issue. He has, on countless occasions, reiterated that the land reform is irreversible and that Section 72 of the Constitution is very clear in this regard.
In his own words, he has been very clear that “we fought for land and there is no way we will retract our position with regards to the land reform”.
The signing of this global compensation agreement is a significant step in the coming together of Zimbabweans in efforts to bring to finality a long outstanding, highly emotive and divisive issue. This agreement should be welcomed by those who genuinely wish Zimbabwe well.
It is our expectation that the EFF and others who may wish to comment on the land issues in Zimbabwe do so from an informed, objective and constructive standpoint that respects the people of Zimbabwe’s struggles and sacrifices for their land and contributes to the unity and progress of the country.
Political commentators have blamed divisions within Zimbabwe’s opposition for the failed 31 July anti-government protests.
Renowned political analyst, University of Zimbabwe (UZ) political science lecturer, Eldred Masunungure, opined that divisions and lack of a strategy have hamstrung the opposition. He said:
The problem is that our opposition parties are hopelessly divided. They need to go back and re-strategise, and also speak with one voice. They have to reconfigure.
Zanu PF has not changed and … is still using the same tools that it always deploys, and the opposition parties are also using the same strategies.
The planning was poor … and the demonstration was announced nearly a month ago, thus giving authorities ample time to prepare. This enabled the authorities to continue with their repression.
Unfortunately, Friday’s events only work to embolden the authorities and to give them more confidence.
The opposition parties are speaking with different voices and are not united. So, it will be difficult for them to confront the government.
Meanwhile, Professor of World Politics at the London School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), Stephen Chan, said there is enough suffering in Zimbabwe already and it was better that people were not put at risk of brutality.
The organisers of the 31 July protests initially said they intended to demonstrate against alleged rampant corruption in government circles, but they ended up demanding the collapse of the ZANU PF-led government.
The Zimbabwe Revenue Authority arrested two men for smuggling into Zimbabwe five tankers of petrol, a total of 221 000 litres, using forged papers that designated the contents as crude de-gummed soya bean oil, which is exempted from duty.
This comes hard on the heels of an announcement by the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission (Zacc) that fuel was being smuggled into Zimbabwe from Mozambique and reshipped to South Africa, Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The development also explains, investigators believe, why some fuel dealers can afford to sell fuel in foreign currency at prices much lower than those set by the Zimbabwe Energy Regulatory Authority (Zera), which allows only modest mark-ups on properly-taxed directly-imported fuels.
Complex cartels are reportedly importing fuel from Mozambique at prices in the region of 50 US cents a litre before taking it to neighbouring countries using forged export documents. Zacc is now demanding explanations from some 42 fuel companies of their fuel dealings.
Two suspects were arrested last month, the first on these sort of charges, for smuggling 221 000 litres of petrol from Mozambique via Forbes Border Post in Mutare.
They allegedly forged the import papers and misrepresented to Zimra officials that they were importing soya bean oil, duty-free.
Malvern Mugodoki (38) an agent working for Vernson Freight Pvt Ltd and Wellington Kusalaweka (34), who operates from Hurudza House in Mutare, were arrested on fraud charges. Mugodoki and Kusawela were freed on $10 000 bail each. However, the names of company or companies that imported the fuel were not mentioned in court.
According to the State, Mugodoki, a clearing agent, received petrol import documents from three truck drivers — Beven Munyaradzi Mavhaza, George Muzimbawake, and Langton Mabee — for processing.
He was tasked to facilitate the clearing of three trucks: registration number AEZ 3183 loaded with 45 000 litres of petrol, AEU 9772 with 41 000 litres and AEG 7618 with 45 000 litres.
After receiving the papers, Mugodoki allegedly connived with Kasalaweka to alter the original import documents where the product was indicated as petrol so that it reads ‘crude de-gummed soya bean oil’, exempted from paying import duty, the court was told.
“They went to Kasalaweka’s workplace at Hurudza House in Mutare where they forged the import invoices to indicate the product was crude de-gummed soya oil,” reads the court documents.
The pair later subcontracted Southern Business Services clearing agents, who are authorised to clear tankers, to do the work.
The subcontracted agents handed the forged documents over to Zimra officials for processing.
“Acting on the misrepresentation, Zimra produced the manifests for the three trucks,” reads the papers.
Later on Zimra received information that the tankers had petrol and that its officers had been duped.
Manicaland police CID together with Zimra officers swiftly reacted and impounded the trucks.
A check on the load proved the product to be petrol. The two were arrested and charged with fraud.
While seized with the case of three tankers, police also received information that two other tankers ferrying were awaiting fraudulent clearance by the same suspects.
The two trucks ferrying about 90 000 litres of fuel purchased by some two Harare-based companies were also impounded.
Manifests showing the false declarations and the computer used in the fraud were held as exhibits in respect of the first three tankers’ case.
The original import papers for petrol were recovered from the house of one of the suspects’ girlfriend while copies of the fake papers presented to Zimra were recovered at Southern Business Clearing Agents’ premises in Mutare.
Zimra spokesperson Mr Francis Chimanda said the Mutare case was the first one since reports on fuel smuggling filtered last year.
“Recently, five tankers were seized at Forbes Border Post for false declaration. The tankers were reported to be transporting crude soya oil while they were transporting fuel.
“Fake documents were submitted in support of the declaration. Zimra keeps records of all seized goods and in that record there is no fuel seizure as the most recent fuel seizures are the beginning on fuels,” he said.
However, Zimra has made a total of 60 seizures of different other goods at Forbes Border Post since January this year.
Zacc chairperson Justice Loice Matanda-Moyo is on record saying her investigations, the police and Zimra were jointly investigating fuel smuggling.
“Zacc and Zimra have been conducting an investigation into reports received, indicating that there has been a massive and expansive operation involving smuggling of significant volumes of fuel, mainly diesel and petrol through a number of our ports of entry.
“Investigations carried out thus far reveal the existence of a criminal fuel smuggling syndicate involving entities that are registered in Zimbabwe and in a neighbouring country.
“This criminal project has been in operation for a period of two years and its activities have caused financial prejudice to the Government of Zimbabwe and that of the neighbouring country,” said Justice Matanda-Moyo.
Early this year over 25 million litres of fuel smuggled from Zimbabwe were intercepted by police in South Africa.
The original source of the fuel is unknown; it could be diverted fuel bought in Zimbabwe dollars or re-exported cheap fuel smuggled from Mozambique.
Zacc has since asked 42 companies registered in Zimbabwe to furnish investigators with documentation relating to their fuel dealings.
The companies are: Global Oil, Com Oil Petrol, Victoria Falls Truck, Unique Jay, Nansane (Rosmitrick), Bankable Resources, Silver Air, Timkase Investments, Dexfueld Pvt Ltd, Chilota Mine, Mann Aggregates, Matriflex Oils, Bresville Investments, Fastlane Petroleum, Couderay Oil, Outrech Comm, Plulixey Petroleum, Bantu Africa Mining, Valley Field Holdings, Takunda Fuel Services, Musa Petroleum, Einstein Energy, Kinsey Mining, Emirates Valley, Afrifor, Megabest, Nelich Investments, BOL Supplies, Traderose Investments, Coalvart Enterprises, Kit Kat Enterprises, Skybuild Construction, Elkrus Pvt Limited, Getmack Fuels, Falika Pvt Ltd, Bustque, Talebrant Investments, Peritus, Downtown Fuel, Valbazen Enterprises, Quick Gases and Roomi Truckshop.
When customs duties were raised significantly at the end of 2018 to bring Zimbabwean pricing into line with regional norms, there were suspicions based on the dramatic rise in fuel purchases in Zimbabwe that fuel was being smuggled out of the country and sold on black markets in the region.
The recent exchange rate fluctuations and the premium paid on the black market for foreign currency have enhanced fears that the same problem may be resurfacing.
Midlands State University (MSU) has, due to the surge in Covid-19 cases in the country, suspended final year examinations that were set to start today.
On July 24, Government gave a directive to all tertiary institutions to close and continue conducting lessons through e-learning as part of measures to curb the spread of Covid-19.
Ministry of Higher and Tertiary Education permanent secretary Professor Fanuel Tagwira cited the surge in Covid 19 cases in the country as the main reason for the directive.
This development has affected MSU final semester students in the faculties of Science and Technology, Law, Education and Natural Resources Management and Agriculture.
MSU director of communication Mrs Mirirai Mawere yesterday said the examinations had been postponed to a date when it’s safe for the learners and staff.
“It’s mainly because of the spike in the numbers of Covid-19 infected people. Resumption of examinations will be dependent on the improvement of the situation as far as the containment of the new infections is concerned,” said Mrs Mawere.
She said following the announcement of new Covid-19 induced lockdown by President Mnangagwa on July 21, the university is postponing examinations.
“In light of the continued increase in the number of Covid-19 positive cases, which saw the President announcing new lockdown measures on July 21, the university would like to advise final year students in the facility of Science and Technology, Law, Education and Natural Resources Management and Agriculture who were scheduled to commence preparations for their final examinations on August 3 that examinations have been postponed to a date to be advised.
“Please note the decision was made in the best interest of our stakeholders’ health. Any inconvenience caused is sincerely regreted,” said Mrs Mawere.
National University of Science and Technology (Nust) director of communications and marketing Mr Felix Moyo has retired after serving the institution for 23 years.
Mr Moyo bade farewell to Nust last week together with Dr Fortune Nkomo who was the institution’s bursar and had joined the university at its inception in 1991.
The two join former registrar Mr Fidelis Mhlanga who resigned in May after serving the university for 26 years.
The trio had served Nust for a combined 79 years and were among the remaining senior founding members of the university.
Nust management and staff commended Mr Moyo and Dr Nkomo for their service to the growth of the university.
Nust council chairman Mr Alvord Mabena said the duo’s departure would affect Nust, as it moves to recruit their replacements.
“As a team, you always ensured that Nust business moves forward and it’s a fact that your departure has a destabilising effect on the university. As Council we are working to bring stability by recruiting capable staff to continue the work of moving Nust forward,” said Mr Mabena.
He said the duo leaves the university in a dignified manner, calling for other staff members to emulate their work ethic.
Mr Mabena said Nust should come up with innovative ways to address societal challenges and challenged the remaining leaders to develop the university to greater heights.
“Let us respond by coming up with innovations, and adapt to the new normal. We need to have focus, and if we work as a team, the power in us will be useful, as we work to serve our future generations,” said Mr Mabena.
Nust Vice Chancellor Professor Mqhele Dlodlo paid tribute to the duo for their dedication towards the university.
He said while Mr Moyo ensured that the Nust brand is not tainted, Dr Nkomo safeguarded the university’s purse.
“You unified communication and marketing and always told the Nust story based on facts. You kept the media under control and guided them into portraying a positive image about Nust. Today, Nust is an influence within and to outside stakeholders because of the communication and marketing director,” said Prof Dlodlo.
“Dr Nkomo controlled Nust funds and always sought to solve the problems that we found ourselves in by managing the damage that was caused by the University community,” he noted.
“He used our motto ‘think in other terms’ very well as he took the University through the hard economic times and hence we stand today.”
Mr Moyo said he was gratified to have served at Nust while encouraging the institution to adapt to new ways of doing things, to change administrative systems and improve service delivery.-
TWO senior Zanu PF officials are in quarantine in adherence to the World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines after attending a global conference in Tanzania recently.
The top officials are Secretary for Administration Dr Obert Mpofu and the Secretary for External Affairs Simbarashe Mumbengegwi, who are both members of the Politburo.
Briefing Politburo members in Harare last week, President Mnangagwa said that Mpofu and Mumbengegwi were in self-quarantine, and therefore could not attend the meeting.
“The party’s Secretary for Administration Dr Mpofu and his counterpart Cde Mumbengegwi could not make it to this Politburo meeting today (Wednesday) because they are in self-quarantine after they visited Tanzania recently,’’ said President Mnangagwa.
Mpofu was part of a delegation that attended the recently ended conference for global political parties where he was representing Zanu PF. He confirmed that he was under self-quarantine at his home.
Speaking from his base in Nyamandlovu, where he is in self-quarantine, Mpofu said although life in isolation was not easy, the measures were necessary to curb the spread of the pandemic.
“It is not easy to stay away from the people you love, but when you love them that much, you keep your distance for their safety. I tested negative on arrival and I am waiting for a second test after eight days,” he said.
Mumbengegwi also confirmed that he was in self-quarantine and doing a lot of reading.
“I am in self-quarantine at home here in Harare. I am just following the WHO guidelines. We don’t want to take chances. I am doing a lot of reading,’’ said Mumbengegwi.
Zimbabwe now has 3 921 confirmed cases after its worst two days on record, although with only three extra deaths over the weekend, the death toll crept up to 70.
Figures from the Ministry of Health and Child Care show that a record 490 new confirmed cases were recorded for the whole of Zimbabwe on Saturday and 262 yesterday, but of the weekend total of 752 new cases there were 719 people infected inside Zimbabwe and a relatively small 33 were among returning residents in formal quarantine.
Out of those 719 local infections, 437 were in Harare taking the total of those infected within the city and most of its satellite towns to 1 227.
Bulawayo, once the main focus of internal infection, now has 897 confirmed local cases after 99 new infections over the weekend. However, two of the three weekend deaths were in Bulawayo health institutions, a 62-year-old man and 52-year-old woman.
The third death was a 93-year-old woman in Midlands who was admitted to hospital on July 23 and died early yesterday morning.
After the high levels of infection in the two largest cities, Midlands is the third worst hit province with 237 local infections, with Gweru previously identified as the main centre of infection in the province.
Mashonaland East, which includes some satellite towns of Harare, has 157 local infections with Manicaland now rising past the century mark to 101.
Out of the 70 deaths, 31 have been recorded in Harare, 20 in Bulawayo, six in Manicaland and five in Midlands.
Recoveries now total 1 016, but the very low total for Harare suggests that there is a batch of recovered patients whose status still has to enter the statistics.
Does anyone in the Mnangagwa regime understand how damaging the rank madness displayed by security forces has been to their credibility? This charge sheet takes the cake – a young woman briefly displays a poster @PicknPay protesting corruption & its investigated like a bombing. pic.twitter.com/DtoyC5PGnb
PANASHE VONGAI SIVINDANI (Hereinafter called the accused)
1. The complainant, in this case, is the State.
2. The accused resides at number 204 Block A National University of Science and Technology, Bulawayo and is a third-year student at the aforementioned University.
3. On the 31st of July 2020 at around 1300hours information was received from an anonymous caller to the effect that an unknown demonstrator entered TM Supermarket, Ascot Shopping Centre, Bulawayo to do her shopping and whilst inside the supermarket, the demonstrator displayed a placard inscribed #No to corruption, #Free Hopewell, #No to nepotism, #No commissioned law enforcement and justice system and #we want accountability,
4. The police carried out some investigations and went to TM Supermarket, Ascot Shopping Centre, Bulawayo where the manager played a CCTV footage which showed the accused removing the placard from her bag, wearing it and then went on to carry out her shopping displaying the above message. After paying for a water bottle, accused removed the placard and placed it in her bag.
5. Subsequent investigations led to the arrest of the accused and the demonstration the material was not recovered.
6. The State can produce the CCTV footage as an EXHIBIT.
7. The accused person had no right to act in the manner she did.
Former Warriors, Dynamos and CAPS United left-back Cephas Chimedza has paid tribute to the late Phillip Mugadza.
Mugadza, a former DeMbare chairman who was part of the executive during the days Chimedza was at the Glamour Boys, passed away, though its not clear whether it was today or yesterday as details of his death are sketchy.
Chimedza, who is based in Belgium, took to Twitter to pay tribute to the late Mugadza.
“R I.P Mr Chairmain,Philip Mugadza. Will never forget how you helped me as a young boy at Dynamos. I always knew ndikaomerwa ndiri mutown I could always count on you,” he wrote.
Meanwhile, the Zimbabwe Football Association (ZIFA), in their condolence message, described Mugadza as a dedicated football administrator.
“ZIFA commiserates with the Mugadza and football family following the passing on of former Dynamos FC chairman Phillip Mugadza.
Mr Mugadza was an astute administrator who served the beautiful game with dedication and commitment . We are saddened by this great loss,”read the message-Soccer 24
As you have noticed after the 31st of July, instead of the regime attending to the issues raised by the Zimbabwean citizens they went into the default mode and escalated human rights abuses all over the place. Our people are being beaten, tortured, arrested for no apparent reason. This can not be allowed to continue.
On Saturday night residents of Dzivarasekwa were beaten door to door by people in military uniforms. The same thing happened in St. Mary’s around Chigovanyika area where citizens at night were indiscriminately beaten in their homes for no explanation.
Yesterday they were beating people door to door around the place where my house is called kuMapositori. In Zvishavane, the same happened, so was in Mucheke Masvingo and reports we are getting from Bulawayo, Gweru and Kwekwe are so sad.
I think you have all seen the pictures of Tawanda Mucheiwa a 22 year old nephew to journalist Mduduzi Mathuthu. The 2nd year university student was severely tortured after having been taken to different places, where at one time was driven for a period of 4 hours to an unknown destination where he was taken to a farm which had military trucks parked on it.
You have seen the unlawful arrests of Advocate Fadzai Mahere, author and international award winning writer Tsitsi Dangarembga, Cllr Godfrey Kurauone in Masvingo, Hon Mugidho in Chiredzi and several citizens in Gweru, Bulawayo, Chiredzi, Kwekwe, Matabeleland South and allover the place.
Last night Hon Settlement Chikwinya escaped attempted abduction on his person by 7 trucks loaded with state security agencies. We can not accept this situation. No one is safe. If not careful we will all perish. It is now time to speak to the world.
From tomorrow Monday the 3rd of August, we urge all of you to have an opportunity to stock food.
This is called upon because we need to speak more loudly for the entire week starting Monday the 10th of August to the 15th. That will be the week of action. This time it won’t be a one day event. It will be a week of expression against corruption and looting.
This time we are also speaking against gross human rights abuses against us. We will say no to corruption and no to looting. No to abductions. No to violence against the people of Zimbabwe by the state. These are going to be our 4 agenda items for our action. Why are you bringing violence against the people? People are peaceful in their homes and you raid them at night and beat them.
Dear Zimbabweans, we need to stop it. This has gone against all tenants of civilization and human dignity.
Why are people being beaten? Why are people being tortured, why are people being arrested for no crime? Kwayi unnecessary movements? What is that in a modern state? In the 21st century? No no no. We can’t accept this. One week action from the 10th of August to the 15th.
We are tired of being abused in our own country. 10th to the 15th we shall Speak.
Speak Zimbabwe Speak No to Corruption and Looting No to Abductions, Torture and Violence against citizens.
Farai Dziva|State security agents attempted to abduct MDC Alliance official Settlement Chikwinya on Saturday night.
Several opposition members were arrested across the country as Emmerson Mnangagwa intensified spirited “manoeuvres” to dismantle the opposition.
Read statement below:
NOTICE TO THE PEOPLE OF ZIMBABWE
By Hon Job Wiwa Sikhala 31st July Movement
As you have noticed after the 31st of July, instead of the regime attending to the issues raised by the Zimbabwean citizens they went into the default mode and escalated human rights abuses all over the place. Our people are being beaten, tortured, arrested for no apparent reason. This can not be allowed to continue.
On Saturday night residents of Dzivarasekwa were beaten door to door by people in military uniforms. The same thing happened in St. Mary’s around Chigovanyika area where citizens at night were indiscriminately beaten in their homes for no explanation.
Yesterday they were beating people door to door around the place where my house is called kuMapositori. In Zvishavane, the same happened, so was in Mucheke Masvingo and reports we are getting from Bulawayo, Gweru and Kwekwe are so sad.
I think you have all seen the pictures of Tawanda Mucheiwa a 22 year old nephew to journalist Mduduzi Mathuthu. The 2nd year university student was severely tortured after having been taken to different places, where at one time was driven for a period of 4 hours to an unknown destination where he was taken to a farm which had military trucks parked on it.
You have seen the unlawful arrests of Advocate Fadzai Mahere, author and international award winning writer Tsitsi Dangarembga, Cllr Godfrey Kurauone in Masvingo, Hon Mugidho in Chiredzi and several citizens in Gweru, Bulawayo, Chiredzi, Kwekwe, Matabeleland South and allover the place.
Last night Hon Settlement Chikwinya escaped attempted abduction on his person by 7 trucks loaded with state security agencies. We can not accept this situation. No one is safe. If not careful we will all perish. It is now time to speak to the world.
From tomorrow Monday the 3rd of August, we urge all of you to have an opportunity to stock food.
This is called upon because we need to speak more loudly for the entire week starting Monday the 10th of August to the 15th. That will be the week of action. This time it won’t be a one day event. It will be a week of expression against corruption and looting.
This time we are also speaking against gross human rights abuses against us. We will say no to corruption and no to looting. No to abductions. No to violence against the people of Zimbabwe by the state. These are going to be our 4 agenda items for our action. Why are you bringing violence against the people? People are peaceful in their homes and you raid them at night and beat them.
Dear Zimbabweans, we need to stop it. This has gone against all tenants of civilization and human dignity.
Why are people being beaten? Why are people being tortured, why are people being arrested for no crime? Kwayi unnecessary movements? What is that in a modern state? In the 21st century? No no no. We can’t accept this. One week action from the 10th of August to the 15th.
We are tired of being abused in our own country. 10th to the 15th we shall Speak.
Speak Zimbabwe Speak No to Corruption and Looting No to Abductions, Torture and Violence against citizens.
MDC Alliance spokesperson Fadzai Mahere, playwright and filmmaker Tsitsi Dangarembga and nine other political activists arrested in Harare over July 31 illegal demonstrations, are contesting their arrest saying the police did not formally warn and caution them of the offence of violating Covid-19 regulations.
Mahere, Dangarembga, Paul Besa, Julie Gabriel Barnes, Chamunorwa Phillip Ndengu, Tinotenda Muskwe, Tinashe Murapata, Jessica Drury, Nyasha Musandu, Josee Lotter and Simon Drury appeared before Harare regional magistrate Mr Ngoni Nduna charged with participating in public gathering with intent to cause public violence.
They were also charged with violating the Public Health Act (Covid-19 Prevention, Containment and Prevention). The 11 were remanded to September 18, 2020 on $5 000 bail each.
As part of the bail conditions, they were ordered to surrender their passports and report every Friday at their nearest police stations.
“The accused were not cautioned on their second offence which is violating the Covid-19 regulations upon their arrest.
“The charge was preferred against them when they were preparing to come to court. We would like to place the State on notice that on the next day of appearance we will challenge their placement on remand,” they said through their lawyers.
They also notified the State that they would challenge their placement on remand in respect of charges of participating in a gathering with intent to cause public violence. -Herald
Today(yesterday) marks the second anniversary of the 1st of August 2018 shootings, an episode in respect of which at least 6 compatriots were shot and killed in cold blood.
The families of the deceased are yet to get justice despite the findings of the Motlanthe Commission against the State including the recommendation to arrest the perpetrators.
The MDC Alliance views the episode as a clear sign of a failure to break from the past despite a facade of reform which had been mooted by the Mnangagwa adminstration.
It was a continuation of other episodes including Gukurahundi,the violence in the run up to 2000, 2002, 2005 and 2008 elections, abductions of Itai Dzamara, killings of Tonderai Ndira, Godfrey Kauzani and Talent Mabika among others.
We demand justice for the victims of 1 August 2018.
We also demand the operationalization of the National Peace and Reconciliation Commision including ensuring it’s full independence.
We also demand the urgent establishment of the Independent Complains Mechanism against members of the security forces provided in section 210 of the Constitution.
More importantly there must be an end to the capture of State institutions including the army and police in pursuit of a narrow partisan agenda of power retention.
Our security services must be left to do their work of protecting the territorial intergrity of our country and maintaining law and order following the conduct spelt out in section 208 of the Constitution.
MDC Alliance Acting national women assembly Hon Mugidho, Chiredzi Deputy Town Chair Councillor Ropa, MDC Alliance Chiredzi West district chair Mr Kampota and others will spend the weekend in cells after being arrested on Friday.
Human Rights Lawyer Adv Martin Mureri said Chiredzi Magistrate Chikodzore will give judgement on the bail application on 3rd Monday 2020, at 14:15pm.
As MDC Alliance we are shocked by selective application of the law and we demand their immediate unconditional release. Bail denied is Justice denied- MDC Alliance Masvingo
Emmerson Mnangagwa’s prosecuting authority has requested South Africa to deport his nemesis Walter Mzembi from the neighbouring country.
It never rains but pours for Mzembi who traditionally belongs to the G40 faction aligned to former First Lady Grace Mugabe. The tale of bitterness gets worse as it emerges Mzembi recently launched his own party in the last year.
The latest has Mzembi being accused of siphoning a US$847 000 lumpsum.
The state owned Herald paper says Mzembicommitted the offences when he was Minister of Tourism and Hospitality Industry and was spearheading Zimbabwe’s cohosting of the United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) Conference in August 2013.
The Government, through the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) is seeking the assistance of the South African authorities to bring Mzembi to a Zimbabwean court to answer allegations of stealing vehicles worth US$130 000, which had been donated for UNTWO General Assembly, the report continues.
Mzembi has also been accused of abusing his office by donating four public viewing screens worth US$200 000 to Zion Christian Church, United Family International Church and Prophetic Healing Deliverance Ministries in violation of the Public Finance Management Act.
The screens were the property of the Ministry of Tourism and Hospitality Industry and Mzembi is accused of showing favour to the three churches by giving them screens without the Treasury’s concurrence.
In another case, Mzembi and two others — Susanna Makombe Kuhudzayi and Aaron Mushoriwa Dzingira — received donations amounting to US$815 000 for UNTWO from Mbada Diamonds on behalf of the Government and converted US$517 360 to their own use.
In a request for extradition, Acting Deputy Prosecutor-General Mr Nelson Mutsonziwa indicated that Mzembi’s prosecution will be solely in respect of these criminal abuse of office and theft charges.
Mr Mutsonziwa, in an affidavit commissioned by chief law officer Mr Chris Mutangadura, assured the South African government that the criminal charges preferred against Mzembi were not political.
He said Mzembi should simply be brought to court within reasonable time for justice to prevail.
“The accused will not be prosecuted for any offence other than theft, criminal abuse of duty as a public officer as defined in Section 174(1) of the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act [Chapter 9:23], based only upon the facts stated in this request.
“This request is not being pursued for political reasons or any ulterior purpose. Zimbabwe guarantees that Walter Mzembi will receive a fair trial in terms of the laws of Zimbabwe. The Republic of Zimbabwe also undertakes to render assistance to the Republic of South Africa in any criminal matter,” reads part of the request.
While there is no formal extradition agreement between South Africa and Zimbabwe, the National Prosecution Authority premised its request on the Extradition (Designated Countries) Order of 1990 which designated South Africa as one of the nations to which the Government can seek legal mutual assistance in extradition cases. South Africa and the Republic of Zimbabwe.- Herald
MDC Alliance Acting national women assembly Hon Mugidho, Chiredzi Deputy Town Chair Councillor Ropa, MDC Alliance Chiredzi West district chair Mr Kampota and others will spend the weekend in cells after being arrested on Friday.
Human Rights Lawyer Adv Martin Mureri said Chiredzi Magistrate Chikodzore will give judgement on the bail application on 3rd Monday 2020, at 14:15pm.
As MDC Alliance we are shocked by selective application of the law and we demand their immediate unconditional release. Bail denied is Justice denied- MDC Alliance Masvingo
ZESA Holdings executive chairperson Dr Sydney Gata has been suspended and will not be allowed to enter the power utility’s headquarters, Energy and Power Development Minister Fortune Chasi said yesterday.
Dr Gata
He said Dr Gata would be barred from Zesa premises until due processes have been completed.
“Our initial stance as Government was to observe corporate governance and give the board an opportunity to deal with the matter. This entailed giving the board time to investigate the serious allegations against Dr Gata.
“But alas! He (Dr Gata) decided to lock the board out of Zesa premises. He took the view that no board meetings would take place as a way to stall progress. He then proceeded to bar the board entry into Zesa premises and ordered security to lock them out,” he said.
“He refused to accept the letter of suspension and instead proceeded to suspend the entire board as if he had the powers to do so.
He doesn’t. It is very strange and unusual action suggesting that something was seriously wrong”.
As a consequence, Minister Chasi said, processes are underway to ensure normalcy is restored at Zesa.
“This will include barring Dr Gata from Zesa for a defined period to allow the investigations to happen. We want to be very procedural and need to.
“We will continue to assume that he is innocent until proven guilty. He needs to make it easy for us, otherwise the irrational actions he is taking — like firing fellow board members — will cause everyone to think otherwise,” he said.
Dr Gata is facing a slew of allegations that include abusing the power utility’s five pool vehicles, scuttling the disciplinary hearing of a top executive and splurging $10 million on Christmas parties and procedurally sending four consultants to South Africa at Zesa’s expense.
Minister Chasi described the corruption allegations as “egregious and very worrying” and called for a thorough board investigation. Government has since called for a thorough and expeditious investigation into the allegations.
Minister Chasi wrote to the Zesa board of directors on Monday ordering them to expedite the probe.
The letter was copied to Deputy Minister Magna Mudyiwa, Chief Secretary to the President and Cabinet Dr Misheck Sibanda, Secretary for Energy and Power Development Dr Gloria Magombo and Dr Gata himself. But Dr Gata has been defiant.
He claimed that his lawyers had advised him to stay put because a meeting that was held to suspend him was unprocedural.
He has since responded to Minister Chasi objecting to the processes that led to his suspension, and now wants the matter to be adjudicated.
“It is clear from the foregoing that I respectfully take the view that your letter in casu ought not be the basis of the way forward between you (as the line Minister) and the Executive Chairman.
I believe this a matter that requires, on an urgent basis, the mediation role of the Office of the President and Cabinet. I will engage that mediation role without delay.”
The Zimbabwe Energy Workers Union (ZEWU) seems to be fighting in Dr Gata’s corner.
In a statement released as a “special communiqué to all Zesa staff” last week, Dr Gata claimed to have suspended the other eight board members-The Sunday Mail
A 19-year-old Bindura woman committed suicide following a dispute with her husband over sadza.
The incident happened in Nyakudya village, Bindura, after the woman’s husband refused to go to the grinding mill where he had been sent by his wife.
The wife, Clara Phiri, instead, went to the grinding mill and on her return, she prepared sadza but withheld the meal from her husband, Biggie Chakorwa (32).
Reports indicate that Chakorwa did not complain but simply went to bed on an empty stomach. Chakorwa’s reaction unnerved Phiri who went on to consume a tobacco pesticide.
She was rushed to Bindura District Hospital after complaining of a stomach ache and was pronounced dead upon admission. Mashonaland Central police spokesperson Inspector Milton Mundembe confirmed the incident.
He said: I can confirm a sudden death case in Bindura where Clara Phiri of Nyakudya village took her life after a misunderstanding with her husband Biggie Chakorwa (32)- NewsDay
I would say, “I’m praying for you” … but that’s a bit over done, I’d rather just say, you’re on my mind and I hope you will be victorious soon. ✊? ?? pic.twitter.com/utzSyTmWti
THE Zimbabwe United Passenger Company (Zupco) has increased fares for urban routes by 100 percent.
According to the new fares, passengers will now pay $8 per trip for Zupco buses up from $4 while Zupco kombis are now charging $16 up from $8. The new fares became effective yesterday.
In an interview yesterday, Zupco chief executive officer Mr Everisto Madangwa said the new fares were to ensure the company improves service delivery as well as cushion its costs. He said high operational costs the company was incurring had also necessitated the fare increases.
“Yes, we have increased our fares by 100 percent, a move we felt is necessary for us to further improve our services to the public, further these new fares will enable us to cushion our costs which we incur as a company,” said Mr Madangwa.
According to the national lockdown regulations, Zupco registered buses and kombis are the only ones allowed to offer public transport in the urban areas.
Mr Madangwa assured the travelling public that their vehicles will be on the road in their numbers as they had adequate fuel to service their fleet.
He also said the company was in the process of increasing its fleet by enticing more transport operators to join the Zupco franchise.
The company has about 500 buses and kombis plying Bulawayo routes-The Sunday News
Here is Mnangagwa's hit list prepared by his Ferret Force under Isaac Moyo, the #CIO DG & Owen Mudha Moyo, the #CIO minister. It's code named "Project Wipe Out Snakes" & targets those who opposed & carried out the 2017 coup along opposition & NGO elements!https://t.co/gC8vR0ptcS
A ZHOMBE man has been arrested for allegedly fatally stabbing his uncle following a dispute over maize which the former intended to sell.
Midlands police spokesperson Inspector Joel Goko confirmed the incident which occurred last week at Ntingwe Business Centre in Zhombe when Sehluli Ncube (33) of Mvayi Village under Chief Malisa, allegedly stabbed his uncle, Josiah Ngatsheni-Ncube (65) following a dispute over maize.
Insp Goko said on the fateful day, Sehluli went to Ntingwe Business Centre to sell two buckets of maize and approached Ms Hilda Muzinjana, a shopkeeper. Muzinjana agreed to buy the maize.
Insp Goko said while they were negotiating the price, Ngatsheni-Ncube approached the two and interrupted the transaction arguing that his nephew could not sell the maize considering that there is drought.
A heated argument ensued and Ngatsheni-Ncube went on to assault Sehluli with a wooden stick all over the body. Sehluli retaliated by stabbing Ngatsheni-Ncube with an Okapi knife all over the body until he died.
“I can confirm that we are investigating a murder case where a man from Zhombe fatally stabbed his uncle with an Okapi knife following a dispute over maize.
The incident occurred when the now deceased, Ngatsheni-Ncube tried to stop the accused person from selling maize.
Ngatsheni-Ncube tried to advise his nephew that it was a bad idea to sell maize at a time when the country was grappling with drought.
The two had a fight resulting in the accused stabbing his uncle on the cheek, chest, waist and buttocks. Ngatsheni-Ncube died on the spot,” he said-The Sunday News
Ignatius Chombo's son in law arrested over land scam | Felix Munyaradzi duped homeseekers millions through fake sales VIDEO @ZBCNewsonlinepic.twitter.com/5qx7cdtv3A
In Chiredzi, four residents namely Machirairwa Mugidho, Ropafadzo Makunike, Mellania Makara & Victor Bhogo, arrested Friday for allegedly participating in an anti-govt demo, are spending the weekend in prison awaiting the court's determination of their bail application.
By A Correspondent- Suspected state security agents raided the house of MDC Alliance Bulawayo provincial youth secretary-general Pashor Sibanda in the wee hours of Sunday.
Speaking to CITE, Sibanda said heavily armed men broke into his house, rounded up his family and demanded to know his whereabouts.
He said:
At around 1 am, suspected state security agents raided my house in Cowdray Park. They gained entry through destroying locks at the gate and breaking windows using a gun.
They stormed into the house and threatened my family at gunpoint to tell them of my whereabouts.
My mum had to scream “amasela” (thieves) to alert neighbours and that’s when the attackers ran away and jumped over the precast wall. My mother was with my father and two siblings.
There have been numerous reports of abductions just before, and after July 31, with 22-year-old Tawanda Muchehiwa abducted and tortured during two days of captivity before he was dumped in the dead of the night.
By A Correspondent- A Gweru-based “prophetess”, Juliet Masakanire, who is facing aggravated indecent assault charges, was recently granted ZWL$1 000 bail by Gweru magistrate Progress Murandu.
The 29-year-old founder and leader of Pray Deliverance and Testimony Ministries International is alleged to have s_xually molested a 32-year-old female member of her church.
The prophetess allegedly offered temporary accommodation to a female member of the Pray Deliverance and Testimony Ministries International church some time in January this year. The two would share the same bed each night.
In the same month, Masakanire allegedly told the complainant that she was going to get married to a husband by the name of Stanley Chinyonga.
On an unknown date during the month of February, Masakanire allegedly woke up during the night and introduced herself as Stanley Chinyonga and started kissing, caressing and fingering the complainant.
She allegedly overpowered the complainant and warned her of dire consequences if she did not submit. The abuse happened on four different occasions.
On 28 June, the complainant finally informed a church mate of her ordeal at the hands of the prophetess and the matter was reported to the police leading to Masakanire’s arrest.
By A Correspondent- The Zimbabwe National Students Union (ZINASU) has condemned the arrest of students for peacefully protesting against corruption and economic deterioration on 31 July 2020.
Methembe Msipha
This comes after Tawanda Muchehiwa was taken from police custody by gunmen and brutally tortured for two days, while Panashe Sivindani was arrested for raising a placard denouncing corruption. Methembe Msipha was also arrested for moving around with a Zimbabwean flag.
In a statement, ZINASU Secretary-General Tapiwanashe Chiriga demanded an end to brutality and harassment of students. The statement read:
The Zimbabwe National Students Union is appalled by the continued targeted harassment of students by the military junta of Emmerson Mnangagwa.
We condemn the inhumane, cruel and satanic abduction and torture of Tawanda Muchehiwa whose only crime was PEACEFULLY exercising his Constitutional right to protest.
Tawanda’s abduction and torture sum up the character and nature of Mnangagwa’s Old Deception, whose only difference with Mugabe is lack of wit.
We condemn the senseless arrest and persecution of Panashe Sivindani, for PEACEFULLY exercising her right to protest.
We condemn the senseless and stupid persecution of Methembe Msipha, arrested for moving around with the Zimbabwean flag.
It is only an archaic dictatorship devoid of sense, out of depth and on its way to hell that feels threatened by students holding placards.
Only a government lacking the essential foundations of a social contract can fear that peaceful students can pull down its bloodstained walls.
The shrinking of civic space at such an alarming rate and the criminalization of dissent by Mnangagwa is and will be nothing more than the speeding up of his journey to political abyss together with his fellow vacuous intellectual amoebas.
The Students Union will not take lightly a regime that sees students as enemies. We want nothing less than a better, inclusive and democratic Zimbabwe with students as integral stakeholders where students concerns are addressed and academic freedoms upheld. That is not too much to ask and this is a vision we will fight for to the bitter of ends.
We demand that Emerson Mnangagwa and his merchants of terror stop harassing citizens in general and students in particular if they do not want us on their list of enemies
Zimbabwean authorities have thwarted a peaceful anti-corruption protest which was planned for today and launched a witch-hunt against political and human rights activists suspected of being behind the planned demonstration, Amnesty International said.
A number of activists have gone into hiding after police published a list of names of human rights defenders who are wanted for questioning in connection with the planned protests.
A number of opposition leaders are also understood to be wanted by the police, while six others have already been arrested.
“The brutal assault on political activists and human rights defenders who have had the courage to call out alleged corruption and demand accountability from their government is intensifying. The persecution of these activists is a blatant abuse of the criminal justice system and mockery of justice,” said Muleya Mwananyanda, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for Southern Africa.
“This latest witch-hunt and repression of peaceful dissent is a continuation of what we have seen in the country in recent years, including the abductions and arbitrary arrests of those who are critical of the government, in an attempt to muzzle differing views.
The thwarting of the protest illustrates the Zimbabwean authorities’ total intolerance of criticism.” Six activists have been arrested or abducted in the past few days, to prevent the protests from taking place today.
Opposition MDC-Alliance spokesperson Fadzayi Mahere and Henry Chivanga, an activist fighting for rights of people with disabilities are among those who were arrested today. Police also arrested the sister of investigative journalist Mduduzi Mathuthu on 30 July, and refused to release her until the journalist appeared at Bulawayo Central police station.
Mduduzi Mathuthu is the editor of online publication Zimlive and has been charged with planning the protests. His sister was released on 30 July. In the lead up to today’s planned protests, authorities have been beefing up security in main cities, including sealing off the Harare Central Business District, under the pretext of enforcing COVID-19 regulations.
“Zimbabwean authorities must stop using COVID-19 as a pretext for restricting human rights. Peaceful protest is not a crime, and the motivations for crushing this demonstration are plain to see,” said Muleya Mwananyanda.
“Zimbabweans must be allowed to freely exercise their human rights, including the rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly. The authorities must stop harassing, intimidating and arresting people who have done nothing more than peacefully express their opinions.”
Background
The government launched a crackdown last week ahead of protests planned for today with the arrest of prominent journalist Hopewell Chin’ono and opposition leader Jacob Ngarivhume.
While Chin’ono was arrested for “inciting public violence”, it appears that he was targeted for exposing allegations of corruption in the procurement of Personal Protective Equipment related to COVID-19.
Ngarivhume had called for a national peaceful protest against corruption, which eats away at people’s livelihoods and contributes to denial of human rights. Both Chin’ono and Ngarivhume remain in police custody and have been denied bailed on the grounds that they remain a risk to the peace of the country.
By A Correspondent- The Ministry of Health and Child Care has made it mandatory that corpses being handled at health institutions be tested for the novel coronavirus.
Similarly, in rural areas, every death is now being treated as a potential case for COVID-19 that need to be tested.
Acting Provincial Medical Director for Matabeleland North Province Dr Munekai Padingani has said they have instructed community members to report cases of sudden death to the police so that a Rapid Response Team (RRT) can collect the specimen. He said:
If there is death in the community, we have instructed community members to call the police and a Rapid Response Team (RRT) is also dispatched to collect the specimen.
The communities and traditional leaders are being sensitised that with any sudden death or just any death at home they must first make a report so that specimens are collected before the person is buried.
Reports indicate that some families in rural areas have been housing escapees from quarantine centres and in turn spreading the virus within villages.
As of Saturday, 1 August 2020, Zimbabwe had recorded 3 659 coronavirus cases, of which 2 579 are active, 1 011 recovered and 69 have died.
By A Correspondent- Tawanda Muchehiwa who was abducted last Thursday and tortured by Mnangagwa’s Ferret team for three days before they dumped him three kilometers from his home last night is being treated at a private clinic.
Ousted Zanu Pf former politburo member has revealed that Muchehiwa could have been poisoned as he is exhibiting symptoms of acute renal failure.
Said Moyo:
“Tawanda Muchehiwa abducted last Thursday & tortured by Mnangagwa’s Ferret Force for three days before they dumped him three kilometers from his home last night is being treated at a private clinic. There’re worries he was poisoned. He’s exhibiting symptoms of acute renal failure!”
By A Correspondent- In Chegutu West, 8 MDC Alliance members are on the run amid revelations that they are being hunted over the July 31 protests.
Said the MDC Alliance in a twitter post:
“In Chegutu West, we have 8 members who have been displaced since #31July. Their homes are being stalked for 2 nights in a row now. Families are being harrassed to reveal their whereabouts.They are being hunted for excercising their rights.”
The development comes following the crackdown on opposition stalwarts over the July 31 protest by security details where AK47 wielding police officers and soldiers are conducting night raids on their homes.
Several opposition leaders have gone into hiding while others have been arrested.
By A Correspondent- ZDF director of public relations, Colonel Overson Mugwisi who succumbed to COVID-19 on Friday was yesterday laid to rest at Glen Forest Memorial Park.
Mugwisi who is survived by 4 children and was declared a liberation war hero’s burial was attended by Minister of State for Harare Metropolitan province Oliver Chidawu who described Mugwisi as a hard worker:
The ZDF shall forever cherish the late Colonel Mugwisi’s selfless service to the people of Zimbabwe before and after Independence.
Mugwisi was the official spokesperson of the Zimbabwe National Army since 2009.
While in conversation with Trevor Ncube, MDC T Secretary-General Douglas Mwonzora said his fight with the firebrand MDC T leader Nelson Chamisa was not personal and he was not aiding Zanu PF to decimate the MDC Alliance, The Standard reports.
When Trevor asked if Mwonzora winning the Secretary-general post in 2014 ahead of Chamisa was the reason why he was now in another formation while Chamisa was in another formation Mwonzora said:
I don’t think so, but when Morgan Tsvangirai died, he took over power in the manner he did and I did not support that. I thought that we were emasculating our own constitution. My fight with him has never been personal.
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Mwonzora was asked again what stopped him from competing against Chamisa for the position of the party president in the 2019 MDC Alliance congress, in his response he said the party sabotaged him by purging his supporters from the structures:
First of all, I intended to challenge him and when we started the congress process, I found out my supporters had been purged from the structures. All the 2014 structures were purged. I then decided not to contest at all.
Mwonzora also accused Chamisa and the group he is leading of not adhering to ideology and said Tendai Biti does not share the social democracy ideology at all. Mwonzora denied aiding the ruling party in decimating the MDC Alliance and said he was working within the confines of constitutionalism when he decided to join Khupe’s camp.
The government is urgently going to recruit more nurses to better equip the health department with more manpower to fight COVID-19, Sunday News reports.
This was revealed during a post-Cabinet briefing when Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services Minister, Monica Mutsvangwa said:
More nurses will be urgently recruited from the available pool of qualified nurses, while processes to resolve those on industrial action continue. In addition, to strengthen the Covid-19 response, Government will recruit additional staff to run Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) tests, including unemployed graduates.
Government will also expedite the secondment and recruitment of additional staff such as nurses, laboratory scientists so as to strengthen health delivery system and national response to the Covid-19 outbreak.
Ironically, health workers including nurses are on strike citing poor working conditions and low wages a move that has worsened the COVID-19 crisis according to the acting Health Minister.
ARMED police officers Friday arrested two MDC Alliance Mashonaland West officials for allegedly mobilising Chegutu residents to demonstrate against President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government for failing to stem rampant corruption and gross maladministration.
MDC Alliance provincial deputy organising secretary, Edward Dzeka, and Chegutu West district youth vice chairperson Sheunesu Chimunyemba appeared at Chegutu Magistrates Court Saturday.
They were remanded in custody to Monday where the magistrate is expected to pass his bail ruling.
Dzeka, who is a local councillor, and his co-accused Chimunyemba are facing charges of inciting public violence last Friday in Chegutu.
MDC Alliance provincial spokesperson, Blessing Mandava confirmed the duo’s arrest, saying it was unlawful.
“We condemn the illegal arrest and inhumane treatment of our deputy organising secretary, Councillor Dzeka and Chimunyemba at the hands of armed security personnel in Chegutu.
“We condemn the illegal nature of his arrest as it is in violation of their rights and liberties as citizens as enshrined in Section 59 of the nation’s constitution,” said Mandava.
Added Mandava; “The pair was unarmed but the heavily-armed security details pointed their guns at them Hollywood-style. We categorically condemn these arrests as they are archaic and not fit for the 21st century.”
Following their arrest, the pair was detained at Chegutu CID Law and Order Section, before their court appearance Saturday.
Bulawayo City Health Department is investigating claims that a dozen people tested positive for COVID-19 after they attended a lavish party that was thrown by a popular socialite in the City of Kings, Sunday News reports.
2 of the 12 people who tested positive after attending the party have since died, including a close friend of the socialite who died on Friday. According to the publication, it is the talk of the town that many people who attended the party tested positive for COVID-19 which prompted the city to investigate the party which was held on 4 July 2020.
Speaking to the publication, Bulawayo City Health Dr Edwin Sibanda said:
We have seen the social media reports and we have heard the voice notes from people and currently we are investigating to establish whether any of the Covid-19 deaths that we have had can be linked to that party. As of this moment we are not sure that there was a party in the first place. If there was, I think it would be irresponsible for anyone to hold a social gathering of that nature when they are aware that the risk of Covid-19 increases exponentially when people gather in numbers in confined spaces.
According to a partygoer who spoke to the publication, the lavish party was organised by one Moses Matsveru and it had over 100 people at a time gatherings were prohibited.
I have seen the videos but all these are from last year in December. People have just brought them just as a way of fixing me, I guess. Those are very old videos. They are bringing this up at a time when I am mourning a dear friend and they are suggesting that he was infected at a party. The person that they are using for this did not even drink, he was someone who fixed satellite dishes, not a money changer as some people on social media are saying. It’s unfortunate that people are using the death of someone close to us to try and discredit us with lies
Videos of the party are circulating on social media and bottles of expensive champagne like Veuve Clicquot can be seen being passed from one person to another.
My wife was caught on the 28th of July at 11:40 p.m. in the evening; when they took her they said that they were after my head. So what they managed to do was to demolish the fence when they failed to enter; they uprooted the poles to the fencing, they destroyed the fencing because the gate was difficult. So when they entered they went ahead to destroy the screen door. I am sending the pictures so that you see them. When they had destroyed the screen door they smashed the key area to the main entrance. Once inside they began destroying the TV. All my windows at the house were destroyed. After the damage, they entered in and took my wife outside and they said that they were looking for me. They looked underneath the bed to be sure that I was not hiding anywhere, then went outside and threw her into a 4×4 vehicle.
https://youtu.be/k-Q9a0YIwnY
They then left the area, and went towards a place in Makulu, in Crest Farm, near Marirangwe. In that place, at the end of the farm property that is where they then dumped my wife. Before they had dumped her, they took her and forced her to drink a certain substance, a liquid. They forced her to drink a substance from water in a fridge, they been continued to pour the liquid all over her body while she was naked. After pouring this liquid over her body at the place which I later visited to see, after they had finished they left her.
At around 3 there are some dogs that started barking, so after they had left she rose up to walk to the side where the dogs were barking, they got to a place where she wanted to get to but the people there did not come out of their houses to assist. As the people kept refusing to come out what happened was she started crying out.
It was now nearly 4 oclock and when the people had delayed coming out she then continued screaming; then someone who was at a nearby house came out. In no time at all there were many people outside and they made loud noises with their car horns. At that point they then asked for her name. She was administered first aid and the 1st exercise done on her, what’s to give her warm tea. After the tea, they prepared some fire with light firewood. at around 6 to 7 that is when she telephoned and she announced that she was in a place called Makulu. This is where I am as the people who assisted me have told me. These are The people who assisted me. That is when I been drove to the area to pick her up. After taking her away to bring her home, my house is now severely damaged and she is now living in fear; and this is the second time it is happening to me. So things are really not well; we are suffering. Right now we are at zero level, we need your help.
Suspended ZANU PF politburo member Cleveria Chizema said that she felt betrayed following her suspension from the ruling party’s supreme decision-making organ between congresses.
Chizema was frozen out from the ruling party after she was allegedly found in possession of fliers and placards supporting the July 31 mass protests.
Some of the placards also called for Vice President Constantino Chiwenga to take over leadership of the country.
But speaking to The Standard after the highly-charged politburo meeting that suspended her, Chizema said the posters were dumped at her house soon after her birthday in March this year and she intended to inform senior party leaders but could not do so because they were busy. She said:
… the message that was delivered by (Zanu PF acting spokesperson) Cde (Patrick) Chinamasa that I was found with papers with subversive messages, which were delivered at my house made it look like there was a van that brought those papers.
I was very disappointed I tell you. I have 50 years in the party. Since it was formed in Highfield — my father was active in the party.
I never had any misconduct for the past 50 years, 40 years of independence, nothing, and 10 years of struggle, nothing, It’s only today. I am disappointed.
Chizema claimed that she had been keeping the fliers since March and tried to present them to Oppah Muchinguri and July Moyo with no success.
Chizema confessed that she could not sleep the day she was suspended.
Vocal parliamentarian Settlement Chikwinya late Saturday sent a message of a help after more than six cars full of security forces paid him a visit at his residence in Fitchlea, Kwekwe
Chikwinya is the Member of Parliament for Mbizo Constituency.
Prominent human rights activist Dewa Mavhinga confirmed the incident.
In a twitter post, Mavhinga said, “MDC-A MP Settlement Chikwinya has sent out an SOS that more than 7 vehicles are at his gate.Police and soldiers in uniform. He is asking for help,”
Meanwhile Chikwinya has confirmed the incident and said that he is safe for now.
“Yes they came last night. We thank God I managed to escape before they could jump the gate “, Chikwinya said.
Officer Commanding Kwekwe District Conrad Mubaiwa could not be reached for a comment.
While Police could not be reached to confirm the latest incident, it is understood that Chikwinya is wanted in connection with July 31 protests.
Former Warriors, Dynamos and CAPS United left-back Cephas Chimedza has paid tribute to the late Phillip Mugadza.
Mugadza, a former DeMbare chairman who was part of the executive during the days Chimedza was at the Glamour Boys, passed away, though its not clear whether it was today or yesterday as details of his death are sketchy.
Chimedza, who is based in Belgium, took to Twitter to pay tribute to the late Mugadza.
“R I.P Mr Chairmain,Philip Mugadza. Will never forget how you helped me as a young boy at Dynamos. I always knew ndikaomerwa ndiri mutown I could always count on you,” he wrote.
Meanwhile, the Zimbabwe Football Association (ZIFA), in their condolence message, described Mugadza as a dedicated football administrator.
“ZIFA commiserates with the Mugadza and football family following the passing on of former Dynamos FC chairman Phillip Mugadza.
Mr Mugadza was an astute administrator who served the beautiful game with dedication and commitment . We are saddened by this great loss,”read the message-Soccer 24
Former Warriors coach Ian ‘Dibango’ Gorowa is now pursuing a new path in life after he excused himself from the frontlines of football.
Gorowa who led the national team to the Chan semifinals in 2014 completed his theological studies and is now a pastor with the AFM church in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Speaking to Sunday Mail, the 49-year old said that he could not resist the urge to trade football with the call to preach the gospel.
“Calling is calling, you have to adhere to it. Football is a gift from God, and I thank the Lord for that,” he said.
“Preaching the word is something I really enjoy. Life is a journey, but while it is a journey, you must make sure or make an effort to walk that journey on the right path; that is with Jesus.
“So I could say I took the path of Jesus. For the word says (John 14:6) ‘I am the way, the truth and the life’ .”
Gorowa joins the list of other football figures that left the sport to preach the gospel. These include former Lengthens and CAPS United mentor Jostein Mathuthu, ex-referee Felix Tangawarima and Tauya Murewa who played for Dynamos-Soccer 24
BySindile Ncube | We have to keep doing what Zanu hates, that is, exposing corruption and theft.
I am no political strategists, but it seems to me that when Hopewell Chin’ono, Alex Magaisa and many other brave men and women of Zimbabwe exposed corruption by Zanu, the party got into panic mode.
They really hate it when their business gets exposed for the filth that it is. It maybe a coincidence, but ever since the revelations about corruption gained steam amongst Zimbabweans, Zanu has been experiencing levels of discontent within its ranks. We hear and read stories about how the leadership have been pointing fingers of blame at each other. In the midst of that at least two of the big fish died in unclear circumstances.
This is why I think people like me and you who want democracy, justice and ending corruption in Zimbabwe should keep digging for more information about the theft of our money. And the #paybackthemoney needs to continue. Many will agree that anything that causes discord in Zanu pf is a positive thing. So let’s keep on inconveniencing them with these corruption exposés.
This time I really think we need to focus even more on the alpha and omega of corruption in Zimbabwe, the thief in chief, the man who cannot help himself but steal steal steal. I am talking about Mnangagwa himself, of course. We need to dig up his files. Actually, there are so many reports and evidence about his thieving activities, it’s not so much digging up but taking swabs at the surface because his wrinkly hands are all over everything from mining, banking and probably pimping. Another one is SB Moyo, the coup announcer, the one who ran away from in London when we tried to have a word with him outside Chatham House.
Let’s keep putting these expose’s out please. Let’s not lose heart. The fight is on!
Farai Dziva|State security agents attempted to abduct MDC Alliance official Settlement Chikwinya on Saturday night.
Several opposition members were arrested across the country as Emmerson Mnangagwa intensified spirited “manoeuvres” to dismantle the opposition.
Read statement below:
NOTICE TO THE PEOPLE OF ZIMBABWE
By Hon Job Wiwa Sikhala 31st July Movement
As you have noticed after the 31st of July, instead of the regime attending to the issues raised by the Zimbabwean citizens they went into the default mode and escalated human rights abuses all over the place. Our people are being beaten, tortured, arrested for no apparent reason. This can not be allowed to continue.
On Saturday night residents of Dzivarasekwa were beaten door to door by people in military uniforms. The same thing happened in St. Mary’s around Chigovanyika area where citizens at night were indiscriminately beaten in their homes for no explanation.
Yesterday they were beating people door to door around the place where my house is called kuMapositori. In Zvishavane, the same happened, so was in Mucheke Masvingo and reports we are getting from Bulawayo, Gweru and Kwekwe are so sad.
I think you have all seen the pictures of Tawanda Mucheiwa a 22 year old nephew to journalist Mduduzi Mathuthu. The 2nd year university student was severely tortured after having been taken to different places, where at one time was driven for a period of 4 hours to an unknown destination where he was taken to a farm which had military trucks parked on it.
You have seen the unlawful arrests of Advocate Fadzai Mahere, author and international award winning writer Tsitsi Dangarembga, Cllr Godfrey Kurauone in Masvingo, Hon Mugidho in Chiredzi and several citizens in Gweru, Bulawayo, Chiredzi, Kwekwe, Matabeleland South and allover the place.
Last night Hon Settlement Chikwinya escaped attempted abduction on his person by 7 trucks loaded with state security agencies. We can not accept this situation. No one is safe. If not careful we will all perish. It is now time to speak to the world.
From tomorrow Monday the 3rd of August, we urge all of you to have an opportunity to stock food.
This is called upon because we need to speak more loudly for the entire week starting Monday the 10th of August to the 15th. That will be the week of action. This time it won’t be a one day event. It will be a week of expression against corruption and looting.
This time we are also speaking against gross human rights abuses against us. We will say no to corruption and no to looting. No to abductions. No to violence against the people of Zimbabwe by the state. These are going to be our 4 agenda items for our action. Why are you bringing violence against the people? People are peaceful in their homes and you raid them at night and beat them.
Dear Zimbabweans, we need to stop it. This has gone against all tenants of civilization and human dignity.
Why are people being beaten? Why are people being tortured, why are people being arrested for no crime? Kwayi unnecessary movements? What is that in a modern state? In the 21st century? No no no. We can’t accept this. One week action from the 10th of August to the 15th.
We are tired of being abused in our own country. 10th to the 15th we shall Speak.
Speak Zimbabwe Speak No to Corruption and Looting No to Abductions, Torture and Violence against citizens.
Today(yesterday) marks the second anniversary of the 1st of August 2018 shootings, an episode in respect of which at least 6 compatriots were shot and killed in cold blood.
The families of the deceased are yet to get justice despite the findings of the Motlanthe Commission against the State including the recommendation to arrest the perpetrators.
The MDC Alliance views the episode as a clear sign of a failure to break from the past despite a facade of reform which had been mooted by the Mnangagwa adminstration.
It was a continuation of other episodes including Gukurahundi,the violence in the run up to 2000, 2002, 2005 and 2008 elections, abductions of Itai Dzamara, killings of Tonderai Ndira, Godfrey Kauzani and Talent Mabika among others.
We demand justice for the victims of 1 August 2018.
We also demand the operationalization of the National Peace and Reconciliation Commision including ensuring it’s full independence.
We also demand the urgent establishment of the Independent Complains Mechanism against members of the security forces provided in section 210 of the Constitution.
More importantly there must be an end to the capture of State institutions including the army and police in pursuit of a narrow partisan agenda of power retention.
Our security services must be left to do their work of protecting the territorial intergrity of our country and maintaining law and order following the conduct spelt out in section 208 of the Constitution.
Stay aware of the latest information on the COVID-19 outbreak, available on the WHO website and through your national and local public health authority. Many countries around the world have seen cases of COVID-19 and several have seen outbreaks.
The situation is unpredictable so check regularly for the latest news.
You can reduce your chances of being infected or spreading COVID-19 by taking some simple precautions:
Regularly and thoroughly clean your hands with an alcohol-based hand rub or wash them with soap and water.
Why?Washing your hands with soap and water or using alcohol-based hand rub kills viruses that may be on your hands.
Maintain at least 1 metre (3 feet) distance between yourself and anyone who is coughing or sneezing.
Why? When someone coughs or sneezes they spray small liquid droplets from their nose or mouth which may contain virus. If you are too close, you can breathe in the droplets, including the COVID-19 virus if the person coughing has the disease.
Avoid touching eyes, nose and mouth
Why? Hands touch many surfaces and can pick up viruses. Once contaminated, hands can transfer the virus to your eyes, nose or mouth. From there, the virus can enter your body and can make you sick.
Make sure you, and the people around you, follow good respiratory hygiene. This means covering your mouth and nose with your bent elbow or tissue when you cough or sneeze. Then dispose of the used tissue immediately.
Why? Droplets spread virus. By following good respiratory hygiene you protect the people around you from viruses such as cold, flu and COVID-19.
Stay home if you feel unwell. If you have a fever, cough and difficulty breathing, seek medical attention and call in advance. Follow the directions of your local health authority.
Why? National and local authorities will have the most up to date information on the situation in your area. Calling in advance will allow your health care provider to quickly direct you to the right health facility. This will also protect you and help prevent spread of viruses and other infections.
Keep up to date on the latest COVID-19 hotspots (cities or local areas where COVID-19 is spreading widely). If possible, avoid traveling to places – especially if you are an older person or have diabetes, heart or lung disease.
Why? You have a higher chance of catching COVID-19 in one of these areas.
Credit:WHO
Inserted by Zimbabwe Online Health Centre
For more information follow /like our Facebook page :Zimbabwe Online Health Centre
MDC Alliance Acting national women assembly Hon Mugidho, Chiredzi Deputy Town Chair Councillor Ropa, MDC Alliance Chiredzi West district chair Mr Kampota and others will spend the weekend in cells after being arrested on Friday.
Human Rights Lawyer Adv Martin Mureri said Chiredzi Magistrate Chikodzore will give judgement on the bail application on 3rd Monday 2020, at 14:15pm.
As MDC Alliance we are shocked by selective application of the law and we demand their immediate unconditional release. Bail denied is Justice denied- MDC Alliance Masvingo
As you have noticed after the 31st of July, instead of the regime attending to the issues raised by the Zimbabwean citizens they went into the default mode and escalated human rights abuses all over the place. Our people are being beaten, tortured, arrested for no apparent reason. This can not be allowed to continue.
On Saturday night residents of Dzivarasekwa were beaten door to door by people in military uniforms. The same thing happened in St. Mary’s around Chigovanyika area where citizens at night were indiscriminately beaten in their homes for no explanation.
Yesterday they were beating people door to door around the place where my house is called kuMapositori. In Zvishavane, the same happened, so was in Mucheke Masvingo and reports we are getting from Bulawayo, Gweru and Kwekwe are so sad.
I think you have all seen the pictures of Tawanda Mucheiwa a 22 year old nephew to journalist Mduduzi Mathuthu. The 2nd year university student was severely tortured after having been taken to different places, where at one time was driven for a period of 4 hours to an unknown destination where he was taken to a farm which had military trucks parked on it.
You have seen the unlawful arrests of Advocate Fadzai Mahere, author and international award winning writer Tsitsi Dangarembga, Cllr Godfrey Kurauone in Masvingo, Hon Mugidho in Chiredzi and several citizens in Gweru, Bulawayo, Chiredzi, Kwekwe, Matabeleland South and allover the place.
Last night Hon Settlement Chikwinya escaped attempted abduction on his person by 7 trucks loaded with state security agencies. We can not accept this situation. No one is safe. If not careful we will all perish. It is now time to speak to the world.
From tomorrow Monday the 3rd of August, we urge all of you to have an opportunity to stock food.
This is called upon because we need to speak more loudly for the entire week starting Monday the 10th of August to the 15th. That will be the week of action. This time it won’t be a one day event. It will be a week of expression against corruption and looting.
This time we are also speaking against gross human rights abuses against us. We will say no to corruption and no to looting. No to abductions. No to violence against the people of Zimbabwe by the state. These are going to be our 4 agenda items for our action. Why are you bringing violence against the people? People are peaceful in their homes and you raid them at night and beat them.
Dear Zimbabweans, we need to stop it. This has gone against all tenants of civilization and human dignity.
Why are people being beaten? Why are people being tortured, why are people being arrested for no crime? Kwayi unnecessary movements? What is that in a modern state? In the 21st century? No no no. We can’t accept this. One week action from the 10th of August to the 15th.
We are tired of being abused in our own country. 10th to the 15th we shall Speak.
Speak Zimbabwe Speak No to Corruption and Looting No to Abductions, Torture and Violence against citizens.
Steward Bank has limited its operating hours for all its branches to only six and a half hours during weekdays and only three hours on Saturdays.
In a statement, the Bank said all its branches will be open between 8:30 am and 2:00 pm from Monday to Friday, and between 8:30 am and 11:30 am on Saturdays.
The statement read:
In light of the recent increase in COVID-19 cases, we encourage customers to make use of the following digital platforms as opposed to coming into branches:
The Ministry of Health and Child Care has made it mandatory that corpses being handled at health institutions be tested for the novel coronavirus.
Similarly, in rural areas, every death is now being treated as a potential case for COVID-19 that need to be tested.
Acting Provincial Medical Director for Matabeleland North Province Dr Munekai Padingani has said they have instructed community members to report cases of sudden death to the police so that a Rapid Response Team (RRT) can collect the specimen. He said:
If there is death in the community, we have instructed community members to call the police and a Rapid Response Team (RRT) is also dispatched to collect the specimen.
The communities and traditional leaders are being sensitised that with any sudden death or just any death at home they must first make a report so that specimens are collected before the person is buried.
Reports indicate that some families in rural areas have been housing escapees from quarantine centres and in turn spreading the virus within villages.
As of Saturday, 1 August 2020, Zimbabwe had recorded 3 659 coronavirus cases, of which 2 579 are active, 1 011 recovered and 69 have died.
ZANU PF aligned social media user Kudzai Mutisi has told President Emmerson Mnangagwa to resign and stay if he does not understand his responsibility to appoint a new minister of Health and Child Care to replace the sacked Dr Obadiah Moyo.
Posting on Twitter, Mutisi who has of late been candid on Mnangagwa and ZANU PF said the President was failing to see the urgency to appoint a new minister when the country was going through a pandemic which he said was strange of him.
“President @edmnangagwa must appoint a new Minister of Health without any delay… If he doesn’t know his responsibilities as a president he must resign and stay at home. Why is he so slow to act? We are in the middle of a pandemic & the President sees no urgency at all? Strange,” sais Mutisi.
Obadiah Moyo was sacked more than a month ago after he was implicated in corruption involving USD$60 Million COVID-19 response fund.
As seen from this exhibit of his clothes, Tawanda Muchehiwa is a strong young man. He was brutally tortured. Without your public noise & the gallant work of his lawyer Nqobani Sithole, whose habeas corpus application scared the Ferret Force, the risk of a fatal outcome was high! pic.twitter.com/ykpuA3GTqs
In Chiredzi, four residents namely Machirairwa Mugidho, Ropafadzo Makunike, Mellania Makara & Victor Bhogo, arrested Friday for allegedly participating in an anti-govt demo, are spending the weekend in prison awaiting the court’s determination of their bail application.
The four residents were charged with contravening section 37(1)(a) of the Code after participating in a protest in which they allegedly carried some placards with messages denouncing President Mnangagwa such as “ZANU PF Must Go” and “Shutdown Inflation Not Innocent Citizens”.
Chiredzi residents who peacefully protested on Friday
Suspended ZANU PF politburo member Cleveria Chizema has accused her former housemaid of involvement in her recent fallout with her party colleagues.
Chizema was suspended from the politburo last week after she was found in possession of fliers and placards promoting the July 31 anti-government protests.
She said the posters were dumped at her home in Harare soon after a birthday party in March this year.
Chizema said she kept the fliers under a carpet and intended to present them to politburo members Oppah Muchinguri, who is the Defence Minister, and July Moyo – the Local Government Minister.
Chizema said she suspected that her long-time maid was involved in the plot as she left immediately after the posters were dumped in her yard.
She said:
There was another day, i could not sleep, the alarm kept ringing. I think this was definitely a plot against me.
….Six years together, no notice, no nothing. I suspect she was the one who knew I threw the papers under the carpet.
The fliers allegedly pushed for Vice President Constantino Chiwenga to take over the top job in the ruling party.
Reports claim that Chizema’s suspension was part of a broader move to weed out Chiwenga’s sympathisers and there could be more victims in the coming days.
Chiwenga, who engineered the coup that toppled long-time ruler Robert Mugabe in 2017, had an alleged fallout with President Emmerson Mnangagwa after the latter insisted on running for a second term in 2023 despite an alleged deal that he would serve for one term and allow his deputy to take over.
By A Correspondent- Former MDC legislator Norman Mpofu has challenged the opposition leader Nelson Chamisa advisers to resign for advising him to take leave when the nation needs him the most.
“Can Chamisa advisors do a noble thing and resign. How can they allow him to be absent from duty during such a critical moment. Being at the helm of a party in a struggle like the one in Zimbabwe requires sacrifices. One can not afford to even bury loved ones let alone mourn for a month. This is unprecedented. The party visibility has dropped,” Mpofu said.
“Party supporters and other citizens are under siege. Party supporters and citizens are being abducted. It needs him to confront the system, to galvanize the nation and condemn tyranny. It needs him to alert the world. MDC A is conspicuous by its silence in the middle of a crisis. Its visibility is declining.”
He said the party must realise the gap it has left. Individuals like Hopewell Chinono , Alex Magaisa , Mduduzi Mathuthu , Brezhnev Malaba have become the new voice of the voiceless.
“Mwonzora et al have a walk in the park. MDCA looks floored. What happened to that spirit of Chamisa of grabbing power when Tsvsngirai’s body was not even buried. Double standards I presume,” he said.
By A Correspondent- The Martin Dinha-led National railways of Zimbabwe (NRZ) board has fired the parastatal’s management for alleged gross incompetence, mismanagement, and failure to turn around the fortunes of the company.
The development follows incessant complaints by the government on the state of affairs at the NRZ amid fears the company could soon be moribund owing to failed management. and matters came to a head-on Friday when the NRZ board unveiled to transport and infrastructural Development minister Joel Biggie Matiza the new acting NrZ general manager (GM) Joseph Mashika.
Mashika is a member of the NRZ board. He will act until a substantive Gm has been appointed.
He takes over from Lewis Mukwada, who was “forced” into early retirement despite the fact that he had a running contract that was due to expire in October this year.
The introduction and unveiling of the new acting Gm would mark the beginning of a reshuffle process that would culminate in a new NRZ management setup.
“Those four managers, the general manager, Lewis Mukwada included, have been fired,” the insider said.
Dinha confirmed the development saying “as a board, we shall be guided by policy as we finalise the packages of those that are leaving”.
Before we set out, I made a telephone call to my trusted long-time mentor, friend and lawyer – David Drury.
I told him that we were about to go on a peaceful walking protest in the neighbourhood. I told him we had taken every precaution in the book to ensure we were compliant with the law. We wore face masks. We were walking within the permitted radius.
We carried sanitizer. We were going to respect social distancing. There were 7 of us. Our actions were peaceful.
We had written placards that read “No Violence,” “I am protesting peacefully,” Babies’ Lives Matter,” “Covid Kills, So does corruption,” “FreeZimbabwe,” “I have a dream,” and “EndHunger”. When we were making these placards, we joked that each placard represented each person’s little prayer or wish for Zimbabwe.
It was a gloriously sunny, blue-skied day but the air was thick and ominous. We had been online and seen that the army and riot police had barricaded all entry roads to the central business district. I had been advised earlier by phone that a case that I am acting in had been postponed because the magistrate had failed to get to Rotten Row from out of town. I had been turned back at Churchill Ave while trying to get to work myself.
“No problem, Fadzayi. Don’t hesitate to call,” David Drury said. “I promise we will stay safe,” I replied.
Moments after we left the house, a vehicle without a number plate was following us and taking pictures. We continued walking. Courage does not mean you’re not afraid. It means that you face your fears and choose to act in spite of them. What sort of society criminalizes a placard written “Save the Babies?”
Who does not know that just a week earlier, 7 out of 8 newborn babies had died at Harare Hospital because nurses and doctors are striking against their deplorable working conditions. In 2020, those levels of infant mortality cannot be accepted as normal. A day earlier, I had turned 35. I was born at the hospital where the babies died. I had suffered from foetal distress. Had there been no healthcare workers, I would be a statistic like those babies. Those babies lost their lives because of our failed healthcare system.
We continued walking. As we walked down the road, people stared at us in shock. As we passed a vendors’ flower market, everybody stopped talking. Some looked to the side. One could slice through the thick fog of fear with a knife. Several threats had been made earlier in the week by the state and “ruling party”. Anybody who dared to participate in the protest on 31 July would be severely dealt with.
As a believer in the Constitution, it remained more important to me that the Constitution is supreme. It guarantees the right to peaceful protest. How could the government run roughshod over that? Why was the State at war with citizens making peaceful demands for a better life? What is freedom if you cannot ask, speak or act? I had haggled over these questions practically and philosophically for weeks as the number of abductions, arbitrary arrests and assaults on journalistic freedom had escalated.
Nobody wants to live in a police state.
We continued up a main road, peaceful and socially-distanced. We continued chatting.
The conversation was rambly and stilted, mostly because we were now conscious that we were being tailed by a car full of people in a strange car but in plain clothes. Sensing danger, we managed to get a lift into a car where we established for certain that we were being followed. For what reason? We had not done anything wrong. We had not committed a crime. Firm in the conviction that we were innocent and had nothing to hide or run away from, we went to a coffee shop at a shopping centre. They followed us there too.
We observed from a distance that the persons in plainclothes were now changing into police uniforms. We telephoned David Drury who arrived with Emma Drury. As they arrived, riot police had flooded the shopping centre, armed with AK rifles. This scene was unfamiliar in this part of town. We remained seated until they started pointing at me “uyo, uyo.” They charged at us. I asked why and what the charge could possibly be if we were under any sort of arrest. “Inciting public violence!” the officer yelled as another leapt over the barricaded entrance to the coffee shop.
“What are you doing? This is ridiculous. Why do you find it necessary to jump over the entrance?” Mr Drury asked the police in an attempt to de-escalate their disproportionate advance towards us. “We want to see the placards in your car.”
The placard at the top when they inspected the car was the one that read, “No Violence” followed by the one that said “I am protesting peacefully.”
Of course, they bundled all 7 of us up into the back of a police truck and charged us with inciting public violence anyway. We lay and sat on top of each other as we drove through a menacingly silent CBD to the Harare Central Police Station. When it comes to enforcing repression, all semblance of wanting to respect Covid 19 is thrown out the window.
At the police station, the inefficiency, underfunding and undignified state of the justice system was again laid bare.
We were asked our ID numbers so many times that I ended up drawing a blank. The interrogation methods are outdated. The Constitution is not paid regard to in the slightest and our police officers did not have a copy of the Criminal Code. We were blessed to be surrounded by a team of competent lawyers who did everything in their power to defend our rights.
In my individual police interview, one of the questions struck at my core.
“Did you not think that because of the position you hold and party you belong to, people would be incited to join your so called peaceful protest and become violent.?”
Looking at Mr Drury, half in shock, half in anger, I said, “I did not know that my constitutional rights are suspended due to my political affiliation. I thought that as a citizen of Zimbabwe, I had the same rights as everyone else.”
At the police station we met Tsitsi Dangarembwa, Julie Barnes and other protesters had been arrested for protesting peacefully – most had been holding up placards in their neighbourhood with peaceful demands. Tsitsi and Julie also narrated an ordeal of having been tailed and photographed before their arrest. At the holding cells, we also saw Terrence and Loveridge who had been abducted, beaten and tortured.
They had bleeding head injuries and were dazed. Their clothes were soiled in dirt. They said they had been blindfolded, told they were at Lake Chivero and threatened. Their abductors kept saying they were going to feed them to the crocodiles. The condition of the State, afraid and at war with citizens making legitimate demands was indeed a Nervous one.
As night fell, we were taken upstairs to our cells. There was no water, just an overflowing pit latrine. There were puddles of urine everywhere. There was no sanitizer and no soap. One of the women among us was on her period. Bloody hell. At first we looked at the pile of dirty blankets and figured we could not use them because they were so dirty. By the end of the night, we had used every blanket in sight and huddled up very close to each other as the cold coursed through our veins.
After what felt like a millenium, morning came. Further inefficiency, confusion and slowness of the wheels of justice meant that we only got to court after lunchtime. We were granted bail with the strange condition that we had to hand in our passports. My little brother Simon Drury was taken to remand prison because they say his passport has expired and was therefore not competent fulfilment of his bail conditions. On hearing this, I wanted to scream. The ridiculousness, the injustice and the madness know no end.
Freedom?
For as long as we have to remain silent with no rights and remedies in the face of grave injustice, I assure you, we are not yet free. A free society is my wish for Zimbabwe.
Anything less than that is an existence I will not enjoy being a part of. They must Free Hopewell and they must Free Jacob. Tawanda Muchehiwa must be delivered back to his family in one piece.
What society is this where people cannot be free?
When things like this happen, the best of the Zimbabwean spirit is also placed on full display. Thank you to my beloved parents, Stephen and Winfrida. They want someone to be speaking out but they do not want it to be their daughter. It is normal for us to feel this way. It is sometimes the cost of freedom. Thank you to my siblings for their eternal support.
Thank you Tafi for coming to court and praying. Thank you Tawi for the calls. Thank you Mudiwa for being my second brain and being the qeen logistician during the crisis. Thank you Lenon for getting me pain and headache meds and showing up.
Thank you to Emma Drury for showing up this and every time and taking charge. Thank you for standing up to that police officer who nearly manhandled you to get my phone. Thank you Vikki Drury for being a second mum and breakfast maker.
Thank you Dr Gede for attending to us medically and to my beloved friends Cheryl and Zam. Thank you Rebekah for the warm clothes and care pack.
Thank you Namatai for the food at the police station. Thank you to my work colleagues David and Fran for showing up. Thank you to our amazing legal team – Chris, Paida, Alec and Andrea. Thank you to MDC Alliance officials including Tendai Biti and Miriam Mushayi for showing up at court for solidarity. Thank you to Ibbo Mandaza for showing up. Thank you to everyone for the support online and offline. I am so grateful.
To Nyasha, Tino, Jess, Jossee, Simon and Tinashe – I am so proud to know you and call you my friends. One day, we will look back on this with a deeper understanding of why things worked out the way they did, for better and for worse.
At a personal level, I am on a journey that some may not understand.That’s okay.
My aspiration is that we live in a nation where there is freedom, fairness and opportunity for all. The journey is going to be long and often arduous.
However, we must never stop fighting to win Zimbabwe for change. I will never stop imagining that Zimbabwe can be better than it is now. Save the babies – the unborn ones who deserve a brighter future than the crisis-filled nation that is being served to us currently.
Tawanda Mathuthu, the nephew of ZimLive Editor Mduduzi Mathuthu was abducted on Thursday, gruesome tortured and asked to drink his urine, it has emerged.
Former Cabinet Minister Professor Jonathan Moyo says Muchehiwa was a ‘guest’ of the dreaded Ferret team.
The Ferret team is made up of the police, military police, central Intelligence organization, and other security organs.
Said Moyo, “Mnangagwa’s Ferret Force, a team of five joined by others over the more than two days they held him, tortured Tawanda Muchehiwa in horrific ways like repeatedly beating him below his feet & on his bums, making him drink his urine, eat tainted food and mental torture!”
According to ZimLive Muchehiwa, (22), was chained and tortured over 2 days, including being made to drink own urine. They accused him of plotting to overthrow President Emmerson Mnangagwa.
His uncle Mathuthus said the stated wanted to know who is supplying ZimLive with sources relating to the US$60 million Covid-19 tender scam which led to the firing of Health Minister Obadiah Moyo.
By Tawanda Majoni- One crazy thing happened last week. Not quite surprising, but shocking, nonetheless. A brazen case of crass impunity and criminality in the ruling Zanu-PF.
The ruling party held a politburo meeting. Nothing wrong with that. The party can hold as many politburo meetings as it wants, and whenever its whim dictates, as has always been the case. The problem is, at the latest meeting last week, the decision-making politburo hauled in the two topmost generals from the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO). That is, the director general, Isaac Moyo, and his deputy, Walter Tapfumaneyi.
The dominant item on the agenda was factional fights within Zanu-PF. The party has a security department, which is led by Lovemore Matuke. The party security chief made some interesting revelations. He told the meeting that some Zanu-PF elements were plotting against their president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, who is also the Zimbabwean president.
At the end of the meeting, they announced that they had suspended a politburo member, Cleveria Chizema, who reportedly kept at her home, placards denouncing Mnangagwa and supporting his deputy, Constantino Chiwenga, ahead of the national protests that the opposition and civil society had called for July 31. Things are still murky, but it seems the reason why they brought in Moyo and Tapfumaneyi was to get their say and findings on the alleged factional developments apparently pitting Mnangagwa against Chiwenga.
And as reported and not refuted the two top spooks supported the claims that Matuke had made about the party saboteurs apparently being used to uproot Mnangagwa. They are said to have said they had made the same findings as Matuke on the factional drama taking place in the party.
Now, that’s bizarre. Zanu-PF has Matuke and other chaps in its security department. What, then, was the thinking behind roping in the big spooks to participate in a conversation arranged by a private institution, Zanu-PF? You and I will make our good guesses out of it. Maybe, as the media speculated, Mnangagwa wanted to hasten his point about the claimed sabotage and show Chiwenga that he was clever and knew what Brutus was plotting.
But whatever reasons were there to haul Moyo and Tapfumaneyi into the plot, the point is, their participation in the politburo talk show was illegal. It tore the constitution into pieces the moment the two arrived at the Rotten Row hall. It betrayed the slippery slope that comes with conflating national issues and the affairs of a private institution.
The Zimbabwean constitution is loud and fluent on such matters. For starters, the constitution declares itself as the supreme law which any law, practice, custom or conduct must obey, and which is binding on any person or institution. This one, given under the Founding Provisions in Chapter I, is a very useful provision. What it means is that no-one, not even the ruling party, must rebel against the constitution. It’s the people’s anointed covenant and must not be touched.
Now, under the same chapter, the Zimbabwean constitution categorically lists down the tiers of government. And a political party, ruling or wishing to rule, is nowhere near that. That means that Zanu-PF is not a tier of government, even though it’s the ruling party. It remains what a political party must be, a private and voluntary organisation.
But more usefully, under Chapter 11, the constitution gives invaluable wisdom on security services. Here, the supreme law says many noble things. Members of the security services, of which the CIO is part, must always act in accordance with the constitution and other laws. That’s number one. Two, members of the security services must not act in a partisan manner.
Three, members of the security services must not further the interests of any political party or cause. Four members of the security service must not prejudice the lawful interests of any political party. Five, they must not be active members or office bearers of any political party or organisation. Then, last but not least, servicemen and women must not be engaged in civilian institutions, except in periods of public emergency.
Those are the commandments. Going against them means you are acting in an unconstitutional, therefore criminal and impeachable manner.
Back to the politburo meeting as it relates to the participation of Moyo and the deputy director general in CIO. Is there, therefore, any doubt about what the gathering did to the constitution, in spirit and act? Moyo and his deputy stopped being impartial the moment they stepped into the Zanu-PF headquarters for a private, political meeting. But then, the mere fact that they also carried out their own investigations on a purely party issue regarding factionalism made them partisan too.
For argument’s sake, let’s assume they did those investigations on the basis that Mnangagwa is the national president and, therefore, whatever happens to him is of national interest. But that didn’t give them any mandate to go and report to the Zanu-PF politburo. Section 209 provides for a National Security Council whose roles include advising the presidium on national security issues. The president and his deputies are supposed to be part of the council, together with the service chiefs and relevant ministers.
That’s the theatre the CIO bosses must have taken the matter to if they were genuinely convinced that the factional happenings in Zanu-PF had a national bearing.
Not the Zanu-PF headquarters. Participating in party squabbles makes you partisan, no doubt about it. It means that, directly or indirectly, you are influencing party policies, decisions and actions. Yet, as already seen, the supreme law says the security service must never further the interests of any political party. Nor should they engage in civilian institutions unless in an emergency. Nor must they actively participate in the affairs of a political party, whichever that party is. By informing policy, decisions and actions directly or indirectly those that do it are actively involving themselves in political party affairs.
Zanu-PF, as a political party, is a civilian institution. That means security servicemen and women must find the farthest spot away from it and stay there, unless they don’t mind being seen as unconstitutional miscreants. And, by the way, there is no emergency that would justify their involvement in civilian affairs as Moyo and Tapfumaneyi did. Yes, we have an emergency. That’s Covid-19. But that emergency has no relevance to what is being talked about here. If there is any relevant emergency, it’s the so-called factional fights in Zanu-PF and all those rumours about imminent coups. But then, that’s a Zanu-PF emergency, not a national one.
This disruptive collation of party politics and national politics is a long-drawn narrative in Zanu-PF. They just can’t separate the two as the law requires. But the fact that they have always done it doesn’t make it right. In fact, it’s partly the reason why Zimbabwe is in such a mess.
The culture of impunity where this conflation is concerned may be working in Zanu-PF’s favour now as it has done in the past. But, friends and countrymen, the fact that storks have always come in summer doesn’t mean they will always come in summer. One day will be one day, when things change, never mind if the change will be from Zanu-PF or elsewhere.
—— Tawanda Majoni is the Information for Development Trust (IDT) national coordinator and can be contacted on [email protected].
By A Correspondent- Suspended Zanu PF politburo member Cleveria Chizema said that she felt betrayed following her suspension from the ruling party’s supreme decision-making organ between congresses.
Chizema was frozen out from the ruling party after she was allegedly found in possession of fliers and placards supporting the July 31 mass protests.
Some of the placards also called for Vice President Constantino Chiwenga to take over leadership of the country.
But speaking to The Standard after the highly-charged politburo meeting that suspended her, Chizema said the posters were dumped at her house soon after her birthday in March this year and she intended to inform senior party leaders but could not do so because they were busy. She said:
… the message that was delivered by (Zanu PF acting spokesperson) Cde (Patrick) Chinamasa that I was found with papers with subversive messages, which were delivered at my house made it look like there was a van that brought those papers.
I was very disappointed I tell you. I have 50 years in the party. Since it was formed in Highfield — my father was active in the party.
I never had any misconduct for the past 50 years, 40 years of independence, nothing, and 10 years of struggle, nothing, It’s only today. I am disappointed.
Chizema claimed that she had been keeping the fliers since March and tried to present them to Oppah Muchinguri and July Moyo with no success.
Chizema confessed that she could not sleep the day she was suspended.-standard
Open letter to Human rights groups and Minister of Social Services
I am a member of the African Apostolic Church and i am highly disturbed and worried about Mutumwa Paul Mwazha’s (102 years) welfare and safety as his close lieutenants continue to pesture him to appoint a successor as well as disturbing his peace and abusing him.
At such an advanced age Mutumwa should be enjoying his privacy and not disturbed by administrative ,court and succession issues.
Before being inactive in church issuues Mutumwa Mwazha appointed his last born son Bishop Israel Tawanda Mwazha, who is currently based in South Africa , to perform the functions which he used to do such as performing holy communion rites.
In 2019 Evangelist Kasima (mutumwa’s close aide) penned a letter which he claimed was written under Mutumwa’s instructions.
The letter reinforced that Bishop Tawanda would continue doing his duties as spritual leader and leading in holy communion.
The letter also went on to instruct other leaders to go with Bishop Alfred Kushamisa Mwazha (Second born son) when buying holy communion items since he is the most senior leader when people are at church.
Mutumwa’s eldest son Ngoni Edward Mwazha was barred from leading since he went against church doctrine of one men one wife but he married many wives and thus unqualified.
On 19 March 2020 all Mutumwa’s sons and Board of trustee members were called and the letter was read in their presence by his aide Ev Kasima.
Later the letter’s contents were intepreted differently as some felt Tawanda should lead the church since he had been given an important task to lead in holy communion whilst others felt Kushamisa should lead since he was most senior as indicated in the letter. This issue spilled into public domain and this prompted some government officials to try and break the impasse.
They organised to go to Mutumwa’s house to hear his correct position pertaining succession issue in the letter but that did not materialise as the visit generated into chaos in May 2020 and the clashes of the day made headlines in most Zimbabwean media outlets including ZBC TV.
The event then prompted one of the church members Reverend Ernest Mhambare( son to the late church chairman Enoch Mhambare) to report the matter to High court on urgent basis.He wanted the perpetrators of the violence( including Mutumwa’s sons Ngoni,Kushamisa and James as well as Secretary General Juru, Bishops Tafa of Harare North, Bishop Chiome and Rev Siyamuzhombwe) to stop that.He also wanted to compel church leaders to use the constitution in all matters pertaining the church succession and administration.
The church constitution states that in the event of Mutumwa’ s death, illness or absence , the church would be headed by a Priesthood Council (PC) which is made up of mutumwa’s biological sons who are bishops and all matters to be decided unanimously not by majority vote in the PC. The PC would be assisted by a Board of Trustee BOT which is also a high ranking body which encompasses PC and other selected church leaders.
The succession matter divided the leaders so much that two camps exists : those supporting Tawanda Israel Mwazha ( last born) and others supporting Kushamisa Afred Mwazha( second born).
Among senior members Tawanda’s camp has support of Church Chairman Chiseko Mwazha, Vice chairman Patrick Mahachi, Vice Secretary General Mhizha whilst Kushamisa’s camp has General secretary Juru, James Mwazha as well as non church members Ngoni Mwazha and Dr Masimba Mwazha.
Various Bishops and Reverends also took sides.These 2 camps take turns to visit mutumwa seperately several times trying to lure Mutumwa to appoint their preferred candidates as successors.
They visit him a lot exposing him to corona virus considering that his age is advanced and very vulnerable .
When the case was tried at High court Kushamisa’s camp felt it was losing as Applicant Mhambare’s lawyers requested to see the authenticity of the 19 March letter and this riled Kushamisa’s camp which felt it was losing since the matter is to go before the judge on 5 August 2020.So to strengthen their defence they sought Paul Mwazha’s signature.This prompted Kushamisa Mwazha and his team led by Rev Siyamuzhombwe to go and force Mutumwa Mwazha to put a fingerprint on the letter of 19 March.Mutumwa did not concede but the cabal made sure his thumb had to be put at all cost.They dipped his finger in ink against his will and he complained so much about the incident since he was no longer comfortable with his hands following the dipping.He even complained to Siyamuzhombwe that he would break his thumb( munondikuvadzaka he said) as Siyamuzhombwe kept on pressing it on the letter making finger prints.After forcing him to put his finger print Mutumwa kept on asking what had happened to his hand(munwe wangu waomarara sei mandiitei?) and why they had treated him (ko mazviitirei?ah vakomanaka)that way.He actually said he had never experienced such discomfort in his hands( hazvisati zvambodai kutotanga nhasi).He requested to get an explanation for over 25 minutes to what could have happened and why.He requested to have hands washed about three times but kept on requesting explanation and complaining about his discomfort.Siyamuzhombwe instructed his aides to give him gloves to wear so that he does not feel nor see the ink).There is a 40 minute audio clip supporting this incident.
As a member of the African Apostolic church led by Paul Mwazha i feel mutumwa’s rights were violated physically and mentally.Physical and emotional abuse took place.
The man of God was deceived .His health rights were violated and continue to be violated. I call upon all human rights groups which deal with rights of the elderly to investigate this case and other members who continue to abuse Paul Mwazha’s rights to be brought to book.
Paul Mwazha no longer has peace deserved by an elderly man. He is being disturbed by power hungry leaders, he is being exposed to covid 19 as well as having right to privacy violated.
His right to good health was violated by Norman Siyamuzhombwe (on Wednesday 29 July at ‘Number 8’) when he dipped mutumwa’s finger into ink without his knowledge and he became irritated continuously untill they gave him gloves to cover up for their misdeeds.
One member who was in that meeting even complained that mutumwa was not in agreement with the act( vatenderana nazvo here zvamuri kuvaita?). Elderly people must be protected as enshrined in the constitution of Zimbabwe and Mutumwa Mwazha has that right too.
Hope caring Zimbabweans and organisation will assist the old man who dedicated his entire life in building one of the biggest Apostolic churches.
The South Africa based couple has donated personal protective equipment to the Ezra Tshisa Sibanda Initiative meant for the health institutions in Bulawayo.
This was confirmed by Sibanda through his Facebook Post.
“Help me thank and appreciate the lovely couple from South Africa, husband and wife who donated PPE worth R50 000 to my Initiative including transporting the goods from South Africa to Bulawayo.
I’m so pleased and truly appreciate these 2 adorable South African citizens who run a very successful business in SA and would want to remain anonymous. To be identified by people l don’t know and offer assistance because they believe in me and trust my works, means the world to me. I’m deeply humbled good people,” he said.
The message from the couple reads:
Dear Ezra,
“It might be small items but they will go a long way in changing lives of those in need in your country. My family and our business will always support such commitments with community development ngoba umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu Siyabonga. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to touch the lives of the less fortunate people.”
The donation comprised N95 Masks,1000 × Surgical Masks , 5 x 25 litres of Liquid Hand Sanitizer , 10 x 5 litre of Alko 70% Jely Sanitizers and INFRARED Thermometers etc .
“I have passed the PPE to Thorngrove Hospital, it was handed over to His Worship, the Mayor of the Great City Solomon Madlala Mguni by our foot soldier and representative Admond Ntini. Thank you for helping to keep our frontline staff and patients safe with an in-kind donation of protective equipment. As Ezra Tshisa Initiative we are so grateful for the support of our initiatives and projects. God bless you!!,” the couple wrote.
By A Correspondent- Striking doctors have vowed to press on with their job boycott despite pleas by President Emmerson Mnangagwa for them to return to work amid revelations that scores of people could be dying in their homes due to lack of medical care.
Mnangagwa pleaded with senior doctors to abandon the strike that began last week during an address at the burial of Agriculture minister Perrance Shiri at the heroes Acre on Friday.
The doctors joined nurses and other health workers, who have been on strike for over a month, as they demanded salaries in foreign currency and provision of personal protective equipment (PPE) to deal with Covid-19 cases.
Norman Matara, the Zimbabwe Doctors for Human Rights secretary-general, said the government should first pay health workers a living wage, provide adequate PPEs and equip hospitals with medicines and equipment to end the strikes.
“The government should simply meet its end of the bargain, pay health workers a living wage, provide them with adequate personal protective equipment, and equip hospitals with medicines and equipment,” Matara said.
“If they do this simple task, health workers will happily return to work and do their job of saving lives.”
“The government wants health workers to act “in the nation’s interest and exhibit a sense of responsibility’, yet the same government is not meeting its end of responsibilities.”
“Health workers cannot work on empty stomachs and without protective clothing simply because they save lives.”
Enock Dongo, the Zimbabwe Nurses Association president, said Mnangagwa should ensure the government addressed health workers’ grievances if he expected them to return to work.
“We heard what the president said, but we also want him to hear and listen to what we are saying.
“First, he must respect our work and we will also do our part,” Dongo said.
“We want the president to look into our issues. If he acknowledges our issues which are genuine, then he must address them.
“No way can we go into such a dangerous environment without wearing protective gear in the name of national interests, that will not work.”
“Right, now many nurses are being evicted from their lodgings because they failed to raise rentals, which are now US$40 to US$70, but salaries are below US$30.
“Even if they say we are not acting in the national interest, but we have families to look after.”
Public hospitals are turning away sick people, including those with Covid-19 symptoms, leading to fears that people are dying in their homes without any treatment.
As you have noticed after the 31st of July, instead of the regime attending to the issues raised by the Zimbabwean citizens they went into the default mode and escalated human rights abuses all over the place. Our people are being beaten, tortured, arrested for no apparent reason. This can not be allowed to continue.
On Saturday night residents of Dzivarasekwa were beaten door to door by people in military uniforms. The same thing happened in St. Mary’s around Chigovanyika area where citizens at night were indiscriminately beaten in their homes for no explanation. Yesterday they were beating people door to door around the place where my house is called kuMapositori. In Zvishavane, the same happened, so was in Mucheke Masvingo and reports we are getting from Bulawayo, Gweru and Kwekwe are so sad.
I think you have all seen the pictures of Tawanda Mucheiwa a 22 year old nephew to journalist Mduduzi Mathuthu. The 2nd year university student was severely tortured after having been taken to different places, where at one time was driven for a period of 4 hours to an unknown destination where he was taken to a farm which had military trucks parked on it.
You have seen the unlawful arrests of Advocate Fadzai Mahere, author and international award winning writer Tsitsi Dangarembga, Cllr Godfrey Kurauone in Masvingo, Hon Mugidho in Chiredzi and several citizens in Gweru, Bulawayo, Chiredzi, Kwekwe, Matabeleland South and allover the place.
Last night Hon Settlement Chikwinya escaped attempted abduction on his person by 7 trucks loaded with state security agencies. We can not accept this situation. No one is safe. If not careful we will all perish. It is now time to speak to the world.
From tomorrow Monday the 3rd of Aug, we urge all of you to have an opportunity to stock food. This is called upon because we need to speak more loudly for the entire week starting Monday the 10th of August to the 15th. That will be the week of action. This time it won’t be a one day event. It will be a week of expression against corruption and looting. This time we are also speaking against gross human rights abuses against us. We will say no to corruption and no to looting. No to abductions. No to violence against the people of Zimbabwe by the state. These are going to be our 4 agenda items for our action. Why are you bringing violence against the people? People are peaceful in their homes and you raid them at night and beat them. Dear Zimbabweans, we need to stop it. This has gone against all tenants of civilization and human dignity. Why are people being beaten? Why are people being tortured, why are people being arrested for no crime? Kwayi unnecessary movements? What is that in a modern state? In the 21st century? No no no. We can’t accept this. One week action from the 10th of August to the 15th.
We are tired of being abused in our own country.
10th to the 15th we shall Speak.
Speak Zimbabwe Speak
No to Corruption and Looting
No to Abductions, Torture and Violence against citizens.
By Patrick Guramatunhu- Zimbabwe is in serious, serious trouble. For the last 40 years, the country has been in decline morally, economically and, worst of all, intellectually.
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.” Wrote the great English novelist, Charles Dickens.
Zimbabwe has had the great misfortune of 40 years of the worst of times, age of foolishness, epoch of incredulity, etc.; all the negative stuff without an iota of the positive; and it shows!
“As corona virus ravages the world and its ugly head makes upwards strides in Zimbabwe, we feel a great comfort in knowing that this world will never end by sickness,” wrote one of Zimbabwe’s intellectuals, such as he is, Dr Masimba Mavaza.
“The world has hit over sixteen million people found to be COVID 19 positive. Of these millions only half a million has died. This gives the world hope that not all who are positive will die. A large number will go on to recover. All hope is not lost CORONA is not the final thing before we die.”
Dr Mavaza’s article in Bulawayo 24 was entitled “Hope for Zimbabwe as coronavirus Covid-19 is not the end of the world!”
Well, for a start; for all those who die of this deadly virus, corona virus IS the final thing before they die! Death is final. “Seri kwaguva hakuna muteuro!” (There is no pleading or appeasing beyond the grave!) as one would say in Shona.
As a member of the human race, our life-long challenge therefore is to promote and preserve, qualitatively and quantitatively, human life; one’s own life and the lives of others.
The outbreak of corona virus constitutes the greatest threat to human lives of our generation. A direct threat, as many of those who get the virus infection suffer great health discomfort needing medical help and many even with the best medical assistance have died, the death toll has been even higher where even the most basic health care was not available.
Corona virus has posed an equally serious indirect threat to human lives in that in our efforts to contain the virus we have also disrupted many life sustaining activities.
Most developed countries will suffer a 20% plus contraction in their economy and the situation will be much, much worse in the poor developing countries. Corona virus has triggered a world economic depression which could last a decade or more.
There is a real chance that mankind will come up with a effective vaccine and/or an effective cure against corona virus. Repairing the economic damage to the economy will take a decade or more. All the gains mankind had made in the last 20 years to pull billions humanity out of poverty and despair has been undone as billions of people are thrown back into poverty.
As a nation, Zimbabwe had good reasons to be worried sick at the onset of the corona virus outbreak. For a start, the country’s economy was already in total meltdown before the outbreak which meant the country will have very few resources to deal with the pandemic. It is no secret the country’s health care service had long collapsed due to decades of under investment. But worst of all, the country was being governed by corrupt, incompetent, vote rigging thugs who only cared about retaining their vice grip on power and did not care about public good or the sanctity of human lives.
Zanu PF’s blundering incompetence has failed to contain the corona virus outbreak. Instead of enforcing the quarantine measures, for example, it was Zanu PF leaders who reportedly allowed Zororo Makamba to mix with the public even though he had the corona virus symptoms. He was the first official corona virus death.
Against World Health Organisation advice to test, trace and track corona virus cases aggressively; Zanu PF has stubbornly refused to test. The regime is deliberately sweeping the true corona virus cases and deaths under the carpet and so claim the accolades as one of the countries that contained the corona virus.
We have often heard of “a neighbour from hell!” Well in Zanu PF the country has the government from hell! By under stating the corona virus statistics this Zanu PF government is deliberately misleading the nation into believing the country has been spared the ravages of corona virus not knowing that their ignorance is only helping the virus spread far and wide.
Hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans will die of covid-19 because their government deliberately kept them ignorant, they have continued to blissfully spread the virus when they should have taken the common-sense action of self-isolation, washing hands, etc.
Even countries like New Zealand that have managed to contain the corona virus; so far, the country has 1 562 confirmed cases, 22 deaths and a population of 5 million; they will still say it was one too many cases/deaths! Zimbabwe’s corona virus deaths will soar to hundreds of thousands, certainly one of the worst per capita death toll in the world, thousands of times higher than the official figure.
All told, as many as 5 to 10% of the Zimbabwe population will succumb to corona virus with many, many more to follow during the economic depression to follow.
Zimbabwe is facing a real prospect of 5% or 800 000 plus corona virus deaths, largely because government has deliberately kept the people in the dark of the danger, and Dr Mavaza argues that we take “great comfort and hope in that, after all covid-19 is not the end of the world!”
The Charles Dickens of this world force the leaders and the populous to look at themselves objectively and inspire them to reach for the sky! The Dr Masimba Mavaza of this world praise mediocrity because it is better than Armageddon doom’s day!
No wonder the Zimbabwe is stuck in this hell-on-earth; with a corrupt, incompetent and tyrannical ruling party and an equally corrupt and useless opposition on the one hand and an all but brain-dead intelligentsia on the other. With people like Dr Mavaza brainwashing the nation, the country has no chance of ever getting out of this hell-hole.
By A Correspondent- While in an interview with Trevor Ncube, Douglas Mwonzora gave an account of what transpired at the takeover of the Harvest House by the MDC T which is contrary to what was reported and what was seen on footage that circulated on social media.
Mwonzora was responding to a question about the perception that the military and the police helped them to take over the Morgan Tsvangirai House when he said:
The takeover of Harvest House was actually done by three youngsters as a result of the plan we had conceived. It was done at 5pm, we had taken about a month planning this, we planned it well and the three youngsters took over. When they took over, they invited the other 12 to make them 15 and this was again according to plan.
This is after I had asked Nelson Chamisa and Charlton Hwende to give over administration of Morgan Tsvangirai House, they had promised there would be bloodshed, and there would be a bloodbath and so on. I told them that the time we take Harvest House, it would be so smooth. The police were not involved; they only came more than three hours later.
This was in response to Charlton Hwende, who came with 45 people. I think it was smart, cleverly done, and I also think that the youngsters who did it, did it well. I can also share a secret, that one of the enticements was mealie-meal. Somebody was asked to go and buy mealie-meal and they left the guard.
While it is not clear what Mwonzora was trying to say since he did not get into finer details of his 3 member takeover, speculation becomes rife that Mwonzora by that narrative is trying to sanitize the infamous takeover that made opposition party members and other organisations conclude that he was working with the ruling party to decimate the MDC Alliance.
By A Correspondent- Zupco is spacing out passengers in its buses increasing social distancing, while the mandatory temperature testing, sanitisation, wearing of masks by passengers and disinfection of buses after every trip will continue.
Last night, Zupco acting chief executive Mr Evaristo Madangwa said the Ministry of Health and Child Care screened staff at the Willowvale depot on Wednesday and nine of the company employees were found positive.
It was not clear if these were rapid screening tests or the diagnostic PCR tests.
“We shall continue to spray, disinfect each bus and omnibus daily,” said Mr Madangwa.
“Zupco shall continue to ensure temperature checks, hand sanitisation and wearing of face masks by both passengers and crews.
“Efforts are underway to ensure continuity of service by Zupco. As we fight this pandemic we once again encourage our passengers, stakeholders and the nation at large to take all necessary precautions to curb the spread of Covid-19.”
Meanwhile, in a statement the Zimbabwe Schools Examination Council (Zimsec) advised of the temporary closure of its Head Office and Harare Region Office from yesterday to August 3 to allow for disinfection after 11 of its workers tested positive.
“This closure is to facilitate thorough disinfection of our offices as a precautionary measure to mitigate the spread of Covid-19,” said Zimsec in a statement.
By A Correspondent- Speaking at a post-Cabinet briefing, Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services Minister, Monica Mutsvangwa said Government will also recruit additional staff to run Covid-19 tests.
“More nurses will be urgently recruited from the available pool of qualified nurses, while processes to resolve those on industrial action continue. In addition, to strengthen the Covid-19 response, Government will recruit additional staff to run Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) tests, including unemployed graduates.
“Government will also expedite the secondment and recruitment of additional staff such as nurses, laboratory scientists so as to strengthen health delivery system and national response to the Covid-19 outbreak,” she said.
The minister revealed that modalities were also being put in place to enable industrial and innovation hubs to produce Viral Transport Media (VTM), a critical ingredient in PCR tests currently in short supply, so as to enhance testing capabilities.
By A Correspondent- While in conversation with Trevor Ncube, MDC T Secretary-General Douglas Mwonzora said his fight with the firebrand MDC T leader Nelson Chamisa was not personal and he was not aiding Zanu PF to decimate the MDC Alliance, The Standard reports.
When Trevor asked if Mwonzora winning the Secretary-general post in 2014 ahead of Chamisa was the reason why he was now in another formation while Chamisa was in another formation Mwonzora said:
I don’t think so, but when Morgan Tsvangirai died, he took over power in the manner he did and I did not support that. I thought that we were emasculating our own constitution. My fight with him has never been personal.
Mwonzora was asked again what stopped him from competing against Chamisa for the position of the party president in the 2019 MDC Alliance congress, in his response he said the party sabotaged him by purging his supporters from the structures:
First of all, I intended to challenge him and when we started the congress process, I found out my supporters had been purged from the structures. All the 2014 structures were purged. I then decided not to contest at all.
Mwonzora also accused Chamisa and the group he is leading of not adhering to ideology and said Tendai Biti does not share the social democracy ideology at all. Mwonzora denied aiding the ruling party in decimating the MDC Alliance and said he was working within the confines of constitutionalism when he decided to join Khupe’s camp.
World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. (Photo: AFP/Fabrice Coffrini)
GENEVA: The World Health Organization on Saturday (Aug 1) warned the coronavirus pandemic was likely to be “lengthy” after its emergency committee met to evaluate the crisis six months after sounding the international alarm.
The committee “highlighted the anticipated lengthy duration of this COVID-19 pandemic”, the WHO said in a statement, and warned of the risk of “response fatigue” given the socio-economic pressures on countries.
The panel gathered Friday for the fourth time over the coronavirus crisis, half a year on from its January 30 declaration of a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) – the WHO’s highest level of alarm.
“WHO continues to assess the global risk level of COVID-19 to be very high,” said its latest statement.
“The committee highlighted the anticipated lengthy duration of this COVID-19 pandemic, noting the importance of sustained community, national, regional, and global response efforts.”
The novel coronavirus has killed at least 680,000 people and infected at least 17.6 million since the outbreak emerged in China last December, according to a tally from official sources compiled by AFP.
Unsurprisingly, the panel, comprising 18 members and 12 advisers, unanimously agreed that the pandemic still constituted a PHEIC.
CRISIS FATIGUE WARNING
Several countries around the world have imposed strict lockdowns in a bid to control the spread of the respiratory disease, plunging economies into sharp contraction.
The committee urged the WHO to provide nuanced, pragmatic guidance on COVID-19 reactions “to reduce the risk of response fatigue in the context of socio-economic pressures”.
The panel urged the WHO to support countries in preparing for the rollout of proven therapeutics and vaccines.
The committee also urged the agency to accelerate research into the remaining “critical unknowns” of the virus, such as the animal source and potential animal reservoirs.
It called for improved understanding of the epidemiology and severity of COVID-19, including its long-term health effects.
And the committee wanted more light shed on the dynamics of the virus, such as “modes of transmission, shedding, potential mutations; immunity and correlates of protection”.
The near six-hour gathering was hosted at the WHO’s headquarters in Geneva, with some participants joining via video-link.
The committee will reconvene in three months’ time.
EFFECTS ‘FELT FOR DECADES’
Going into the meeting, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the pandemic’s effects would be long-lasting.
“It’s sobering to think that six months ago, when you recommended I declare a PHEIC, there were less than 100 cases and no deaths outside China,” he said Friday.
“The pandemic is a once-in-a-century health crisis, the effects of which will be felt for decades to come.”
The WHO has been sharply criticised for the length of time it took to declare an international emergency.
The United States, which accused the organisation of being too close to China, officially began its withdrawal from the organisation in July.
The agency has also been criticised for recommendations deemed late or contradictory, in particular on wearing masks, or the modes of transmission of the virus.
“Many scientific questions have been resolved; many remain to be answered,” Tedros said Friday.
“Most of the world’s people remain susceptible to this virus, even in areas that have experienced severe outbreaks.”
FOUR former MDC employees have now applied for the High Court to issue a garnishee order against the party’s bank accounts to recover terminal benefits and salaries which they are owed.
Wilson Box, Aleck Tabe, Geraldine Sibanda, and Lawrence Paganga previously sued the MDC Alliance, but recently directed their lawsuits against the Thokozani Khupe-led MDC-T group and specifically wanted US$155 318 deducted from the government grant the party recently received.
However, the Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that neither MDC Alliance nor MDC-T can receive the $7,5 million political funding under the Political Parties Finance Act until a resolution on the on-going legal battle over which formation is entitled to the money is settled.
According to the Political Parties Finance Act, all parties that poll more than five percent of the vote in a general election share the sum budgeted for political parties each year in proportion to their votes.
Box and his colleagues cited Justice minister Ziyambi Ziyambi, MDC-T and CBZ bank as respondents in the High Court application and want deductions made until the US$155 318 together with interest at the prescribed rate and taxed costs have been paid in full.
Box and his colleagues obtained court orders against MDC-T in terms of an arbitration award and filed writs of execution against its moveable property.
One of the applicants instructed the sheriff to attach MDC-T’s moveable goods in order to recover the money, but the return of service indicated that the party’s property was insufficient to cover the debt.
The court heard Box and his colleagues were not aware of the specific details of MDC-T’s property and can no longer instruct the sheriff to attach them.
In the event that they find the immovable property, the amounts realised from the sale of the said property, they argued, may not be sufficient to cover the debt.
The court heard that MDC-T lawyers had written to Box and his colleagues on April 26 indicating intentions to pay the debt from the government grant.
“To secure payment of the said money to applicants, the applicants have, therefore, approached this honourable court seeking a garnishee order against MDC-T’s bank account or any other account which their funds are disbursed,” reads the application.
Sheffield Wednesday have been hit with a huge 12-point deduction after being found guilty of financial misconduct, following a lengthy investigation by the English Football League.
Wednesday will start next season in the Championship on minus 12 points following the verdict reached by an independent disciplinary commission.
It is understood the decision to impose the punishment next season was made by the panel, and not the EFL – but could now result in legal action from rival clubs as Wednesday would have been relegated to League One with the points deduction.
The Yorkshire club were charged in November by the EFL over charges of breaching Profitability & Sustainability rules relating to the £60 million sale of their Hillsborough stadium.
The charge related to “how and when” it was sold, and its subsequent inclusion in the 2017/2018 accounts when it was sold a year later.
Wednesday had denied the charge and also issued a counter-claim against the EFL for allegedly “acting unlawfully”.
The club appeared in front of the three-person panel last month and the verdict was finally reached on Friday evening.
Wednesday finished the season eight points clear of the bottom three.
The EFL’s statement read: “An independent Disciplinary Commission, appointed under EFL Regulations, has ruled that Sheffield Wednesday will receive a 12 point deduction for breaching the League’s Profitability and Sustainability Rules for the three season reporting period ending with Season 2017/18.
“The sporting sanction will take effect in season 2020/21.
“The club was charged in November 2019 and referred to an independent Disciplinary Commission, which conducted a full hearing at the end of June 2020, before finding the Club guilty based on the fact that the Club should not have included profits from the sale of Hillsborough Stadium in the Club’s financial statements for the period ending July 2018.
“The club was found not guilty of a further charge of breaching its duty of utmost good faith to the EFL by deliberately concealing information from the League in respect of filings made in respect of the Profitability and Sustainability Rules.”
Wednesday and the EFL both have 14 days to appeal against the punishment, and it is believed Wednesday will take that course of action.
As you have noticed after the 31st of July, instead of the regime attending to the issues raised by the Zimbabwean citizens they went into the default mode and escalated human rights abuses all over the place. Our people are being beaten, tortured, arrested for no apparent reason. This can not be allowed to continue.
On Saturday night residents of Dzivarasekwa were beaten door to door by people in military uniforms. The same thing happened in St. Mary’s around Chigovanyika area where citizens at night were indiscriminately beaten in their homes for no explanation. Yesterday they were beating people door to door around the place where my house is called kuMapositori. In Zvishavane, the same happened, so was in Mucheke Masvingo and reports we are getting from Bulawayo, Gweru and Kwekwe are so sad.
I think you have all seen the pictures of Tawanda Mucheiwa a 22 year old nephew to journalist Mduduzi Mathuthu. The 2nd year university student was severely tortured after having been taken to different places, where at one time was driven for a period of 4 hours to an unknown destination where he was taken to a farm which had military trucks parked on it.
You have seen the unlawful arrests of Advocate Fadzai Mahere, author and international award winning writer Tsitsi Dangarembga, Cllr Godfrey Kurauone in Masvingo, Hon Mugidho in Chiredzi and several citizens in Gweru, Bulawayo, Chiredzi, Kwekwe, Matabeleland South and allover the place.
Last night Hon Settlement Chikwinya escaped attempted abduction on his person by 7 trucks loaded with state security agencies. We can not accept this situation. No one is safe. If not careful we will all perish. It is now time to speak to the world.
From tomorrow Monday the 3rd of August, we urge all of you to have an opportunity to stock food. This is called upon because we need to speak more loudly for the entire week starting Monday the 10th of August to the 15th. That will be the week of action. This time it won’t be a one day event. It will be a week of expression against corruption and looting. This time we are also speaking against gross human rights abuses against us. We will say no to corruption and no to looting. No to abductions. No to violence against the people of Zimbabwe by the state. These are going to be our 4 agenda items for our action. Why are you bringing violence against the people? People are peaceful in their homes and you raid them at night and beat them. Dear Zimbabweans, we need to stop it. This has gone against all tenants of civilization and human dignity. Why are people being beaten? Why are people being tortured, why are people being arrested for no crime? Kwayi unnecessary movements? What is that in a modern state? In the 21st century? No no no. We can’t accept this. One week action from the 10th of August to the 15th.
We are tired of being abused in our own country. 10th to the 15th we shall Speak. Speak Zimbabwe Speak No to Corruption and Looting No to Abductions, Torture and Violence against citizens.
Warriors midfielder Marvelous Nakamba will stay at Aston Villa for the 2020/21 season, Soccer24 has established.
The 26-year-old’s future at the Birmingham side has been a subject of debate over the past few days since they escaped relegation from the Premier League with a 1-1 stalemate at West Ham on the last day.
He lost his place in Dean Smith’s team towards the end of the season and started in only one game after the Covid-19 enforced break, a situation which has not been helped by the dismissal of the Sporting Director who presided over his transfer from Club Brugge last year, for “bad transfer decisions.”
A source close to the midfielder, who chose to remain anonymous, confirmed to Soccer24 that he (Nakamba) is going to be Aston Villa next season.
“He said he is going to stay. He is happy at Villa and the United Kingdom is like home to him, so he will be there next seaon” the source said.
Nakamba in under contract at Villa Park until June 2024.
The rift between President Emmerson Mnangagwa and his deputy Constantino Chiwenga that was exposed by the July 31 protests against the deteriorating economic and political situation in the country is said to be widening revelations by a Zanu PF politburo member that the divisions have been simmering since the beginning of the year.
Cleveria Chizema, who was suspended after a dramatic politburo meeting on the eve of the protests where it emerged that some senior ruling party leaders backed the “uprising”, told The Standard in an exclusive interview that she had been caught in a cross fire.
Chizema was frozen out from the ruling party after she was allegedly found in possession of fliers and placards promoting the July 31 mass protests allegedly rooting for Chiwenga to take over the leadership of the country.
Opening up for the first time since the highly-charged politburo meeting that suspended her, the long-serving Zanu PF leader yesterday said she felt betrayed.
She said after the posters were dumped at her home in Harare, she wanted to inform senior party leaders including Oppah Muchinguri and July Moyo, but failed to do so as they were busy.
At the politburo meeting, Moyo confirmed that Chizema tried to meet him, but Muchinguri did not defend her.
“The truth is I kept those papers in good faith,” Chizema said.
“And the message that was delivered by (Zanu PF acting spokesperson) Cde (Patrick) Chinamasa that I was found with papers with subversive messages, which were delivered at my house made it look like there was a van that brought those papers.
“I was very disappointed I tell you. I have 50 years in the party. Since it was formed in Highfield — my father was active in the party.
“I never had any misconduct for the past 50 years, 40 years of independence, nothing, and 10 years of struggle, nothing, It’s only today. I am disappointed.”
Chizema said the placards were dumped at her house soon after her birthday in March this year and she kept them as she wanted to present them to Muchinguri and Moyo.
She, however, failed to meet both of them as they kept on saying meetings were not possible due to Covid-19 restrictions.
“The day I was suspended, I did not sleep,” she said.
“People thought I had been arrested and they were calling and calling.
“The way Cde Chinamasa announced made it appear as if bags, boxes or sacks full of fliers had been delivered at my house for yesterday [Friday]’s demonstration.
“The message gave an impression that I have loads and loads of the papers here.
“The papers were very confidential to me and I wanted to give them to Amai Muchinguri.
“I told her I had a bone to chew with her. “But that was the time Covid-19 broke out and she kept saying ‘Mai Chizema, I will see you, I will come’ and you know, time flies, five months went past.
“In the meeting [politburo], I told them everything and also that I tried to see July Moyo. He confessed that I looked for him twice.”
Sources who attended the meeting said Muchinguri said she did not know anything about Chizema’s request for meetings.
The insiders said the politburo meeting was meant to checkmate Chiwenga who allegedly leads a faction that is dissatisfied with Mnangagwa’s leadership.
Zanu PF’s security chief Lovemore Matuke submitted a report that was allegedly meant to prove that there was a plot to topple Mnangagwa from within.
His submissions were corroborated by Central Intelligence Organisation boss Isaac Moyo.
Chizema said she suspected that her long-time maid was involved in the plot as she left immediately after the posters were dumped in her yard.
“There was another day I could not sleep, the alarm kept ringing. I think this was definitely a plot against me,” she said.
“Six years together, no notice, no nothing. I suspect she was the one who knew I threw the papers under the carpet.”
Zanu PF insiders said there was a witch-hunt to weed out Chiwenga’s sympathisers and there could be more victims in the coming days.
Three years ago, Chiwenga played a crucial role in Mnangagwa’s rise to the presidency after he led a coup that toppled long-time ruler Robert Mugabe.
A few months later reports started surfacing that the two had fallen out as Mnangagwa insisted on running for a second term in 2023 despite an alleged pact that he would make way for his deputy.
EMBATTLED former Information deputy minister Energy Mutodi was on Wednesday ordered to apologise to the party for misbehaving when he appeared before a disciplinary hearing in Marondera.
The hearing was held following a series of postponements due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The musician-cum-politician was fired by President Emmerson Mnangagwa on May 21 after tangling with Foreign minister Sibusiso Moyo before Zanu-PF’s Mashonaland East province issued him with a prohibition order.
Efforts to get a comment from the provincial disciplinary committee chairperson Michael Madanha were fruitless.
However, a top party official, who declined to be named, said Mutodi was “warned” before being ordered to apologise.
“The disciplinary hearing was finally conducted in Marondera on Wednesday. The matter is not over yet. Mutodi was warned over his conduct and was ordered to apologise to the party for his misconduct. He will not retain his provincial executive post, but will remain an MP. The party saw it fit to let him be the Goromonzi legislator,” the source said.
Since his sacking, Mutodi has been inactive on social media and has shunned public life.
During a provincial co-ordinating committee meeting held in Marondera recently, the Goromonzi West lawmaker cut a lone figure as he occupied the back seats.
The lockdown to control the spread of the novel coronavirus has disrupted Zimbabwe’s education system to an extent that it may take years to recover.
Authorities were forced to halt the first term for 2020 in March after the country recorded its first cases of the flu-like disease that was first detected in China late last year.
The government had few options available when it came to education because the environment in schools is ideal for the quick spread of the virus, something that could have been catastrophic for a country with an ailing health delivery system like Zimbabwe.
Three months after the lockdown began, some children started returning to their schools to sit for the June examinations a fortnight ago.
The phased re-opening of schools, however, starts on July 28 with classes of pupils sitting for final year examinations, which are Grade 7 and Form fours as well as Form sixes.
They would be followed by those in Grades 6, Forms 3 and 5 classes while those in Grades 3, 4 and 5 as well as Forms 1 and 2 would be in the next phase.
Grades 1 and 2 will follow thereafter while those in early childhood development classes would be the last to return to school.
The government insists that it is doing all it can to ensure the health and well-being of learners, teachers, staff and communities. But it should not be lost in people’s minds that prior to the Covid-19 outbreak, Zimbabwe’s economic and health systems were already under a severe strain.
A break of four months has also left schools that heavily rely on user fees for their operations, struggling for survival as parents were not paying school fees.
Expecting the schools to meet preconditions for the safe resumption of classes that include infection and control measures could be asking for too much in an economy that is on its knees.
To eliminate risks of infection, schools should ensure social distancing and the provision of personal protective equipment (PPE) at a time the economy is imploding.
As if that was not enough, Zimbabwe last week recorded a spike in Covid-19 infections and deaths. As of Friday, the number of cases had risen to 942 with 13 deaths.
The statistics are a stark reminder that the threat posed by Covid-19 remains high, hence the need for caution in opening up society including the return of children to school.
Zimbabwe could learn a valuable lesson from Kenya, which last week cancelled the 2020 school calendar.
Classes will only resume next year where hopefully significant progress would be made towards finding a vaccine to control coronavirus infections.
There is absolutely no need for the government to rush the re-opening of schools at the risk of opening a route for a surge in infections.
ELEVEN political activists, including MDC Alliance spokesperson Fadzai Mahere, filmmaker and novelist Tsitsi Dangarembga and others from various pressure groups, yesterday appeared in court facing charges of participating in Friday’s illegal demonstrations in Harare.
Mahere, Dangarembga, Paul Besa, Julie Gabriel Barnes, Chamunorwa Phillip Ndengu, Tinotenda Muskwe, Tinashe Murapata, Jessica Drury, Nyasha Musandu, Josee Lotter and Simon Drury appeared before Harare regional magistrate Mr Ngoni Nduna.
They were separately charged with participating in a public gathering with intent to cause public violence and breaching the Public Health Act (Covid-19 Prevention, Containment and Treatment) Regulations 2020.The accused were not asked to plead to the charges and were remanded to September 18, 2020 on $5 000 bail each.
They were ordered to surrender their passports and report once every Friday at their respective police stations.
Through their defence lawyers, the activists said they have complaints against the police and indicated that they would file written submissions in respect of those complaints by August 4, 2020.
They notified the State that they would challenge their placement on remand when they return to court on September 18.
The State, led by Mr Michael Reza and Ms Tendai Shonhiwa, had it that on July 31, MDC Alliance and other pressure groups organised an illegal demonstration to effect regime change.
The court heard that at different times and locations, but in Harare, the 11 took to the streets demonstrating against the Government.
Mahere and six others were arrested between 11am and 11.30am while demonstrating between Alps Road and The Chase.
Police are said to have recovered placards from Jessica Drury’s car inscribed #FreeZim, #FreeMDCtrio, #stopabductions and #handsoff the Constitution. On the second count, they allegedly breached Covid-19 regulations while they were marching.
Zimbabwe is now gripped with the reality of the effects of COVID 19. It is now sinking in people’s minds that COVID 19 is real and indeed serious. Zimbabwe lost a lot of people to the virus. In one week, the nation lost te minister of Lands and his driver, the nation lost several to army officers security officers and a lot of other people from all walks of life. The indiscriminating nature of the COVID 19 has gripped the nation with fear. Bus drivers’ burses and doctors, health workers and all frontline workers have tested positive. The sad thing is that many more have died and are not tested and not known thus not recorded as COVID 19 victim. What people were seeing on TV and social media is now turning to be a reality. Death smells heavily in our corridors and our streets, the presence of the Virus does not need any awareness anymore, it is indeed written all over people’s faces. This is the time the nation needs GOD. The dilemma we have as a country in this time is that we do not have a minister of health, we do not have the permanent secretary of health, we do not have any director in the Natpharm and nom directors in the hospitals. All chief Executive officers from each major hospital have been fired. The health system which has been limping is now moving without direction. The arrests and humiliation of leaders of the health system makes those in the acting capacity to be afraid of taking bold actions or thinking outside the box. We do appreciate that most policymakers in many parts of the world are struggling to bring the rapidly spreading Covid-19 pandemic under control. In doing so, they are repeating many of the mistakes made in Italy, where the pandemic turned into a disaster. It has been reported that A major contributing factor was the decision-making process at many levels of government. The government took long to decide and made decisions only as reaction and not decisive. Zimbabwe will lose many more people if the issue of Covid 19 is not taken seriously.
It is high time now that the president appoints he minister of Health and put deadlines on actions to be taken. It will be a good idea for the president to appoint Deputy president Chiwenga to be the senior minister of Health, then give him a medically trained person to be a junior minister. Chiwenga is known for forcefully attaining his goals. This virus now needs force and purpose. The time for thinking is over we need to have something going now. The president must declare this virus as a state of disaster. All rules and laws governing the ministry must be suspended the ministry must be given powers to act on the feet to make decisions without going through the bureaucratic delays. The situation is desperate and it needs desperate measures. Zimbabwe cannot die. Procrastination is the thief of time, so there is no time to act at the pleasure of the president. This is the time to act now. Our health system has no leader we need to put the ministry under the vice president’s office or even put it under the office of the first lady is she has such an office. Why first lady, because she has shown that she acts and moves the earth. She must be allowed to use her energy to save lives. We are really dying, and we cannot sit and look. we should realise that policymakers around the world struggled to combat the rapidly escalating Covid-19 pandemic, they find themselves in uncharted territory. Much has been written about the practices and policies used in countries such as China, South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan to stifle the pandemic. Unfortunately for us in Zimbabwe, it is already too late to contain Covid-19 in its infancy, and policymakers are struggling to keep up with the spreading pandemic. We should not be in this situation, we simply need a decision, take this virus seriously. If we do not do so, however, we are repeating many of the errors made early on in Italy, where the pandemic has turned into a disaster. Zimbabwe can simply put itself back in control by taking a decision now, we cannot fight this pandemic without a leading team. Zimbabwe can start to build centres now set them aside for COVID patience. Shurugwi North has taken a lead by constructive a covid 19 centre. Member of parliament for Shurugwi is leading a big project of building a treatment centre for Covid patients. Instead of fighting him we must take a leaf support the project expand it to other provinces. Within a very short time period, Zimbabwe has been hit by nothing short of a tsunami of unprecedented force, punctuated by an incessant stream of deaths. It is unquestionably our biggest crisis since 2008 cholera. Zimbabwe’s aspects of this crisis — starting with its timing — can undoubtedly be attributed to plain and decision making. Other aspects, however, are emblematic of the profound obstacles that leaders are facing in recognizing the magnitude of the threat posed by Covid-19, organizing a systematic response to it, and learning from early implementation successes — and, most importantly, failures.
The systematic inability to listen to experts highlights the trouble that leaders — and people in general — have figuring out how to act in dire, highly complex situations where there’s no easy solution. The desire to act causes leaders to rely on their gut feeling or the opinions of their inner circle. But in a time of uncertainty, it is essential to resist that temptation, and instead take the time to discover, organize, and absorb the partial knowledge that is dispersed across different pockets of expertise. As a nation we do not need anymore deaths. We must reakise that we must appreciate the importance of systematic approaches and the perils of partial solutions. We must give solutions now and move on. As the Italian government did Zimbabwean government is dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic by issuing a series of decrees that gradually increased restrictions within lockdown. This is important but is it helping. this approach taken by the president is prudent and perhaps even wise. But the president needs soldiers on the ground. The “facts on the ground” at any point in time were simply not predictive of what the situation would be just a few days later. As a result, Zimbabwe is reacting to the spread of the virus rather than prevented it. There is still tremendous uncertainty on what exactly needs to be done to stop the virus. Several key aspects of the virus are still unknown and hotly debated and are likely to remain so for a considerable amount of time. Furthermore, significant lags occur between the time of action (or, in many cases, inaction) and outcomes (both infections and mortality). We need to accept that an unequivocal understanding of what solutions work is likely to take several months, if not years. We need to know that there is no time to waste, given the exponential progression of the virus. The virus is faster than our bureaucracy. An effective approach towards Covid-19 will require a war-like mobilization — both in terms of the entity of human and economic resources that will need to be deployed as well as the extreme coordination that will be required across different parts of the health care system. We normally hold fund raising events in other issues, this is the time to fund raise. The president must set a fund-raising committee for COVID. We must build makeshift centres, we must buy as many ventilators as possible.
Together, the need for immediate action and for massive mobilization imply that an effective response to this crisis will require a decision-making approach that is far from business as usual. If policymakers want to win the war against Covid-19, it is essential to adopt one that is systemic, prioritizes learning, and is able to quickly scale successful experiments and identify and shut down the ineffective ones. Yes, this a tall order — especially in the midst of such an enormous crisis. But given the stakes, it has to be done. Zimbabwe must not only wait for gloves to be donated, we can encourage locals to make gloves, to make masks. We are in the time of war we need to deal with this war now. It is important that now we act. Appoint the minister or simply reinstate Obadiah Moyo, forget about what thw world will say let him carry on the touch. Set a team to negotiate with our doctors and nurses. Let us swallow our pride and find each other with our health workers, we need to be together. We can win this battle. Only today over hundred families are burying their loved ones who fell to the evil sword of COVI 19. For how long can we sit and pretend that all is well. Together we will win. Can we all come together and save the nation and save our people. Let us invest in our health system.
Finance minister of Zimbabwe, Mthuli Ncube, PhD (Cantab), has become the poster child of everything that is wrong with the management of affairs in Zimbabwe. He must go. Then and only then, will Zimbabweans be able to go back to the drawing board and start fresh.
In a nutshell, he represents (willingly and unwillingly) the worst of Zimbabwe; the best education money can buy, mastery of the lexicon one would think they created the dictionary with Merriam Webster, they know everything, they teach the world how to run their affairs, they have engineers with titles on their behinds, but the potholes in Bulawayo have been known to swallow Mazda pick-ups. In short, Pettinah Gappah has concluded that they are an embarrassment to the world for always begging.
It is, therefore, time for him to go. Now! In the exit package I will include his sidekick, Dr John Mangudya. Notice the lofty titles which denote their much learning, signifying nothing.
Rwanda’s Paul Kagame does not have a single title, but has more sense than both these brothers combined.
Ncube no longer carries any credibility, even if he were to change course in midstream, as he has done several times, the market no longer pays him any mind. I will list his sins below, each one deserves the severest of punishments, the least of which would be a minimum of 10-year banishment from Zimbabwe.
Taking a cue from his discredited Zanu PF masters, he ignored his own wisdom, that there are universal laws that operate whether humans try to bend towards themselves or not.
Gresham’s law says that bad money drives out good money. Ncube confessed knowledge of this law on August 31, 2018. “The bond note currency is bad money and we know in economics bad money drives out good money.” Ncube should have known better.
That is sin number one. Keep your own advice. Honourable men resign when their wise counsel is not followed.
Sin number two comes from the Zanu PF manual. Learn nothing from history. Price controls are useless from time immemorial.
When Roman Emperor Diocletian issued his list of maximum prices for goods and services, including haircuts and prostitution, the rhetorician Lactantitius of Nicodemida (301 AD) had a field day. Entire towns failed to produce goods they had formerly produced for export, those with fixed salaries, (especially soldiers) found that their money was increasingly worthless as artificial prices did not reflect actual costs.
Prostitutes and barbers particularly found the going insufferable as their efforts had been underpriced.
There is nothing new under the sun. Ncube should have educated his masters or resigned. Having failed to do either, he finds himself riding a tiger.
Sin number three is tampering with the value of money. Once one tampers with monetary values, everything goes haywire. On November 12, 2019, grain millers bought a tonne of maize at $3 548. Three months later, the cost had risen to $55 900.
As indicated above, once the value of money has been interfered with, there is no knowing when and where the tiger’s ride will end and what will happen to its rider.
As I write, July 7, I am informed that men of learning at the University of Zimbabwe, including the great mind Hasu Patel, have quit for greener pastures. With a salary of $7 000 per month (US$70), they can hardly fill a car with petrol.
Lactantitius, mentioned above, referred to soldiers in particular. Away from home, their fixed salaries no longer lasted a month.
Even if soldiers and nurses’ salaries, pegged at $3 000, were doubled, the buying capacity remains insufficient to sustain a living.
Sin number three is the growing lawlessness in the management of financial affairs. It was hoped that Ncube’s arrival at treasury would bring some form of financial sanity to government agencies, and indeed he boasts about a surplus.
The truth is that top government managers are paying him no mind and are becoming more boisterous. Hopewell Chin’ono reported on July 3 that eight Zimbabwe Energy Regulatory Agency (Zera) officers bought Toyota four-wheel drive vehicles from their agency for Z$2 000 each. The officers — Ranga Ngoni (Z$80 860), Jacqueline Ngoni, (Z$80 960) MZ Tapera (Z$101 075) and five others — then rented the same vehicles to Zera, while they received free petrol as well.
The amounts in parenthesis are the sums they received in mileage allowances in one month. There are some things which even if they were legal, look wrong and should be avoided.
Similarly, the Health authorities splashed over US$8 million on Range Rovers while hospitals lack basics like bandages and protective gear for staff. That money can equip more than one major hospital.
You sluggard, before you go begging, look in your backyard and see what amounts of monies are going to waste.
The shamelessness of these brothers allows them to assume that while they splash money everywhere, the US embassy is responsible for feeding their poor and paying for HIV-Aids medicines.
Return of the US dollar
On October 18, 2018, Ncube announced with fanfare the Transitional Stabilisation Programme which would be replaced by a five-year plan in December 2020. This plan would “operationalise Vision 2030…acknowledge policy reform initiatives of the new dispensation to stimulate domestic production, exports, rebuilding and transforming the economy to an upper middle income status by 2030”.
There is a method to this madness. Zanu PF believes that they are gods and in the beginning there was their word, and if they say, operationalise, stimulate through command agriculture, command street dealers from selling US dollars, then it will be done.
They talk “big noise about market forces” yet tell everybody what to do. One cannot withdraw his US dollars at will. One cannot withdraw his wages from a bank. Zanu PF tells the farmers what to grow through command agriculture. Government sets prices for corn (maize), for bread, and for petrol.
As prices chase the US dollar, government remains in a state of denial. I have left my severest damnation to the end. I am compelled to use the word “allege” in the next sentence. My sources “allege” that the chief malefactors in this government are paying themselves in US dollars even as they forbid workers access to the same benefits.
The hope that Ncube’s arrival at treasury would bring house cleaning has disappeared. A leaked memo from Police General Headquarters described the lives of policemen as that of daily torment. Ncube is the clean face that represents this charade. He must go for his own sake, or forever be remembered as the face that covered up “vices most notorious”, a leadership steeped in “idleness, treachery, revenge, cruelty, impudence, stealing, lying, profanity, debauchery, nastiness and intemperance”, a ruling class that has extinguished natural law and reproofs of conscience.” So wrote Encyclopedia Britannica about our race in 1798.
Unpleasant picture of the brutalised innocent young man
Tawanda Muchehiwa, the nephew to ZimLive editor Mduduzi Mathuthu, was found yesterday evening, the 1st of August 2020 around 2200hrs after he was ‘dropped off’ at his place of residence by his tormentors. Muchehiwa had been missing since the 30th of July 2020 after his arrest by police officers and his detention at Bulawayo Central Police Station.
Muchehiwa was brutally tortured and has sustained serious injuries. Following his re-appearance, his Lawyer Nqobani Sithole filed a report which was only finalized around 02.00hrs this morning.
The MISA-Zimbabwe deployed lawyer stated that Muchehiwa informed him that he was picked up from the police station by officers from the army’s Military Intelligence Department. He alleges that he was subsequently taken to an unknown location which he only recognises as bushy.
Muchehiwa is currently at a private hospital in Bulawayo where he is receiving medical attention.
Background
The police officers had since professed ignorance as to his whereabouts which had led MISA-Zimbabwe through lawyer Nqobani Sithole to file an urgent chamber application for habeas corpus.
High Court judge Justice Makonese on 1 August 2020 ordered the police to investigate the whereabouts of Tawanda Muchehiwa and produce the outcome to the Magistrates Courts at Tredgold Building in Zimbabwe’s second city of Bulawayo within 72 hours.
The court had ordered that the 72 hours commenced from 1400hrs on 1 August 2020.
CONDOLENCE MESSAGE BY HIS EXCELLENCY THE PRESIDENT, CDE EMMERSON DAMBUDZO MNANGAGWA, FOLLOWING THE DEATH OF AIR CHIEF MARSHAL (Rtd) PERRANCE SHIRI, MINISTER OF LANDS, AGRICULTURE, WATER AND RURAL RESETTLEMENT, JULY 29, 2020.
I learnt with utter shock and a deep sense of grief of the death early this morning of Air Chief Marshal Perrance Shiri (Rtd), our Minister of Lands, Agriculture, Water and Rural Resettlement, after a short illness.
A stalwart of our war of national liberation, Cde Shiri ranked high among our leading Zanla Field Commanders, whose contribution to the national liberation struggle was simply valiant and outstanding.
His commitment to the liberation of this country and his people amply showed when he, alongside our Vice President, General C.G.D.N Chiwenga, abandoned his studies at Mount Saint Mary’s Mission School in Wedza in 1973, and defied all odds to join the liberation struggle at a very tender age.
Once fully-trained and battle-hardened, the late Cde Shiri rose through the ranks to become the overall commander of Tete Province, one of the hottest fronts in the war.
Under his command, several spectacular missions against the enemy were carried out, among them the 1978 blasting of oil tanks in the then Salisbury, itself the heart and citadel of the settler power.
Indeed that military action, which was undertaken by a specialised ZANLA Unit which he mentored, reverberated well beyond the immediate theatre of war, and proved a turning point in the struggle for national liberation.
After the struggle, he would continue serving his country in the military, including playing a salutary role in the integration process by which erstwhile warring armies were re-oriented and re-moulded into a cohesive national army.
Later, he would be redeployed to the Air Force of Zimbabwe, becoming our second indigenous Air Force of Zimbabwe Commander after the late Cde Josiah Tungamirai.
While he discharged his onerous command duties, he still found time to further his education, in the process acquiring several professional qualifications and two masters degrees in the field of business and development.
Always focused, hardworking and hands-on, the late Minister Shiri was key to revamping our food sector by ensuring our farmers were fully mobilised, motivated and supported to mechanise, modernise and climate-proof our agriculture for sustainable national food security.
Barely a month ago, we launched and agricultural equipment initiative he concluded with an American company, John Deere.
Except for his untimely demise, we would have launched yet another of his many initiatives on mechanisation, this time with the Republic of Belarus.
It was also during his short-lived ministerial tenure that he reached out to, and opened negotiations with, white former commercial farmers with a view to breaking the impasse over the age-old national land question.
Only this morning (Wednesday), we signed an historic agreement with the former farmers, itself a crowning moment for his tireless efforts.
Sadly, as fate would have it, he would not live to witness this historic moment!
We miss him sorely.
On behalf of the Party, Zanu PF, Government, the Zimbabwe Defence Forces of which he was a longstanding member, my family and my own behalf, I wish to express my heartfelt condolences to the entire Shiri family, especially his children, who now stand orphaned.
As they go through the painful motion of deep grief, I urge them to find comfort and solace in the distinguished role and career of continuous service, which their father gave to this country.
He remains our hero together, making his demise a blow we all keenly feel and share.
PUBLIC and private hospitals should not turn away patients or demand a Covid-19 certificate first before admitting patients, particularly in emergency cases, Government has said.
The latest exhortation comes after the country has gone through its worst month yet, as 61 Zimbabweans succumbed to the coronavirus in July alone. Acting Health and Child Care Minister Professor Amon Murwira said Government is engaging hospitals to ensure that they provide other life-saving services to avoid unnecessary loss of life.
“Other things that may happen or mis-happen are the things that we want to hear and rectify. What we want to do is to ensure that we revamp our health system, invest in it and ensure that every citizen has access to health services as enshrined in our Constitution.
“This disease (Covid-19) does not spare anyone, but we have to ensure there is continuity in terms of service provision otherwise we may regress and lose lives unnecessarily. Hospitals should continue offering services and desist from making unreasonable demands at the expense of lives. We all have to be responsible at some point,” said Prof Murwira.
Scores of people are failing to access health care as health institutions, including both private and public health institutions, are insisting on Covid-19 certificates before admitting patients, even in emergency cases.
However, the certificate can only be issued after a polymerase chain reaction (PCR test), which is going between US$65 to US$80 at various private institutions, although the test is free at some public hospitals.
There are fears inordinate delays in admitting patients could lead to the unnecessary loss of life.
Parirenyatwa Group of Hospitals public relations officer Mr Linos Dhire said the institution has been struggling to provide services due to the ongoing industrial action by health workers.
“The strike by both nurses and doctors has greatly affected the delivery of our services across the hospital. The situation has been worsened by the fact that some among the few who have been reporting for duty are testing positive for Covid-19 and have to go in isolation. Fellow healthcare workers who are their contacts have to go off duty and isolate and this has significantly contributed to low numbers on the ground. Consequently, the hospital has been forced to respond to dire emergencies only,” he added.
Zimbabwe Nurses Association president Mr Enock Dongo said nurses were waiting for Government to make a tangible offer to review their conditions of services before they consider going back to work.
“Since we started the industrial action, we haven’t had any meaningful discussion with Government insofar as our demands are concerned. Yes, the Government provided a platform for negotiation but they didn’t bring any offer on the table. They only said our demand of salaries in USD was not feasible,” said Mr Dongo.
Health Services Board chairperson Dr Paulinus Sikhosana, however, said negotiations with the health workers will continue with the hope of reaching an agreement soon.
“Negotiations are continuing; they never stopped . . . we need to reach an amicable solution soon,” said Dr Sikhosana.
President Emmerson Mnangagwa last week implored health workers to commit to serving the nation while Government acts on their grievances.
“We must stop the scourge of Covid-19, itself a global pandemic. It spares no one, great or small. All nations of the world are suffering from its impact, with figures of infections and deaths rising daily. In unity and through discipline, we stand a chance to save our nation from its menace,” said the President.
“I call on our medical staff to act in the national interest and exhibit a great sense of responsibility. My Government hears your cries, listens to your concerns. But the time to serve is now. Your grievances, which we acknowledge and continue to address, cannot be enjoyed at the expense of loss of life. When the pandemic spreads and the death toll rises, there are no winners, none at all. Tinopera tese kufa,” he said.
