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Zimbabwe’s Mnangagwa faces impeachment

Munyaradzi Gwisai, a senior law lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe has said President Emmerson Mnangagwa will be removed from office if he is found guilty in former VP Kembo Mohadi’s resignation matter. Gwisai said it is likely that Mnangagwa violated the constitution by not announcing within 24-hours that Kembo Mohadi had resigned from the VP post and if the opposition and ruling party’s MPs converge, he will be removed from office. Below is Gwisai’s submission. Continue reading “Zimbabwe’s Mnangagwa faces impeachment”

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Fix Harare pothole menace

Who is going to patch potholes on Harare’s roads?

This seems to be the question on every road user’s mind in the capital these days where potholes are getting deeper and wider by the day, making it difficult for motorists to navigate their way through the bad roads.

The potholes are causing untold damage to vehicle suspensions and tyres.

In worst cases, motorists trying to avoid them have been involved in accidents, leading to loss of lives.

The Harare City Council, which is supposed to fix the roads, is doing nothing about the problem which is getting worse.

There are no council repair teams on the roads, no signs to warn motorists of impending danger caused by trenches and nobody at the local authority seems to care. This dereliction of duty on the part of the council is shocking, to say the least.

Harare City Council should have anticipated that the onset of the rains would worsen the problem of potholes and deploying response teams to attend to the problem should have been a priority.

Where are the pothole patching machines that were donated by Zinara amid pomp and fanfare a few a few years ago?

The lack of repairmen on the disintegrating roads means motorists can only pray for divine intervention.

Hard-pressed families now spend precious dollars repairing their vehicles, something they had never budgeted for.

The money, which is difficult to raise in this tight liquidity environment, could have been used for other productive purposes if the roads were well-maintained.

A number of people have also lost their lives in accidents that can be attributed to the state of the roads.

The local authority should urgently come up with a plan to revamp the road network in order to make it usable for thousands of people who travel in the city every day.

Council must also formulate a strategy to deal with congestion that has been worsened by the influx of ex-Japanese vehicles which have flooded the city. This could provide relief to its long suffering ratepayers.

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Edith Chibhamu challenges Mnangagwa to pay fees for all the informal service affected during the lockdown

Dubai based business woman and aspiring president for Zimbabwe Democratic and Economic Freedom Party (ZDEFP), Edith Chibhamu has challenged Zimbabwe President Emmerson Mnangagwa to do the right thing and assist parents in the informal service with their children’s school fees.

Posting on her micro-blog Facebook page Chibhamu said: “Now that the lockdown has ended and ED says schools must open, who is going to pay fees for the informal traders’ children since their businesses were closed?

Vendors and informal workers’ groups in Zimbabwe say that city officials, with the support of the government, have been exploiting the lockdown destroying makeshift shops and market stalls while their owners were observing stay-at-home orders last year.

In a conjoint statement the former minister of state for Harare Oliver Chidawu and former mayor Hebert Gomba said they noted with concern the anxiety that has gripped players in the informal sector, especially when the demolitions began.

In an exclusive interview with Chibhamu on the sidelines of her challenge to the president she said:

“Mnangagwa’s government still claims that the aim of the operation was to remove illegal businesses and ensure that cities are “clean, orderly and well-managed” while also making sure councils don’t lose out on potential revenue although they did not consider the destructiveness to such a diabolic act against the ordinary people and the informal sector”

“I expected Mnangagwa’s administration to be reserving low capital sectors of the economy only for locals. It’s sad that he has chosen to side with foreigners whilst his own people are languishing in poverty with unemployment rates close to 95% percent”.

“Mnangagwa is treating his own people like strangers. How can a normal government approve a Chinese national to come to Zimbabwe and start Sadza (staple) and bottled water business when locals are unemployed and often denied that opportunity?”

“He must know that our youths are the guarantee to the future of our nation and it’s high time we build a strong foundation. The government must promote youths and have them in all levels of leadership and not victimize them on the basis of their different political affiliations” Chibhamu said

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What SHOULD have been done differently with respect to the Chinese vaccines in Zimbabwe: Arthur Mutambara

A summary

A few things could have been done differently:

1) Yes the SA variant is new (dec 2020), and the Chinese vaccine has be around for a while and tested in a number places.

If we and the Chinese were in a proactive and empowering partnership, within the period from December to now; clinical trials could have be done on the drug against this SA variant in Zimbabwe or SA by the Chinese working with Africans.

2) We could have established the efficacy of the Chinese drug against the SA variant before roll-out, just as he South Africans did with respect to the Oxford one before rollout, although they were late into the process as well.

A lot of things can be done BEFORE shipping a drug, if there is a meaningful partnership between manufacturer and consumer.

3) Forget the SA variant. For the other virus variants in Zimbabwe; Zimbabweans working with the Chinese should have done trials in Zimbabwe way before shipment.

There was plenty time to run trials of the Chinese vaccine on the these variants in Zimbabwe.

Why should we depend on data and trials from other jurisdictions?

Where is our agency in this?

4) Advance work with the Chinese in Zimbabwe would have enabled us to do a SWOT analysis on the vaccine, and clearly understand its exceptions (cases where it does not apply).

All this knowledge and insights about the Chinese vaccines could have gathered way before shipment into Zimbabwe.

5) More, importantly the Chinese are our all-weather friends (I hope and trust that this is the case);

Why can’t we as a continent work with them to do vaccines R and D, manufacturing of vaccines, run clinical trials …. participation in the entire drug value chain with them?

The Chinese are working on at least 6 vaccines. Why can’t they partner with the African continent on just ONE of those vaccines?

As all-weather friends whose bond was crafted in blood against imperialism (as they tell us) we surely can work together on just ONE vaccine as whole continent with our dear comrades.

That is not too much to ask as fellow comrade in arms.

6) Listen, it is a crisis situation.

Yes, we take what is available.

We must save our people.

However, we must learn and try to do things differently. Where we err we must quickly rectify the situation.

The sooner we pick up lessons from this COVID-19 experience as Africans the better; for our struggle against this pandemic and future ones.