Problems in Masvingo as outreach meetings abandoned
By Lance Guma
30 August 2010
Several constitutional outreach meetings were abandoned in the urban areas
of Masvingo on Saturday. Our correspondent, Simon Muchemwa, reports that
only 1 out of 6 meetings were successfully completed after ZANU PF planted
members of the Central Intelligence Organization (CIO) into the outreach
teams.
Those appointed by ZANU PF into the outreach teams, and have been working in
the teams for the past two and half months, were replaced by the CIO’s
without notice, Muchemwa reported. Although not using violence to disrupt
the meetings the CIO have been generating silly squabbles amongst the
all-party outreach teams to ensure no meeting is successfully completed. The
only meeting to be completed lasted 5 hours and was dominated by more
engineered ‘petty’ squabbles.
At Mucheke Hall for example Team number 6 of the outreach failed to complete
its meeting after the ZANU PF CIO rapporteur alleged proper procedures were
not being followed. The arguments were so heated members of the outreach
team almost came to blows. The meeting was abandoned after only 4 out 26
questions had been asked in a total of 2 hours.
An attempt on Monday to finish the abandoned meetings was again disrupted.
This time it was the turn of notorious ZANU PF activist Chief Fortune
Charumbira who is President of Zimbabwe Council of Chiefs. Charumbira, with
the help of the Provincial Administrator and a ZANU PF youth known as
Ephraim Moyo, is alleged to have deliberately misled outreach teams into
going to rural Zaka some 200 km away from Masvingo urban. This meant they
could not go back to the correct venue in time for the meeting to be done.
The disruptions come at a time the Constitutional Parliamentary Committee
(COPAC) was supposed to meet its project board to raise an extra US$5
million funding to extend the outreach by 15 days. Muchemwa told us ZANU PF
knows COPAC is broke and cannot afford to complete the abandoned meetings.
This he said was why they are deliberately resorting to the tactic of making
sure meetings are abandoned.