Zim News Blog -NEWS NETWORK

Zambia, which is the current SADC Troika Chair, convened a virtual meeting on Wednesday, where among other issues discussed the SADC Electoral Observation Mission (SEOM) report on Zimbabwe’s just ended disputed harmonised elections as well as other security challenges taking place in the region.

The opposition in Zimbabwe including concerned citizens were pressing for an urgent Extraordinary SADC Summit to settle the political challenges in the country following the flawed August 23 elections.

Zambia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation announced that Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema, current Chairperson of the SADC Organ on Politics, Defence and Security Cooperation would convene and chair a virtual Extraordinary Organ Troika Summit on September 27, 2023.

Tanzanian President Dr Samia Suhulu Hassan – the incoming chairperson of the SADC Organ on Politics, Defence and Security Cooperation, Namibian President Hage Gottfried Geingob – the outgoing chairperson of the SADC Organ on Politics, Defence and Security Cooperation, and President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) Felix Antoine Tshisekedi attended the meeting from 2.30pm to 4.30pm.

“The summit will deliberate on the security situation in eastern DRC, updates of pledged critical capabilities for the SADC mission in the DRC (SAMIDCR) and the progress made towards deployment in the eastern DRC, particularly the revised indicative budget for the SAMIDRC,” said Zambia’s Foreign Affairs Ministry in a press statement.

“It is in Zambia’s interest to support efforts towards the SADC mission in DRC in order to maintain regional peace and stability, a prerequisite for advancing intra-regional trade and investment which are critical for socio economic development.”

Zambia’s Foreign Affairs Ministry said the deployment of a Brigade-size Force in support of the DRC for an initial period of 12 months, beginning on September 30, 2023 was approved at the Extraordinary Organ Troika Summit Plus SADC Troika and Force Intervention Brigade Troop Contributing Countries (FIB TCCs) and the DRC on MAy 11, 2023 in Windhoek Namibia.

“Additionally, the SADC Electoral Observation Mission (SEOM) report on the harmonised elections in Zimbabwe as well as other implementing elections in the sADC region will also be discussed and good governance are also the foundation of Zambia’s foreign policy,” said the Foreign Ministry.

The summit was preceded by another virtual Extraordinary Council of Ministers Meetings on September 27, 2023.

Residents in Bulawayo have challenged the new councilors to prioritise service delivery and a good working relationship between the local authority and communities citing water as a major concern.

Residents indicated that their major concern was water, as Bulawayo has long faced acute water shortages.

“Our councillors will need to prioritise access to clean water,” said Marilyn Ncube, a resident in QueensPark West Suburb.

“We have been receiving dirty brown water for weeks now. If you check the containers you will see the brown residue on the bottom and that is frightening because you wonder what we are drinking.”

Ncube noted that buying purified water was expensive, so they resorted to boiling water.

Witness Bhebhe, another Trenance resident, stated that councillors must prioritise cleanliness in the city and health access in the community.

“The City of Bulawayo needs to prioritise sanitisation. Everyone can see the decay of our beloved city and that is painful,” he lamented.

“Tied to sanitation and cleanliness is the healthy delivery system. Council needs to make sure  people have access to quality healthcare within their local institutions,” he said.

Bhebhe added another priority was the road infrastructure.

“We have potholes everywhere. Our roads are a disaster and rehabilitation needs to happen otherwise we will have no roads at all,” Bhebhe said.

Louette Hunt also from Trenance added “the city is in urgent need of a serious service delivery across the board and councillors cannot afford to fail people in any way.”

“We now need to see the work, be it cleaning streets, picking litter, improving water quality and access,” Hunt said.

Political analyst, Effie Ncube, noted residents were justified to make these calls because these are difficulties they face daily.

More significantly, Ncube said councillors will need to prioritise ties between themselves and Bulawayo residents.

“Sometimes it gets so, so difficult. But for you to successfully govern well you need the support of the community, so councillors will need to mobilise the local community. Work with them at the ward level to make sure they have sufficient information about what is transpiring at Council level, what they have, what they don’t have, the limitations and everything that is at their disposal,” Ncube recommended.

“So, the mayor and councillors have a huge responsibility waiting for them.”

However, Ncube stated the first challenge for the mayor is that the position is not executive mayor and thus an individual cannot rely on their singular capacity but needs collective capacity.

“Success will need institutional capacity, working with all others to ensure that you deliver services that people are waiting for. But also, the council needs to build bridges across into the business sector to mobilise resources that are in the business sector.”

Ncube stated that there are also factors that are dependent on the national government, so councillors will need to build bridges to make sure there is coordination between the local authority, the national government and provincial councillors if they are given the authority to function as the Constitution envisages.

“So by and large, that is what is waiting for the mayor and councillors. Most importantly, they will need to be united because one of the things that debilitates council capacities is the level of divisions that we usually see in councils, where they spend a lot of time squabbling amongst each other. So they would need to prevent that from happening so that as a collective they are able to deliver the kind of services that people want to see in Bulawayo,” he summed.

The Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) councillors in Nkayi have accused the District Development Coordinator (DDC) and the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) in the Rural District Council (RDC) of rigging the election of the council chairperson in favour of a Zanu PF candidate.

The accusations follow the election of Zanu PF councillors, Elvis Nkomo and Bongani Dube as chairperson and deputy chairperson, respectively, on Tuesday.

CCC councilors alleged that before the election the DDC, Matilda Mlotshwa and CEO Silibele Mpofu held a ‘secret meeting’ to make sure that a Zanu PF councilor was appointed chairperson.

Zanu PF has 19 councillors in the RDC while CCC has 17 and MDC-T has two.

In an interview with CITE following the election on Tuesday, CCC councillor Modias Fuzane, who was nominated as chairperson, alleged he was cheated.

“The DDC was chairing the election but connived with the CEO and other staff members. The election was by secret ballot and after voting, the DDC announced the winner and put the ballot papers aside. I wanted to verify the ballots, but I erred in making my intentions known because we were dismissed during the verification exercise to go to our committees,” Fuzane claimed.

Fuzane alleged the CEO also went and stood in front of them, forming a barrier to prevent them from witnessing what the DDC was doing with other staffers.

“I suspected something was amiss and I stood up to see the DDC quickly exchanging papers with a council staffer. That is how I was cheated,” claimed the councillor.

Fuzane indicated he was confident he would win more than 20 votes, however once the results were released, he received 18 votes while Nkomo had 20.

“The possible result was a tie, which is 19. I was sitting next to a councillor from Zanu PF who voted for me and I saw that,” he claimed.

CCC councilors alleged that before the election the DDC and the CEO held a ‘secret meeting’ to make sure that a Zanu PF councilor was appointed chairperson.

“The DDC and CEO are staunch Zanu PF supporters. They also told us that interested candidates for chairperson must submit CVs. The two even called their Zanu councillors and had a secret meeting from 9 pm to 11pm,” alleged some of the CCC councillors who had an induction event at Nyathi training Centre on Monday.

“Although Zanu PF has 19 councillors, CCC entered into an agreement with MDC-T, which has two councillors to combine votes, therefore we also had 19 councillors. Zanu has 11 councilors who were elected first past the post in Nkayi North, three in Nkayi South, CCC has 11 in Nkayi South and two in Nkayi North, and MDC-T has one. The remainder fell under proportional representation.”

CCC councillors also stated that because Nkayi was divided into North and South, the chairperson was expected to be from the South this time.

“The council chairperson was elected from Nkayi North in 2018, and there was an inside verbal agreement to have a chairperson from Nkayi South after the 2023 elections. However, Zanu PF councilors from Nkayi North rejected this, arguing the council chair cannot come from Nkayi South because Zanu PF only has three councillors there,” said the councillors.

“The Zanu PF councillors were afraid that since CCC has more councillors in Nkayi South they will lose the chairmanship position. This is why the DDC and CEO were acting funny, receiving instructions from elsewhere to manage those squabbles.”

When contacted for a comment, Nkayi DDC Matilda Mlotshwa curtly said the elections “went well” and hastened that she “does not talk to journalists about such because the spokesperson of council is the CEO.”

Nkayi CEO, Silibele Mpofu also concurred the elections went well and that vote was by secret ballot.

He however dismissed the allegations raised by CCC councillors saying he was not privy to that.

“Parties are tricky, whenever there is an election people will always caucus as political parties. That is an obvious thing to come up with how best to elect their candidates,” Mpofu said.

Mpofu also said he could not respond about the arrangement because he had not joined council in 2018.

“I only came in last year, I also heard there was something like that but as CEO my role is to swear in councilors. The election to choose the council chair is presided over by the DDC and I work with what I have been given by the voters,” said the CEO.

“Political parties have their own arrangements on how to handle issues, I’m not privy to that and I don’t want to know what they are planning on because I work with what I have been given.”

In 2021 Nkayi residents called for the abolition of the DDC’s office formerly known as District Administrator (DA) amid concerns that persons occupying the office were used by the ruling Zanu PF party to stifle development and that the post was inherited from the colonial system to suppress people’s freedoms.