MOSES MADYIRA
Every election brings fresh confusion and problems that people will live with for the next five years hoping to solve them in the next election only for new serious challenges to emerge.
The recently held harmonized elections were no exception for the residents of Chivhu. The elections brought ne problems that people will carry forward hoping to solve in the next election. And the most intriguing question that has so far raged and divided the transit town is; which wards constitute the town board?
The question became intense after four opposition councillors in the urban, namely Collen Zvarevashe of Ward 11, Amos Reza of Ward 10, Felix Zhakata of Ward 9 and Ishmael Maukazuva of Ward 12, stormed out of the formulation meeting citing that the process was warped and have since declared it null and void.
However, the politics of walking out of meetings has become a habitual tendency from the opposition wherever they feel something is off tangent.
No one makes a fuss about that, it’s an internalized model of their politics.
So, I have concluded that someone needs to lose something essential in his head first before pursuing politics. Seriously, how can a level-headed politician miss out on the delimitation process, his town’s LDP and the newly formed women’s quota? Perhaps one has to choose what to know and what not to know to be a ‘typical’ politician.
One can safely say the opposition councillors paid no or little attention to the delimitation process, Chivhu LDP and the new women’s quota which shook them out of their wits when they realized they were outnumbered by Zanu Pf councillors prompting them to throw a series of tantrums before ganging and walking out of the proceedings.
However, for them the issue has nothing to do with the delimitation of the town’s LDP or the women’s quota but the process which was used to assemble a town board.
Their argument, which I think is valid and vague at the same time, is that every ward has an interest in town but it doesn’t make them permanent members of the Town Board because none of the said wards has a polling station in town.
They are also of the view that the council imposed rural ward councillors to handle Chivhu town affairs. And lastly, the fact that the previous Town Board was chaired by Ward 8 does not make it a good precedent. For Christ’s sake, if you don’t want too many cats at your homestead you better kill them off before they get pregnant otherwise, they will multiply.
The councilors have since written a letter to the council CEO Bullen Chiwara who has referred the matter to the full council for a decision. The letter reads, “The above matter refers to a council meeting held on Wednesday, September 20 2023. Our objection is to the process that had been followed in the appointment of committees which to us was done by certain individuals who are not even part of the council and announced to the council by our council chairperson Mr. Israel Dhikinya.
“The process was against RDC Act and our constitution as it fails to follow the required procedure as outlined in our RDC Act Chapter 29:13 and this renders the whole process void,” reads the letter.
Chikomba RDC chairman Israel Dhikinya who chaired the meeting insisted that the process was above the law as only councilors who are within the council’s LDP of Chivhu are members of the Town Board and elected their chairman.
“What we did is above board because councillors within the council’s LDP of Chivhu are members of the Town Board and elected their chairman. Everything that was done was done lawfully as per the delimitation exercise that was done recently. There won’t be any coming back, after all, they left when the meeting was still ongoing so they don’t know what transpired after they left, they need to see minutes first so they can catch up with others. Only four of them out of 39 councillors are having queries about the Town Board,” said Dhikinya.
Fortunately or unfortunately, the opposition welcomed a lone cat which later got pregnant and gave birth to two more kittens. So, this is how two kittens came about: in 2018 the Town Board was constituted by only four urban wards, namely Ward 9, Ward 10, Ward 11, Ward 12 and Ward 8 of Learnmore Mufamba was later brought in due to its interest in town.
After CCC ward 11 councillor who was chairing the committee was recalled together with the ward 10 councillor, Mufamba took over the reins due to a division amongst two opposition councillors who had left after one of the opposition councillors.
After the delimitation, Ward 8, which is circular in shape and surrounds Chivhu Urban was ripped and fused with the other two wards, namely Ward 4 and Ward 6 which made them automatically fit into the Town Board since they have some parts that have interest in town, and most notably the LDP which states a 20km radius.
Zanu PF also got two more urban councillors from the women’s quota which gave the ruling party a total of five councillors against four CCC councillors. The development triggered anger from the opposition who did not expect that prompting them to storm out of the proceedings accusing the council of smuggling rural councilors into the town board lastly council chairperson who assembled the committees lacked the powers to do so, so a wrong procedure cannot produce a legitimate outcome.
Learnmore Mufamba of Ward 8 was re-elected Town Board Chair.
History has it that as long as there is an interminable tension of that magnitude any dream of development remains just like that, a dream on the horizon.
There are too many dreams hovering on the horizon that have already been mocked to death due to fights between politicians. Chivhu is stuck due to high tension in politics.
It’s already time up!
