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Government Decision to Appoint Governors for Harare, Bulawayo Unwarranted
National Constitutional Assembly (NCA)
January 07, 2003

The recent announcement by Ignatius Chombo, the Minister of Local Government, Public Works and National Housing, that the provinces of Harare and Bulawayo will soon have governors is not only unacceptable but is yet another case of scorn of the people's will by the knave and illegitimate ZANU P.F regime using the provisions of the defective and condemned constitution of Zimbabwe. It is a public secret that the two provinces are strongholds of the opposition and residents of both provinces democratically elected their Executive Mayors last year. These mayors stunned the ZANU P.F regime by their marked achievements in the two cities in a very short period of time as opposed to the successive ZANU P.F mayors who were at the helm of the two cities since independence but succeeded in nothing but a systematic destruction of the two cities through corruption and bad management.

The NCA is aware that under the current tainted constitution of the land, Chombo's attempts are legal. However, the idea is inadmissible as it seeks to undermine grassroots or local government democracy by incapacitating the opposition-led councils in Bulawayo and Harare. In the past nine months the ZANU P.F government through Chombo tried in vain to baffle and oust the two opposition mayors for their achievements because they are exposing the ineptitude and bad governance of the ruling regime which failed to improve the two cities during the time of ZANU P.F mayors. These malicious attempts by Chombo and his party to usurp the sovereignty of the people of Bulawayo and Harare by undermining the autonomy of these two democratically elected mayors through the use of incredulous provisions of the illegitimate and defective constitution should be treated with the contempt they deserve.

Above all this decision to expand the government's wages bill by appointing these so called governors comes in the wake of growing poverty as the tax-payer's money is failing to sustain the bloated government workforce. At the moment more than six million Zimbabweans face starvation as shortages of basic commodities have hit the country partly because of the drought but mainly because of bad governance and ticklish government policies like the state sanctioned violence that characterised the agrarian reform programme leaving Zimbabwe an uncredit-worthy and a risky investor destination. Instead of giving attention to sprucing up of our bad international image so as to attract the much needed aid to remedy the crisis at hand the capricious government finds wisdom in creating employment opportunities to ZANU P.F stalwarts at the expense of the tax-payer and the generality of Zimbabweans.

This issue of governors shows how timid and unaccountable the government is as no consultation was made with the taxpayer whose hard-earned money will go towards funding of this extravagant and frivolous project. It is obvious that the government of Zimbabwe continues behaving in this shiftless manner because of our deficient constitution. The only solution to these problems confronting our country today is a new democratic constitution built through a people-centred process, then fresh elections held under provisions of the new constitution.

We therefore, call upon all Zimbabweans to rally behind the NCA's call for a new, democratic and people-centred constitution for Zimbabwe for it is the only lasting panacea to Zimbabwe's woes. We therefore, urge you to join the NCA demonstrations and stay-aways that are going to be staged in due course to protest against these senseless government decisions, increasing hardships and to force the government to embrace constitutional reform.

Issued by NCA Information Department
For further information, contact:
Maxwell Saungweme
Tel: 011-734171
Email: info@nca.org.zw

Visit the NCA fact sheet

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