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Community News Bulletin - Issue 5
Centre for Community Development in Zimbabwe (CCDZ)
April 29, 2012

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Selfish Chiefs, Headman blasted

Communities around the country have lamented the selfishness of traditional leaders who recently demanded hefty allowances, guns, vehicles, boreholes and control of Constituency Development Fund (CDF).

Phillip Pasirayi, an official with Centre for Community Development in Zimbabwe (CCDZ) said communities recently visited so far - Mashonaland West, East and Central, Midlands and Masvingo - felt that the chiefs' demands were too personal.

"In recent CCDZ community meetings held on local government and service delivery, attended by an average of 100 people per meeting, participants felt the chiefs were not doing anything spectacular that warrants those hefty allowances," said Pasirayi.

One youthful participant at Murereshi Village in Magunje said the chiefs only desired material things while on the ground they were doing a shadowy job.

Participants in Chiweshe's Gweshe area lambasted the move as well, saying that a good chief is protected by his own people and that they can only fight him in the event he was not serving the people well.

"In further questioning the reasons why there is a feeling that chiefs were performing below standard, it came out that most of them have since become enemies of their own people, particularly those who do not support Zanu PF," said the CCDZ official.

A young woman in Doro Village, under Chief Dendera said: "We always get threats that we will be displaced from this area for supporting MDC and we are excluded from some provisions distributed by the chiefs."

Pasirayi said the majority of participants also complained about the bungling by minister of Local Government, Ignatius Chombo in community related issues.

"This was mainly raised in Murehwa where the minister is said to have told citizens that chiefs had the right to do whatever they deemed necessary in the communities since they were the custodians," he said.

Pasirayi said in Chirumhanzi South, Chief Nhema was urged to displace Tendekai Mugova and a youth who had exchanged harsh words with the chief at a beer hall.

"The village heads have also been painted with the same brush with communities accusing them of being partisan. An alarming revelation by communities in Chivi was the fact that almost all village heads supported Zanu PF," said Pasirayi.

He said a village head that was in attendance at a Chivi community meeting hastened to defend that position arguing that they were intimidated into doing so.

Said the headman: "We are forced to act as such (being partisan) because failure to do so risked either being removed from your position or being beaten up."

Pasirayi said it became apparent from the meetings that the headmen were actually involved in mobilising people for political meetings.

They were blamed for giving updates of what was prevailing politically in their respective communities to the Zanu PF leadership.

Women lamented their discrimination at the hands of chiefs.

"Chief Nyakunhuhwa whose chieftainship is in Zaka was mentioned, having said that the role of women was just to assist men as they instructed them," said the CCDZ official.

CCDZ programmes officer George Makoni said they assured the villagers that their concerns about partisan traditional leaders would be raised at government level.

"We want to assure them that we will raise their concerns with the inclusive government. Traditional leaders are not supposed to behave as political commissars of political parties," said Makoni.

He however, added that in some areas CCDZ was working with progressive chiefs who were sticking to their role as custodians of culture and not mixing that with politics in violation of Article 14 of the Global Political Agreement.

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