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Parliamentary Monitor: Issue 19
Parliamentary Monitoring Trust (Zimbabwe)
January 18, 2012

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Can These People be Trusted?

I may not have swallowed very big books like those I meet from time to time. I dropped out of school after my parents failed to pay my school fees. I may have left the classroom half-baked but the ability to read and write was something that I thought would open doors for me. I knew I would be able to use the literacy and numeracy for a career in life. I also knew that the foundation was necessary for further correspondence. I would read by night and would attend night schools. This is a disclaimer. I am wading into a territory which may cause some mental bruises. It is thus advised that those who like academic and mind blowing big words and thinking may skip and look for other content. The issue I intent to address is that of CDF. My MP, wherever he is, never asked us what to do with the huge amount. Yes huge by our village standards. He may have avoided our kachasu/tototo influenced thinking. After all what matters to them are the votes. After we deliver the votes, then the rest is history. They will make decisions on our behalf. We forgave him even after he bought a water tank, for the secondary school, the one that gave me the reading and writing skills. This was the second tank for the school. He bluntly told the authorities that they should look for ways of installing it. After all he had done his part. He was better than that MP who did the electricity tubing and then abandoned the people. I held no grudge. I was happy that the green tank was development/ development as we said in my language. Then last week I read that there are 7 MPs who had failed to account for the CDF. Then there was further information that 23 of them had not done returns. Politics is a game of numbers so let us do a bit of calculations here. If 30 men and women, entrusted by 30 constituencies can choose to DEFRAUD the same constituencies, then what is happening to our politics? One villager said the politics of the country had gone to the dogs. I differed. Its worse. It is the dogs which have started to gnaw our politics. Can we trust the politicians with this happening? 30 is a large number. It is reflective of whom we are voting. We should be looking beyond the rotten apples but we are unable to do so as the culprits remain nameless. The onus is now with the people of Zimbabwe to demand that the names of the people who abuse trust be released. These people are not worth our vote. They are not worth a seat in our Parliament. Until then, we would be kept guessing and I am suspicious of my MP. He may be clean but if they do not push for the publication of names then he also is a potential thief and should not be trusted.

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