‘MPs mustn’t be in provincial councils’ . . . chiefs vanguard of devolution
LOCAL Government, Public Works and National Housing Minister July Moyo says there is need for Government to ensure Senators and National Assembly members do not become members of provincial and metropolitan councils.
Government has been forging ahead with plans to devolve power to provinces to ensure grassroots have more say in the development trajectory of their areas.
Section 268 of the Constitution of Zimbabwe (Chapter 14) provides that Senators and National Assembly members be part of the provincial and metropolitan councils mandated with spearheading provincial economies under devolution.
In his address at a Masvingo provincial devolution conference here on Monday, Minister Moyo said Government urgently needed to fine-tune the Constitution to exclude National Assembly members and Senators from provincial and metropolitan councils.
He said it was a serious anomaly for Members of Parliament to superintend over the same developmental budgetary programmes they would have decentralised in the august House.
“Their (Senators and National Assembly members) involvement in provincial and metropolitan councils is just as good as supervising themselves,” said Minister Moyo. TRADITIONAL leaders are the vanguard of devolution and the decentralisation of power cannot happen without their involvement, Zimbabwe’s Chiefs Council president Chief Fortune Charumbira has said.
Addressing stakeholders during the inaugural Masvingo devolution conference here last week, Chief Charumbira said devolution and traditional leaders were inseparable. He said chiefs were the custodians of culture.
Chief Charumbira said the country’s erstwhile colonisers tried to sideline traditional leaders in the development matrix, but failed dismally.
“We believe this is a great moment as we move to develop this country through a new paradigm called provincial council,” said Chief Charumbira said.
“We need to spend a lot of time minister (of State for Masvingo
“In other words, MPs would strain remuneration budgets for the provincial councils and ultimately disrupt the entire sense of devolution.”
The Cabinet minister said allowing MPs to sit in provincial and provincial affairs Ezra Chadzamira) telling our people what it (devolution) is all about.
“There is no devolution which can happen without the involvement of chiefs as they are the vanguard of the programme,” said Chief Charumbira.
He said devolution was not a unique developmental concept to Zimbabwe as it was also being
metropolitan councils would be akin to allowing the legislature to supervise itself.
“In my view, the first thing before setting the ball rolling on the devolution agenda is to amend the Constitution and remove this used in other African countries.
“Fortunately when the issue of devolution was discussed during the constitution-making exercise I was there. We want to isolate what we call development prerequisites and know how traditional leaders can fit into this devolution matrix. We want to deal with traditional leaders’ conundrum.”
“In 2000, when I was the Deputy Minister of Local Government, we went to Uganda on a familiarisation visit on devolution which means the programme is not new,” he said.
Chief Charumbira said devolution and not donor handouts was the panacea to community-level development deficiencies in Africa.
“There is development fatigue in Africa as we are not developing despite huge donations. The World Bank, in 2000 authored a paper titled, “Can Africa claim the 21st century” and that means we
glaring anomaly. The legislature cannot be accountable to themselves,” he said.
Minister Moyo said the separation of powers in the devolution model mandated provinces to craft their own master plans had previously failed to reach our destiny.
“As Masvingo, we need distributive and procedural justice which means we should distribute equitably and share transparently. Under this concept (devolution), we will have power as a province and be able to do our own things,” he said
He said in devolution, development was demand-driven and everyone should take part.
“We had devolution mechanisms before, but there was no budget. We had provincial development committees which used to convene departmental heads, but there were no tangible results. As we talk devolution there is now renewed interest in the traditional institution,” he said.
The Second Republic under President Mnangagwa was taking the devolution concept seriously with $310 million being allocated for the programme in the 2019 Budget.
which would feed into the national agenda.
Senators will be instrumental on the national agenda for development. We must let the provincial and metropolitan councils manage provincial affairs.