MDC-T says chiefs should not be ZANU-PF political commissars

Friday, 27 October 2017

Government must have its priorities right

The MDC respects the institution of traditional leaders and in fact, we have always advocated for the welfare of all our traditional leaders to be adequately catered for by the responsible authorities.

Traditional leaders are crucial in maintaining and upholding the fabric of our society such that our national identity and cultural values can be upheld from one generation to the other. Indeed, a people without a cultural identity is basically a lost and directionless people.

In terms of the supreme law of the land, our traditional leaders are supposed to be apolitical at all times. The colonial regimes bastardized and trashed the institution of traditional leaders to such an extent that most chiefs in the colonial era were reduced to become willing tools and virtual slaves of the racist colonial masters.

However, a few traditional leaders such as Chief Rekayi Tangwena vehemently refused to be subjugated and trashed by the racist colonial regimes that had designed a deliberate policy of reducing chiefs to become stooges who could be abused and manipulated to oppress their own subjects in the then reserves. Traditional leaders are an integral part of our society and they should always be accorded the respect that they deserve.

Recently, the Zanu PF regime announced that it had purchased 226 Isuzu twin–cab  vehicles for the 226 chiefs in Zimbabwe. The timing of this announcement obviously coincided with the dawn of the electioneering season in the country.

It, thus, cannot escape scrutiny that there is a sinister and ulterior motive behind the Zanu PF regime’s decision to buy motor vehicles for chiefs at this juncture. At a time when the public health delivery system has virtually collapsed and when most of the country’s district hospitals do not even have an ambulance, one can easily conclude that the decision to buy these motor vehicles for the chiefs is nothing but a blatant vote–buying exercise by the desperate, crumbling and bankrupt Zanu PF regime.

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