The speech Misihairabwi-Mushonga says she was misquoted by The Herald

Mr. Speaker Sir, there are three things which I want to speak about because there is no point in going into the discussions around the Budget allocations because they are basically the same.  You can talk about the Foreign Affairs Committee to which I belong, it is exactly the same thing and things have gotten even worse.  You can talk about the Committee on Justice, which fortunately holds on Parliament.  Unfortunately, we did not have to look at the Parliamentary Budget, but one can be sure that it is the same.  I think what we need to spend our time doing now is having a very frank, honest and not an abusive conversation.  We need to speak on something that speaks to what are the fundamentals which are problematic.  Why are we in the situation that we are in?

Mr. Speaker Sir, I must say, the state in which Zimbabwe is right now is a sorry state. It does not matter whether you are talking about the roads and potholes, it does not matter whether you are talking about the lack of service delivery where people spend years without water.  It does not matter whether you are talking about hospitals where women are dying every other day because they cannot get blood for blood transfusion as they give birth.  It is a whole range of things, it is about a crisis.

Mr. Speaker, if you go in your own car park, it speaks a story about what is here.  I do not know whether you have been in the car park in the last two days but if you look at the kind of garbage and refuse, lack of refuse collection that is there in the car park, it speaks to what we are saying about this particular Parliament but that is true of every other institution.  I think the question we need to ask yourselves is why?  Why have we gotten where we are today?  Why is it that when we spoke about a vision of creating 2 million jobs, we have created exactly the opposite 2 million people unemployed?  Why is it that all the things that we have spoken about have not worked?  Let us be honest as a nation and as a country.  There is only one thing that has happened.  Mr. Speaker, the centre is not holding in a number of things and this is why I said I emplore on people to not see this as an abusive conversation but to look at the things that I am about to talk about.

Mr. Speaker, there is disunity in every other sector in this country, whether it is Government itself, we have a Government that is at war with itself.  Last time when we did the Mid-Term Review, I raised a point of order because just days after the Minister who I have the greatest respect for and I want to be honest, I think if there is a hard working honest Minister in this particular Government, it is Minister Chinamasa – [HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear.] –  however, he is not going to produce as long as we have the kind of divisions that we are beginning to see which make it impossible for people to operate.

Let me just give you an example, I will start with your own House so that you can understand how the divisions that I am talking about can derail the whole process.  On Sunday we woke up to this headline ‘I am sorry Kereke’.  I just want to tell you a story behind this because I never did but I need to tell you today – [HON. MEMBERS: Inaudible interjections.] – yes, this is a Government paper it is not a private paper.

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