Zimbabwe Parliament- What they said about the Belarus fire tender deal- Part 4

Hon. Saruwaka said that fire tenders need water once arrangement to provide water is available.  Is Belarus relations sound?  We need fire tenders; of course we have resolved some of the problems of water.  There is a programme that was brought by His Excellency the President whereby every village is having a borehole sunk.  You have seen all over the country borehole drilling going on and water is being made available through Gwayi- Shangani.  You can see that the Government is making efforts to make sure that it addresses the water situation, hence we saw it prudent that we also go for the fire tenders.

About the Belarus Zimbabwean relations, I do not think I will be able to comment on that, it is outside my jurisdiction.   I thank you.

HON. MACHINGAUTA: Thank you Mr. Speaker, I need clarification on two sections of the Constitution, whether the Minister is aware of them. The first one is Chapter I (2) which says “Supremacy of the Constitution – This Constitution is the supreme law of Zimbabwe and any law, practice, custom or conduct inconsistent with it is invalid to the extent of the inconsistency”.  Section 2 says “The obligations imposed by this Constitution are binding on every person, natural or juristic, including the State and all executive, legislative and judicial institutions and agencies of Government at every level, and must be fulfilled by them”.

Chapter 14, Section 276 states that, “Functions of Local Authorities –  section 1, subject to this Constitution and any act of Parliament, a local authority has the right to govern, on its own initiative, the local affairs of the people within the area for which it has been established, and has all the powers necessary for it to do so”.  So Hon. Minister, I do not know whether you have come across these two sections which allow the local authorities and the people of Zimbabwe to decide.  You did recentralization which is the opposite of what the Constitution says because the Constitution is saying that no one must go against this.

The Hon. Minister knows that the local authorities and the people of Zimbabwe have the power to refuse to accept unlawful procedures like what they did to force them.  These are some of the things to consider when looking at devolution funds.

HON. CHIKOMBO:  Mr. Speaker Sir, I have very few remarks and submissions to make in following up what she has just alluded to.  The first thing that I am concerned with…

THE TEMPORARY SPEAKER: Hon. Chikombo you need to be guided that you need to ask questions or raise points of clarification and not debate.

HON. CHIKOMBO: Of course I will do that.  In her submission, she made a statement to the effect that the reason they decided not to go with the requirement of the Constitution is because of the bi-lateral agreement that exists between the two countries.  I have to remind the Minister of Section 327 of our Constitution on International conventions, treaties and agreements, subsection (2), which reads as follows, “Any international treaty which has been concluded or executed by the President or under the President’s authority (a) “does not bind Zimbabwe until it has been approved by Parliament…”. In this regard, the bi-lateral agreement was not approved by this House, meaning to say they are not standing on a strong legal position.  So this deal is a nullity, we now need to chat a way forward in terms of what must be done under the circumstances, now that the Ministry is operating without the confines of the law. That is my intervention. They went further to disregard the requirement of the Urban Councils Act and the Rural District Councils Act.

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