Zimbabwe should be the Dubai of Africa- MP says

THE TEMPORARY SPEAKER (HON. MUTOMBA): Sorry Hon. Toffa. I do not think it is proper and parliamentary the way you seem to be castigating Hon. Togarepi. I do not accept that, can you withdraw that statement. Just continue with your facts.

HON. TOFFA: Which one Mr. Speaker.

THE TEMPORARY SPEAKER: Earlier on you said he was sounding like he is bullying and now you are coming back saying that it is childish. I do not think it is parliamentary. It does not need any clarification and what I am ruling on is what you have just said.

HON. TOFFA: Okay for progress’s sake, I will not argue with you. I will withdraw the fact that I said it is childish.  Mr. Speaker Sir, the other day there was a debate in the House, some Hon. Members were reporting on the United Emirates Expo and if you look at how that country is progressing and how well they have done and the fact that they have to import almost every single thing that they use, whereas we have everything exporting intellect and yet we are saying, I do not know whether it is wrong to say what Hon. Togarepi said that we are saying do not help Zimbabwe as though we are destitute. We are not destitute but we just need to manage our resources well.

I look at countries such as Switzerland and in that country no woman is allowed to go to work until the child is six years old. That country has no water. I asked them how they were doing so well. They have got one mineral which is waters and their brains. We are not lacking in that but we find ourselves huge on corruption. We seem to be encouraging corruption because nobody is brought to book. You find small fish for example former Minister Kagonye who has been imprisoned. If she did wrong, she should be. There are people that are smuggling gold and diamonds and look at our resources, they should be going back into our country. Our mining sector – when we go out for public hearings in the bushes of Zimbabwe, we see a hive of activity going on, but it is not turning out to something tangible but we should be the Dubai of Africa. We are attracting the attention to Zimbabwe because what we are doing is infringing on the rights of expression. Our Constitution on Section 60 talks about freedom of conscience.

Every person has the right to freedom of conscience including freedom of thought, opinion, religion, belief, freedom to practice and express these in private or public. We say our constitution is the supreme law of the land and here we are – our Government Chief Whip is talking about taking away those rights. As Government, and as Parliament, we should be leading by example and what we do should be cascading down to our communities, our constituencies and to our young people. Our young people do not even know why they have to vote. They do not want to register to vote because they do not see why they should do it because all we do in Parliament is see how we can fix each other up. So that is what we are teaching our young people out there.

As much as I said we should be patriotic, that does not mean that we should be vindictive. Patriotism means that we should look at how we can progress our country and how we should support one another and to see where things are wrong.

Part of speech not recorded due to power outage.

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