Zimbawe

By Staff Reporter

Mutasa: A 65-year-old man died recently after he was struck on the head with a brick by a drunk and mentally challenged nephew following a misunderstanding over a missing 20 kilograms of maize meal.

Police confirmed the incident, saying they have since arrested the suspect.

Manicaland province police spokesperson Inspector Tavhiringwa Kakohwa said the deceased Sure Nyamvundu of Zindi village under Chief Mutasa returned home from a beer drink around 6pm and found his nephew David Nyamvundu who was also drunk.

Nyamvundu is reported to have started accusing his nephew of stealing a 20 kg of maize meal at the homestead.

David denied the claims but his now deceased uncle kept pressing on with the accusations.

This did not go down well with David who went outside the house, picked up a brick and struck Nyamvundu on the head.

“David was not happy with the accusations that he stole a 20kg bag of mealie meal and he went outside, picked a brick and struck his uncle on the head,” said Kakohwa.

Nyamvundu sustained head injuries and began bleeding from the nose and mouth.

The now deceased was rushed to Zindi clinic by Howard Tsongorera (60) of Pfumai village under chief Mutasa.

Nyamvundu was referred to Hauna District hospital where he was pronounced dead upon arrival.

The matter was reported to local police leading to David’s arrest.

“As police, we encourage members of the public to solve their differences amicably and not to resort to violence,” said the police spokesperson.

The post Drunken mental patient strikes uncle dead with a brick over missing mealie meal appeared first on NewZimbabwe.com.

Matabeleland North Correspondent

A SECONDARY school deputy headmistress who allegedly forced a Form One girl to undress in the presence of other teachers in Hwange was all smiles on Friday after a magistrate cleared of any wrongdoing.

Possenta Kwidini, aged 50, was facing a charge of seriously impairing the dignity of another person after she allegedly forced the schoolgirl to undress as punishment for walking around with her skirt unzipped.

The 15-year-old girl who cannot be named for ethical reasons, had reported the matter to her uncle who is also a teacher at the same school before the matter was reported to the police.

Kwidini, who was being represented by Elvis Mashindi of Mashindi and Partners, pleaded not guilty saying she acted as a parent to rebuke the pupil from walking around naked.

On Friday, Hwange magistrate Gift Dube said the State, led by Trymore Chitumbu had failed to establish a prima facie case against Kwidini before he found her not guilty and acquitted her.

The magistrate said there were inconsistencies in the evidence given by the complainant, who had one lady teacher testifying on her behalf against the deputy headmistress.

“There were inconsistencies in the complainant’s testimony while it is also not clear whether she was threatened to unzip her skirt or not.

“There was no evidence from the State to show that the girl was threatened.

“Her dignity was almost compromised as she was walking with her zip open and she was called into the room where there was privacy as the teacher wanted to reprimand her,” said the magistrate.

The magistrate said from evidence brought before his court, he found that the girl’s skirt fell in the process of the rebuke and it was not the intention of Kwidini to make it fall.

He said the complainant was wrong to walk naked.

“The child was wrong. No one will allow her kid or anyone to walk publicly with the zip open. Teachers are parents at school, hence the court finds that the teacher’s intention was correct as she had no intention to strip her naked. The State dismally failed to bring evidence,” said the magistrate.

Earlier before start of trial, Kwidini had applied for exception of the case but the application was dismissed by the same magistrate.

Prosecutors had alleged that Kwidini, who is a “feared” local businesswoman as the community alleges she and her family use their wealth to abuse members of the community, forced the girl to undress in the presence of two other female teachers Chipo Mahlangu and Mazvita Muteme in September this year.

Mahlangu testified in favour of the girl while Muteme supported Kwidini.

Allegations were that Kwidini was sitting in the Textiles Technology and Design room in the company of the two female teachers when she saw the girl tucking her school uniform shirt behind the classroom and called her.

Kwidini told the girl that it was improper for a girl to dress in public and allegedly ordered her girl to unzip her skirt.

The girl complied and Kwidini allegedly ordered her to let the skirt drop down while threatening to assault her.

Out of fear, the girl complied and she was left wearing her shirt and pant only.

Kwidini allegedly later ordered her to dress up and go to her classroom where she was consoled by her classmates who had witnessed the incident from their class.

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By Leopold Munhende

CHIEFS Council President and Zanu PF apologist, Fortune Charumbira Friday rubbished a 2018 court judgement ordering traditional leaders to desist from actively participating in partisan politics, openly declaring they will continue taking part in the ruling party’s activities.

He was speaking at the opening ceremony of Zanu PF’s 18th annual people’s national conference held in Goromonzi.

“I have come to tell you that this party and us (Chiefs) are the same.

“The reason why we get arrested (when we say this) is because people do not understand they look at the party from the top instead of the bottom.

“They think it is all about politics; no, and that is the reason why we will continue to come to its events.

“We will come and continue to come because Zanu PF stands for us as Chiefs. This is our party.”

He added; “I hear some of you saying Charumbira has been prosecuted, do not worry…Chiefs, veterans of the First Chimurenga and the Second Chimurenga equals Zanu PF.”

Chief Charumbira was taken to court by the Election Resource Centre (ERC) towards last year’s harmonised elections over statements judged to have been politically inclined towards Zanu PF support.

The court ordered him to withdraw his statement but has ignored the ruling without any consequences.

The post We are Zanu PF, says Chiefs Council leader as he rubbishes court judgement appeared first on NewZimbabwe.com.

By Robert Tapfumaneyi

A GROUP of doctors has split from the Zimbabwe Hospital Doctors Association (ZHDA) which organised the crippling four-month strike over poor wages with many locals dying in hospitals because of the absence of the critical health staff.

The newly formed group calls itself Progressive Doctors Association of Zimbabwe (PDA).

Speaking at the launch of the association in Harare Saturday, inaugural president of the group, Benson Dandira said they were not going to continue watching patients being turned away from health care facilities and succumbing to preventable deaths.

The group also said members were prepared to meet with their employers (government) and resolve the current impasse with doctors.

Dandira said the new group’s membership now stands at 200.

“We call them patients; they are fellow countrymen, and they are our mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, sons and daughters,” he said.

“Before we label them patients, they are Zimbabweans, as you and I are, each day passes, a breadwinner is taken away from his or her family due to avoidable conditions.

“The result of the current situation is a widow, a widower or an orphan; we cannot simply stand by and feign ignorance or cast a blind eye or deaf ear to these atrocities.

“As PDAZ, we stand for patients’ welfare. We are here to advocate for our patients with much empathy and sympathy for them and their families who are left to deal with challenges that follow, particularly secondary to these economic hardships that have not spared a single soul in this country.”

PDAZ said its membership is apolitical.

“Ours is an apolitical association, we owe our allegiance and service to the profession and our patients,” Dandira said.

“We do not belong to any political party, business or individuals; it is by remaining neutral that as PDAZ can restore dignity and order to the profession.

“We seek to bring back the ethos of fruitful and faithful negotiations between government and doctors and hopefully end the current chaos in our hospitals.”

The PDAZ leader said as doctors, the world they created over the past few months left a lot to be desired.

“We have seen unfolding of undesirable events in the nation’s health sector. Today, Sunday marks 103 days of the ongoing doctors’ incapacitation that began 3rd September,” he said.

“Our consciences are heavy and our hearts are bleeding, our people keep suffering unnecessarily and are dying from preventable diseases.”

PDAZ said their employers should now make it easy for them to work in the country’s health institutions.

“We, therefore, call upon our employer to seriously look into the doctors’ welfare, not only in terms of remuneration, but to approach it more holistically to ensure that the doctor can offer their services without having to worry about other confounding factors such as accommodation, transport to and from work, daily living expenses as they are too human and have social responsibilities and obligations to fulfil.”

Since going on strike, Zimbabwean doctors have adamantly refused government wage review offers, something that has led to the sacking of over 400 of them and the withholding of their wages by authorities.

The medical practitioners, under their militant ZHDA, have vowed they will not return to work if government did not accept their demands for US dollar wages or the local currency equivalent pegged against the prevailing interbank rates.

President Emmerson Mnangagwa Friday accused the doctors of being bribed by hostile forces to maintain their siege on his government.

The post Zim doctors form splinter group as strike differences widen appeared first on NewZimbabwe.com.

ZimLive

The Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission (ZACC) arrested Vice President Constantino Chiwenga’s estranged customary wife, Marry, on Saturday morning – a day after a stormy family meeting.

A furious Chiwenga allegedly ordered his wife’s arrest on money laundering and fraud charges following a testy meeting on Friday which was called to discuss the collapse of their marriage.

Marry, according to sources, was in combative mood in the meeting, repelling accusations of infidelity and telling elders from both their families that their sex life was dead.

“She was very hostile, she even described Chiwenga’s inadequacies in bed in shocking detail,” a source briefed on the meeting told ZimLive.

Sixty-three-year-old Chiwenga, who has been attempting to evict Marry from their Borrowdale home, immediately took custody of their three children aged eight, seven and five after she was arrested. Two other children from the 36-year-old former model’s past relationships were sent to her mother.

During the meeting on Friday, Chiwenga also accused Marry of trying to force him to marry her from his South African hospital bed while he was battling for life from suspected poisoning in July.

Chiwenga suggested that Marry thought he was dying – and was more interested in securing her stake in his estate.

At around the same time, Marry allegedly bought a house in Pretoria and two Range Rover SUVs for millions of rand.

The property acquisitions and the alleged attempts to force a marriage – allegedly after misrepresenting to the acting chief magistrate Munamato Mutevedzi by claiming it was Chiwenga’s wish – form part of the charges that ZACC have laid against the former model.

Marry maintains that she bought the house in South Africa to guarantee them privacy, which they did not have when booking into hotels.

ZACC spokesman John Makamure was not reachable for comment but Marry was reported to be detained at Rhodesville Police Station. She is expected to appear in court on Monday.

Chiwenga returned from lengthy treatment in China early this month, but did not go to the home he shared with Marry. He immediately initiated moves to end his marriage.

The retired army general is reported to have ordered Marry to leave the matrimonial residence in Borrowdale, but leave the children behind. Marry engaged lawyers to fight her eviction, which infuriated Chiwenga.

The two were customarily married in 2011 after Chiwenga divorced his first wife, Jocelyn, and Marry left her footballer husband, Shingayi Kaondera.

The post Marry Chiwenga picked by ZACC for corruption, VP said to have ordered arrest appeared first on NewZimbabwe.com.

Xinhua

Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa on Saturday urged Zimbabweans to work hard and increase land production to grow the economy.

In his closing remarks at the end of the five-day 18th annual National Peoples’ Conference of the ruling ZANU-PF party in Goromonzi, Masonaland East Province, the president called on Zimbabweans to be more productive to boost the economy.

“Let us shift the mindset of the population towards production. Land must be productive and there is no more room for cellphone farmers,” he said.

He urged the nation to shun laziness, indiscipline, greed, corruption, selfishness and immorality.

He also challenged public sector workers to be results-oriented, while those charged with implementing government programs must deliver.

The president urged the nation to protect and defend use of the Zimbabwe dollar that was re-introduced in June this year following the ban of the U.S. dollar that had been in use for a decade.

Members being disloyal to the ruling party’s philosophy and ideology must recommit and correct their wrong doing, he added.

The conference was themed ” Modernise, mechanise and grow the economy towards Vision 2030.”

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By Staff Reporter

PRESIDENT Emmerson Mnangagwa has pleaded with United Kingdom Prime Minister Boris Johnson to support his government’s bid to return to the Commonwealth.

In a congratulatory letter sent to Johnson following his election victory Friday, Mnangagwa said his government was implementing reforms which have been placed as a precondition for readmission into the elite club of nations.

“The Government and the people of Zimbabwe take this opportunity to express the confidence that your renewed mandate will also enable you to continue to support our re-engagement efforts with both your country and others.

“I was pleased to receive your Special Envoy on 6 November 2019 and earnestly hope that we have more of this supportive interaction in the very near future.

“Zimbabwe continues to implement political, economic, legislative and electoral reforms designed to open up political space, improve the ease of doing business and facilitate the return of Zimbabwe to the family of the progressive Global Community.

“It is our fervent hope therefore that these reforms will also enable your new Government to support Zimbabwe’s return to the Commonwealth Organisation,” Mnangagwa wrote.

However, the Zanu PF led government’s half-hearted commitment to reform implementation has failed to impress the Western world with British Ambassador to Zimbabwe, Melanie Robinson early last week saying Zimbabwe was still far from re-joining the Commonwealth.

Robinson said Zimbabwe has not yet completed political and economic reforms.

She was addressing local media after paying a courtesy call on Vice President Constantino Chiwenga at Munhumutapa Building in Harare.

“We discussed the Commonwealth and from the beginning, the British have been very clear we would like to see the Zimbabwe back in the Commonwealth and at the point where economic and political reform programme has been completed and we have seen good progress on that then that will be the time to look at membership,” she said.

“We are currently somewhere away from that, but we look forward into the future to seeing these reforms underway and for us to be able to discuss the membership.”

Then President Robert Mugabe pulled Zimbabwe out of the Commonwealth 2003 after a meeting of the organisation’s heads of government extended the country’s suspension from its ranks.

The 53-member grouping of former British colonies had suspended Zimbabwe in 2002 following a presidential election marred by massive state sponsored violence.

Mnangagwa’s administration has come under fire for failure to break from the previous government’s ruinous policies blamed for continued economic slide and using iron-fisted policies to enforce compliance among disgruntled citizens.

The country battles run-away inflation propelled by surging prices of goods and services as well as chronic cash and fuel shortages.

Government has also been blamed for visiting brutalities on citizens protesting economic hardship in what has elicited state killings on protesters.

Human rights defenders continue to be victimised through arrests and abductions while government has also responded to a strike by doctors through sacking them.

Observers feel this is unlike a state that is keen on breaking from its brutal past under Mugabe.

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By Robert Tapfumaneyi

MDC leader Nelson Chamisa has called Vice President to order, telling the country’s number two that God restored him to good health so he could dump his bad deeds for good ones.

Chamisa was speaking at a memorial ceremony held in honour of Vimbai Tsvangirai-Java, daughter to late MDC founding leader Morgan Tsvangirai at the latter’s Harare home.

VP Chiwenga spent four months fighting for his life in a Chinese hospital suffering what was he later revealed as oesophageal disease.

His miraculous recovery has surprised many locals who never gave him a chance to recover his good health, let alone return to his job and active politics.

Chamisa told the sabre-rattling former military boss God restored him to good life so he could do the right thing for his fellow countrymen.

“You may have joined mainstream politics as General Chiwenga and looking down upon me, having looked at my small statue, but what you need to know is God has purpose,” Chamisa said.

“And God has given you a life to do good for the country and not to divide the people, not to destroy the souls of the people, not to issue reckless statements which undermine one another, we must all be united as a people.”

Chamisa was apparently referring to statements uttered by Chiwenga during the just ended Zanu PF annual national people’s conference in Goromonzi Friday.

Chiwenga had accused the opposition leader of harbouring a plot to topple the government through uprisings.

“There are some malcontents who think they can unseat a legally-elected government through protests and boycotts,’ Chiwenga had said.

“We want to warn them that their actions will not succeed.

“This is not Mongolia where you can challenge authority and cause violence as much as you want. That will not happen in Zimbabwe.”

Tsvangirai-Java’s, late Glen View South MP, passed on in June this year from injuries she suffered weeks before in a horrific car accident in Kwekwe on her way to Harare in the company of relatives and party colleagues.

Her memorial was attended by family, relatives, party supporters and members from her church.

The post Chamisa urges Chiwenga to repent after VP’s miraculous recovery appeared first on NewZimbabwe.com.

By Anna Chibamu

MDC leader Nelson Chamisa has launched a scathing attack on President Emmerson Mnangagwa, accusing the national leader of too much trust in witch doctors while also suggesting his rival’s continued scarf wearing was out of superstition.

Chamisa was speaking Saturday during a memorial service held for late MDC MP Vimbai Tsvangirai-Java, daughter to founding party leader Morgan Tsvangirai at the latter’s Strathaven home in Harare.

The soon to be 42-year-old opposition leader told family, relatives of the late Tsvangirais as well as MDC members who attended the ceremony that he was taught by his former boss to trust in God.

“Tsvangirai taught me not to have anything to do with sangomas (witch doctors) and today I feel pity for those leaders who are always wearing bangles and scarfs even in hot weather,” he said in apparent reference to Mnangagwa.

“I feel pity for some politicians. You find that most of them spend most of their time visiting n’angas. A politician is given a bangle and fake anointing oil.

“I heard that some were recently burnt in Kariba. Nothing is above God. Do not be like Ndunge (prominent Chipinge traditional healer who died this year).

“Someone is given a bangle; a scarf is worn even in hot weather.

“If you have received Jesus Christ, you do not need all those unnecessary things.

“All those things bring bad luck within families, fights and deaths. I have often told MDC leaders to find Jesus Christ and do away with sangomas too.”

Chamisa also warned Mnangagwa to stop using the army against innocent citizens as has been happening in the recent past.

“…Do not use the army against the people. If you have an obsession for power, wanting to sing ‘Ndinotonga ndichitonga, ndichingotonga!(I will rule forever).

“This shows you do not know your calling. The country is run anyhow and no one bothers to check which direction it is taking. Bhurugwa ra Matirasa, chero zvazvaita. Chero zipi yakatarisa kumashure, ndakapfeka chete (a trousers worn by an insane person who does not know its front or back).

“If you were chosen to be a leader, it does not mean you are now a Prophet. There is an anointing that comes to a person.

“You are given either a Prophetic anointing, Priestly anointing or Kingly anointing; choose the best that suits you,” Chamisa said amid cheers from some MDC followers.

Chamisa appeared to be responding to Mnangagwa’s vows while officially opening the just ended Zanu PF annual national People’s Conference in Goromonzi Friday that no amount of tweeting against his controversial leadership would force him to abandon his job.

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