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Chiefs endorse President’s candidature

The annual chiefs conference opened here yesterday with traditional leaders endorsing President Mugabe as the Zanu-PF Presidential candidate for elections scheduled for this year.

The chiefs said Cde Mugabe should continue leading the country. The chairperson of chiefs from Mashonaland East province, Chief Musarurwa, said it was the general view of all the chiefs from the province that President Mugabe had done a lot for the country, including giving land to the people and as such should be allowed to continue as Head of State.

The chiefs’ chairperson from Mashonaland West, Chief Dandawa, who is also a Senator, said chiefs from the province were all behind President Mugabe, a position which was also supported by Midlands province’s chairperson Chief Malisa from Kwekwe district.

Last year, Zanu-PF endorsed President Mugabe’s candidature at its Annual National People’s Conference.

President Mugabe has said elections will be held this year. The MDC formations have, however, tried to use the Global Political Agreement, which they claim prevents President Mugabe from using his executive powers to unilaterally call for elections.

This is despite the fact that their leaders, Mr Morgan Tsvangirai, andProfessor Welshman Ncube have been criss-crossing the country addressing campaign rallies.

Meanwhile, chiefs complained over delays in the payment of their monthly allowances.

They urged the Ministry of Local Government, Urban and Rural Development to address the issue.

The traditional leaders argued that their allowances should also be given increases each time civil servants get a salary increase.

They said their problems were compounded by the fact that most of the vehicles that they got from the Government had broken down.

Some of the chiefs said the Government should consider coming up with a loan scheme whereby they could import vehicles duty free as most of them were now pedestrians.

It is their hope that Government would also consider giving bicycles to headmen and village heads so as to ease their transport problems.

One area of concern raised by all the provinces was the clash between the traditional court and judicial officers.

The chiefs contend that magistrates and the police do not respect their decisions and that some politicians and other “elements” in society were taking advantage of the discord to undermine their authority.

It is humiliating, they said, to be called to the magistrates’ courts to explain their decision and what irked them was that their clerks who do all the record keeping were not rewarded like Clerks of Court employed by the Ministry of Justice and Legal Affairs.

They urged Minister Ignatius Chombo to ensure that all chiefs were armed with judiciary warrants so that they could execute their mandate properly as some magistrates openly told them that they could not try cases if they do not possess the judiciary warrant. The most affected traditional leaders are the newly appointed.

While applauding the land reform exercise, most chiefs said traditional leaders were not owners of farms and that even those who were allocated land on paper did not have offer letters.

In Matabeleland North, Chief Gampu, who is also a Senator said out of the 38 chiefs in the province only four had farms while in the Midlands 48 out of 71 have farms.

It is their feeling that they do not exercise enough power over issues that have to deal with land, its use and distribution. This, they said, had resulted in some people being resettled in sacred places in areas where there would have been graves and used as shrines. The traditional leaders want to be exempted from paying tollgate fees. They also wanted an assurance that they do not become victims of political violence during election campaigns.