By Daniel Itai.
Kwekwe, Zimbabwe (News of The South) – The Political Actors Dialogue (POLAD) which was formulated last year as a way of creating political discourse within Zimbabwe’s political parties has not been received well by the country’s main opposition party the MDC-A.
Today some of the POLAD members presented a monitoring and evaluation document to Zimbabwe’s President, Emmerson Mnangagwa.
MDC-T secretary-general Nickson Nyikadzino who read the resolutions on behalf of POLAD members at the group’s end of year consultative indaba said the political players’ group had managed to break new grounds.
“People have been saying a look at the achievements of POLAD. Your Excellency, the idea for us to come together and deliberate on our nation is a huge success as it gives us an opportunity to accommodate each other despite our political affiliations.
This shared approach saw us visiting cyclone Idai victims to asses the distraction that happened to our people and make an appeal for their help as one. We have also come up with a shared understanding of how to address the challenges affecting our country.
I am happy to say as POLAD, we have managed to speak on the need to fight sanctions and the rest of the region has since taken a stance on the need to remove these sanctions.
On a technical level, we have managed to provide a roadmap on how dialogue should proceed in the country,” said Nyikadzino.
However, MDC-A president Nelson Chamisa said POLAD was only for Mnangagwa, “POLAD is Mnangagwa and his choir. There is no unity as of now. True unity resolves national problems, past atrocities and the ever widening inequalities threatening our society.
The unity must be lived, realized and felt by all in our country. I am no believer in the unity of just the leaders without the entire people being part of it. Lets all have a unity of vision, values, practices and do’s and don’ts on how we lead or are led.
Unity can’t be imposed otherwise it becomes dictatorship not unity. It’s pointless to join useless projects.”
Fadzayi Mahere MDC-A’s Education, Sport, Art and Culture secretary also snubbed POLAD, “by hosting the POLAD meeting at his farm, Mnangagwa is showing us that he is in control over the participants. How do you tell the man he has failed as you tour his maize field? He is the mediator. He does all the talking. He is the consultation. He is the opposition, do it alone!
Using our taxes to fund his POLAD vanity project in the face of a starvation crisis, closed public hospitals, a broken education system and rising poverty is a slap in the face to the people of Zimbabwe. Governing must be about improving lives, not this.
There is no national dialogue like this. This is a national embarrassment, child’s play. How is this exercise expected to take the nation forward?”
The POLAD end of year consultative indaba resolved to set up an information and publicity committee to steer publicity and spruce up the image of the political players grouping.
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