By Correspondent
The Judge Maphios Cheda-led Commission of Inquiry investigating Harare’s shady operations was never meant to unearth anything new and, essentially, it has not done that.
Sworn in over 5 months ago to delve into Harare City Council’s local governance issues since 2017 it was simply a disembowelment exercise to provide an exclamation mark to a statement already known.
5 months into the six months minimum which it was given the whole exercise has become a tedious overplay yearning for corrective action.
1-Corruption Is Stale
That Harare City Council is a den for corrupt deals has been known since time immemorial.
The descent of the opposition gang at Town House has yielded nothing much for the ordinary resident.
Years in the opposition trenches have cultivated a hunger for corruption deals and a frenetic rush to accumulate as much before time runs out.Its not progressive to overplay that fact without taking corrective action.
Why not get to arresting some culprits first.Or as suspected, remove them and instal a Commission and we start from there.
2-The Art of Murdering a Dead Body
One statement finding from the Cheda Commission has been the creation of a narrative linking land scandals with the opposition CCC political strategies.
In one episode Edgar Dzehonye, the HCC Housing Principal Officer, testified that the city had fallen under the control of land barons.
He admitted that proper town planning procedures had been abandoned, with key aspects of land management thrown “into the trash can.”
It was alleged that CCC had gone on a rampage regularising illegal stands to win urban votes.
The clear agenda was to kill two birds with one stone; the corrupt Cllrs and the ‘holding party” responsible for them, CCC.
Problem is CCC is essentially dead and gone after Chamisa’s exit.
Thus the Commission, as a charade against CCC, is no longer necessary.
3- Fighting Your Shadow
The one party state agenda has essentially succeeded encapsulated by the absence of resistence on the passing of the PVO Bill.
The whole structure of government from Councils and Parliament, post-Tshabangu, has become a single entity in essence and practice.
The few stragglers occasionally throwing opposition tantrums are negligible and don’t amount to much.
Thus the ruling party and whoever structured the plot of the Commission should simply abandon it and go ahead with a progressive move.
