Zimpapers Logo

“Our colleagues in the inclusive Government, the MDC-T and MDC-M, said let’s have a people-driven Constitution because the views of the people were not included. Now let’s have an outreach because some people did not have an input.”

President Mugabe said the draft Constitution was ready and the Principals will soon meet and put a timeline for the referendum.
He, however, said Zanu-PF will not accept MDC machinations to frustrate the constitution-making process, reiterating that elections will be held this year even without a new constitution.

“If the dragging continues, our party will not stand for it. Our party agreed in December last year that we must go for elections in 2012. That is the stand of the party,” he said. 
President Mugabe said the GPA has a provision which says a signatory can pull out of it, thus collapsing the inclusive Government.
“But we have not wanted that to happen. We want to get along, but get along reasonably. But I am told that the draft is ready. We will look at it and look at the time frame.

SEE PICTURES HERE

If it is presented and accepted by the people and parliament, then elections. We don’t want to hear any complaints. We want peaceful elections. We don’t want any fighting,” said

President Mugabe.
Turning to the drought and the looming food shortage, President Mugabe said the grain loan scheme meant to alleviate hunger must be properly managed to ensure it served its purpose.

“We are going to have a programme to provide food to various areas. The programme must be well managed in a manner we have done before, not in the manner we have seen with inputs when some leaders took them themselves. We don’t want that kind of leadership. We need to ensure that people survive, please chiefs, help in the implementation of the distribution programme,” he said.

With the land now in the hands of its rightful owners, the President said, beneficiaries of the land reform programme must utilise the resource fully. Responding to chiefs’ request for more than 80 percent of their peers to be allocated farms, President Mugabe said while ideally the Government wanted all of them to have land, it was practically impossible for that to happen.

“It is not everybody who has it, it cannot be possible. Communal farming, yes. We have taken note of the fact that some chiefs don’t have it, but it should be a celebration to fully utilise it. It is the role of chiefs to encourage maximum productivity on the farms. Land was not provided so that it can be a status symbol,” he said, warning that the impending land audit will be followed by withdrawal of under-utilised land from new farmers and those leasing it to white former landlords.

He urged farmers in Matabeleland region to intensify livestock rearing and irrigation farming.
President Mugabe said now that indigenous blacks are in control of the agriculture sector, focus is now on other sectors of the economy, particularly mining. He said foreign firms must adhere to the Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Act on making available at least 51 percent of their shareholding to indigenous people. The Head of State and Government said even the 49 percent that foreigners could legally hold was too much wealth and urged the country’s highly skilled and educated professionals to constitute themselves into consortia to secure the 51 percent shareholding.

“Chiefs, you are custodians of the land but if the resources          continue to go, you will be custodians of holes, deprived of its value,” he said.
He chronicled the land question from the Lancaster House talks in 1979 to the time when Britain, under former Prime Minister Tony Blair, repudiated his predecessors’ commitment to paying compensation for acquired land.

“The thinking in Britain was that if we don’t pay, Zimbabwe will not take the land because they don’t have money, so land remains in white hands. We said ‘keep your money, we take the land’. They did not expect us to be that blunt, but the land is ours, we fought for it, died for it,” said President Mugabe.  
The President said the community share ownership schemes that have been launched at Zimplats in Mashonaland West and Mimosa and Murowa in the Midlands showed that indigenisation and economic empowerment had gathered momentum.

On African affairs, President Mugabe called for vigilance and defence of the national interest. He singled out Libya where Nato attacked that country to assist rebels to unseat and ultimately murder President Muammar Gaddafi.   
Vice-President John Nkomo, Local Government, Rural and Urban Development Minister, Dr Ignatius Chombo, Minister of Agriculture, Mechanisation and Irrigation Development,

Dr Joseph Made, Minister of Mines and Mining Development, Dr Obert Mpofu, Co-Minister of Home Affairs, Kembo Mohadi, provincial governors and resident ministers, senior government officials, 257 chiefs and their spouses, and senior government officials attended the official opening ceremony. 
Although the conference is being held in Bulawayo, Mashonaland East is actually hosting the annual event. The provincial leadership in Mashonaland East felt that Marondera, which was supposed to host the event last year, did not have proper facilities to host the hundreds of chiefs and their spouses. The theme of the event is: “Traditional leaders:

Realigning culture towards dynamic community development and empowerment.”
A representative of Kenyan chiefs presented a gown to President Mugabe. He described the President as the “chief of chiefs” who had his people and country at heart.