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CHIVHU district development coordinator (DDC) Michael Mariga yesterday stripped two MDC Alliance councillors of their posts and barred them from attending council meetings after they defied orders to resign from the civil service following their victory in the 2018 harmonised elections. BY MIRIAM MANGWAYA Edwin Maseva (ward 11) and Emmanuel Punungwe (ward 10), who are both primary school teachers, were stripped of their titles just before the beginning of the Chikomba Rural District full council meeting. Addressing other councillors during the meeting, Mariga said Maseva and Punungwe had failed to comply with a directive from the Public Service Commission (PSC), which ordered them to resign from the civil service 30 days following 2018 their electoral victory or stop serving as councillors. According to a letter dated April 15, 2020, written by the PSC secretary Jonathan Wutawunashe, which Mariga read out to councillors, civil servants serving as councillors would be violating the Constitution and the Public Service Regulations Statutory Instrument 1 of 2000 as stated in Circular 10 of November 2018. “Given the fact that it is a misconduct to engage in any other employment or service for remuneration without the written consent of the commission, it is advisable that you act immediately to correct the situation,” the letter read. “For avoidance of doubt, the commission hereby directs that as a civil servant, you should cease to serve as a councillor with immediate effect. Failure to comply with this directive will result in disciplinary action taken against you.” Maseva said Mariga had misdirected himself by relying on an old prohibition order which had been overtaken by events. “We are still in talks with the PSC on this issue and we have also engaged lawyers. As it is right now, the DDC’s dismissal is null,” Maseva said. Punungwe described the decision by PSC to dismiss them from council as part of political persecution of opposition officials. “This is a selective application of the law aimed at pushing certain agendas. I wonder why PSC decided to fire us from council instead of the civil service,” he said. Following the PSC directive, three Zanu PF councillors in Buhera Rural District Council who were also teachers, resigned recently from the civil service to continue serving in council. Follow Florence on Twitter @FloMangwaya
\t On Friday, internet and international calls were cut off across the West African nation in anticipation of the election results, according to locals and international observers in the capital, Conakry.
\t This was the third time that Conde matched-up against Diallo. Before the election, observers raised concerns that an electoral dispute could reignite ethnic tensions between Guinea's largest ethnic groups.
From April to July 1994 Rwanda suffered through a period of government-sanctioned mass murder which resulted in the deaths of nearlyone million Tutsi men, women and children. Most observers point to myriad factors which caused the slaughter including government corruption, longstanding ethnic antagonism, the legacy of colonialism, and competition for scarce farmland. Jean-Damascène Gasanabo, a citizen of Rwanda whose parents and four siblings were killed during the Genocide, offers another explanation, greed and jealousy. His account ofthe Rwandan Genocide, written expressly for BlackPast.org, appears below.
For centuries and even until today after the genocide, the three Rwandansocial groups have lived together, on same hills, dales, and flatlands.Hutus, Tutsis, and Twas live together in every part of the country of thousand hills. The relationship between the three groups was based on everyday life. It is simplistic and naive to argue that the relationshipbetween the people was perfect and that conflicts arose as a result of colonization only. No society exists that has avoided social conflicts among its population. From the pre-colonial period to the 1994 genocide,Rwanda has been characterized by internal conflicts. However, the nature of these conflicts was different in each epoch. Before the colonial period, the conflicts involved different clans such as the Bega and the Banyiginya in which both Hutus and Tutsis were represented. Those conflicts were related to the problems of land or power.
The 1994 genocide against Tutsis in Rwanda was the culmination of the hate of Hutus towards Tutsis. It poses two main questions: the first on the relationship between the two groups over centuries, and the second concerns the origins of hate that led to the genocide.
Non-Rwandans and many Rwandan citizens, ask how the relationship developed between Hutus and Tutsis and how that relationship encouraged the genocide that killed about one million Tutsis. I would argue that for centuries, the relationship between Hutus
… -involved shooting of Jacob Blake, African-American led organizations marked the first …
Robert Nelson Cornelius Nix, Sr. was born on August 9, 1905 in Orangeburg, South Carolina, where his father, Nelson, was dean of South Carolina State College. Nix graduated from Townsend Harris High School in New York City, and then from Lincoln University in Chester County, Pennsylvania in 1921. In 1924, he received his law degree from University of Pennsylvania and began practice in Philadelphia the following year. Nix became active in Democratic politics and was elected a committeeman from the Forty-fourth Ward in 1932. From 1934 to 1938 he held a series of positions in a private law firm, in the Pennsylvania State Department of Revenue as special deputy attorney general, and in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania as special assistant deputy attorney general. In 1956 he was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention.
After Representative Earl Chudoff resigned his Fourth Congressional District seat to become a Philadelphia judge, Nix defeated two opponents in a special election to fill the vacancy and was sworn on May 20, 1958. Nix was the first African American to represent Pennsylvania in the House of Representatives.
During his years in the House Nix served on the Veterans’ Affairs Committee, Foreign Affairs Committee, and the Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries. In 1977, he became chairman of the Committee of the Post Office and Civil Service. He sponsored bills to keep open the Philadelphia Navy Yard and to establish a “senior service corps” that would employ people over sixty years of age. He worked for passage of several pieces of landmark civil rights legislation in the 1960s including the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
In 1975 Nix became chairman of the Subcommittee on International Economic Policy and led an investigation of the use of funds by defense contractors to pay foreign consultants, agents, governmental officials and political parties. Nix later introduced an amendment to the Foreign Military Sales Act requiring the Defense Department to provide Congress
Last night’s final presidential debate was filled with some facts, a little policy, and plenty of lies and tall tales. A more subdued Trump was on the defense most of the evening, hurling personal attacks and lies that sent fact-checkers into a tailspin. Very rarely was he clear on his policy or vision for America … Continued
The post “Nobody has done more for the Black community than Donald Trump … with the exception of Abraham Lincoln” and other tall tales from the last Presidential Debate. appeared first on Chicago Defender.
GEORGE TOWN, Cayman Islands (CMC) - The Governor of the Cayman Islands Martyn Roper on Friday approved a law making same-sex partnerships legal in this British Overseas territory.'Today we will end the discrimination being suffered by Caymanians and others on our islands whilst protecting the institution of marriage,' said Roper.
Preamble
Be It Resolved, That the Negro people of the world, through their chosen representatives in convention assembled in Liberty Hall, in the City of New York and United States of America, from August 1 to August 31, in the year of Our Lord one thousand nine hundred and twenty, protest against the wrongs and injustices they are suffering at the hands of their white brethren, and state what they deem their fair and just rights, as well as the treatment they propose to demand of all men in the future.
We complain:
1. That nowhere in the world, with few exceptions, are black men accorded equal treatment with white men, although in the same situation and circumstances, but, on the contrary, are discriminated against and denied the common rights due to human beings for no other reason than their race and color.
We are not willingly accepted as guests in the public hotels and inns of the world for no other reason than our race and color.
2. In certain parts of the United States of America our race is denied the right of public trial accorded to other races when accused of crime, but are lynched and burned by mobs, and such brutal and inhuman treatment is even practiced upon our women.
3. That European nations have parcelled out among them and taken possession of nearly all of the continent of Africa, and the natives are compelled to surrender their lands to aliens and are treated in most instances like slaves.
4. In the southern portion of the United States of America, although citizens under the Federal Constitution, and in some States almost equal to the whites in population and are qualified land owners and taxpayers, we are, nevertheless, denied all voice in the making and administration of the laws and are taxed without representation by the State governments, and at the same time compelled to do military service in defense of the country.
5. On the public conveyances and common carriers in the southern portion of the United States we are jim-crowed and compelled to accept separate and inferior
EDITORIAL COMMENT THE realisation of “The Africa We Want” or Agenda 2063 will remain a mirage with several African countries, including Zimbabwe dented by reports of human rights abuses, human trafficking, police brutality on citizens, torture and several other vices that will never lead to achievement of Africa’s 50-year development trajectory. There have been so many hashtags calling for sanity and an end to brutality in Africa which include #ZimbabweanLivesMatter, #EndSarsNow, #CongoIsBleeding, #AmINext, #AnglophoneCrisis, #RapeNationalEmergency, and several others that show the deep-seated problems bedevilling Africa and that will retard its economic and human development agenda. Of course, one may argue that even Europe and the United States have their own problems and there are several hashtags pertaining to those, but the difference is that their economies are developed, and besides, it is always good to copy the best practices. For Zimbabwe in particular, what is saddening is that the government seems to be focusing on the wrong priorities. While it is true that sanctions hurt a nation, it is an open secret that the biggest sanction is government itself which has outrightly refused to listen to the complaints of its citizens. The fact that the government does not want to listen to teachers, doctors and other civil servants when they cry about their poor working conditions, means that the government is their biggest sanction from achieving the development they want. What is more disturbing is that while government will lure other African countries to support its October 25 anti-sanctions agenda, and is also counting on citizens to do so, it is the same government that denies civil servants and other dissenting voices in the country the right to air their own grievances. In Parliament last week, Norton MP Temba Mliswa bluntly said if the Zanu PF government wants MPs to join their cause, then they must first sort out the welfare issues of MPs who are earning $18 000 which is far below the poverty datum line of $20 000. It is sad that Zimbabwe and other African countries like Nigeria which are experiencing human rights abuses are signatories to different African Union (AU) charters like the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance, the African Continental Free Trade Area, and several other AU and United Nations charters that emphasise democracy and respect for human rights, but none of those provisions are being implemented. The country has come up with economic blueprints, like the Transitional Stabilisation Programme and its successor the National Development Plan which emphasise re-engagement, democracy and achievement of economic development. This can only be possible if there is a buy-in from citizens. After all, those that implement government policies are mostly the underpaid civil servants that have been crying out for living wages. Africa needs to increase peace and reduce conflicts if it is to achieve the objectives of Agenda 2063. All development should be people centred.
JUSTICE minister Ziyambi Ziyambi yesterday told Parliament that government had no immediate plans to abandon the Zimbabwe dollar, totally crashing any hopes by civil servants of having their salaries paid in United States dollars. BY VENERANDA LANGA Ziyambi was responding to a question by Bulawayo East MP Ilos Nyoni during the National Assembly question and answer session. “Government has no desire to abandon the Zimdollar,” said Ziyambi, which then prompted Kambuzuma MP Willias Madzimure to ask the minister if he was aware that shops preferred the US dollar and, therefore, civil servants needed their salaries to be in forex in order to survive. “The MP is aware that when COVID-19 came, the Minister of Finance allowed the use of free funds. There was no pronouncement to say that we are going back to the US dollar that we do not produce. Our desire is to stabilise our currency so that the earnings of our people are not eroded. At no point are we going to abandon the idea of our currency,” Ziyambi said. Mbizo MP Settlement Chikwinya then asked him to explain when the US$75 COVID-19 cushioning allowance for civil servants would reflect in their nostro accounts. In response, Ziyambi said: “A policy position was taken to pay a 50% salary increase and US$75 COVID-19 allowance for three months to civil servants. Regarding the modalities, that is not my job to say.” Harare East MP Tendai Biti then fired another salvo: “The Ministry of Transport through Statutory Instrument 161/2020 has announced that all vehicle number plates must be paid for in US dollars, and the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe through its auction floors is trading in foreign currency and has obliged all shops to display prices in US dollars and local currency and so are we going to officially dollarise?” Ziyambi responded: “Let me repeat – government has no plans to abandon use of the Zimdollar and we are working to ensure it is the sole trading currency.” In another matter, MDC Alliance proportional representation MP Lindiwe Maphosa asked Acting Health minister Amon Murwira to explain how government planned to resolve the health workers’ strike and demands to be paid in US dollars at a time when COVID-19 cases were rising daily. Murwira said government was in dialogue with the health workers and that it was imperative for them to be at work. “We had a wonderful conversation and are going to map the way forward based on availability of resources – the answer is as soon as possible and it could be now,” Murwira said. Home Affairs minister Kazembe Kazembe was also asked by Chikwinya to explain why police and soldiers were moving around telling people to wrap up their activities in 10 days because after that no one would be allowed into the central business district. Kazembe responded: “I heard about this issue today from you. We will check whether that really is happening.” Primary and Secondary Education minister Cain Mathema was asked to explain what was going to happen to November examinations since government has deferred opening of schools. “Schools are not a
Education Cabinet Secretary George Magoha launched the committee in June last year, mandating it to resolve questions on transition from one level to the next, staffing, teacher training, examinations and admissions.
When he released last year’s Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education examinations results, Prof Magoha said although there will be no examinations in Grade Six, which will mark the end of primary school, the task force will announce how the transition will be carried out.
The centres of excellence - meant to guide students on career paths - are not ready, yet in three years, the first cohort under CBC will be joining secondary school.
This first CBC cohort will join secondary school in 2023, leaving the last 8-4-4 learners still in primary school.
Considering the chaotic manner primary school teachers were trained for the CBC, it is worrisome that secondary school teachers have not yet been trained on the curriculum.
CUSTOMS and excise officers at Beitbridge border post and other stations yesterday briefly downed tools and later opted to go slow to register disgruntlement over poor wages, although the tax agency denied that such a development had occurred. BY REX MPHISA The development could cripple imports of food in the entire Sadc region, which is handling the bulk of basic food imports into the region. In an unsolicited Press statement, Zimbabwe Revenue Authority (Zimra) spokesman Francis Chimanda dismissed reports that customs and excise officers at Beitbridge were on strike. “There have been misleading reports that Zimra employees at Beitbridge border post have engaged in a strike. Employees have reported to duty as normal. There is no strike,” Chimanda said in the statement. “We would want to assure the transacting public that (Zimra) continues to provide uninterrupted service as the borders.” Shipping agents at Beitbridge, however, said at one time yesterday morning, senior managers manned work stations ordinarily manned by junior staff. “At the box office, we submit and collect documents. The deputy regional manager, a Mr Mutembu, was receiving and releasing commercial declarations, otherwise called bills of entry. Junior employees were gathered elsewhere,” a shipping agent said. “It has never happened that a senior man is seen in that office and something was brewing, but some few hours later, the juniors were back behind their desks. The pace was, however, extremely slow.” A Zimbabwe Revenue Authority Workers Trade Union (Zimratu) official, Lovemore Ngwarati, told NewsDay Weekender that the workers were, indeed, disgruntled about their salaries and general welfare. “We have been observing this in the last two days and serious welfare issues have been raised by Zimra workers. They have not communicated official labour action, but we expect them to submit that to us soon,” he said. Like all civil servants, Zimra workers, who raise the bulk of government revenue, complain about salaries that do not correspond with the cost of living.
Governor General Sir Patrick Allen says Jamaica should become accustomed to the new way of life ushered in by the coronavirus, which has sent millions of jobs around the world into homes and others into virtual spaces.
Sir Patrick, in an exclusive interview with The Sunday Gleaner, said that even with the pandemic reaching the island, the office of the head of state continues to carry out its full operation, including administrative functions, swearing-in for judges, and handling a flurry of gazettes announcing orders for curfews, quarantine and localised states of emergency.
My work hours have not been lessened as a result of the crisis,” disclosed Sir Patrick, who represents the head of state, Queen Elizabeth, in the island.
We, hopefully, will be a kinder and more gentler society, because this experience pulls all of these qualities out of us, so I do not see why we should revert to those things,” Sir Patrick said.
Sir Patrick called on Jamaicans to exercise tolerance, especially those operating in tight spaces, telling them the viral pandemic will not last forever.
President Museveni has written to the Public Service Commission (PSU) nominating Dorothy Kisaka as the new Kampala Capital City Authority executive director.
If vetted and cleared by the PSU, Kisaka will replace Andrew Kitaka the current acting KCCA director whose contract extension expires next week on June 18.
Kitaka's contract was extended in December 2019 for a further six months and has been acting KCCA executive director since December 2018 after being appointed by then Kampala minister Beti Kamya following the resignation of Jennifer Musisi.
Museveni in his letter to the PSU also nominated Eng David Luyimbazi Ssali as deputy executive director, Dr Daniel Okello Ayen as director public health and environment, Sarah Kanyike as director gender, community services and production and Grace Akullo as human resource and administration.
Museveni said the five nominees were headhunted because of their integrity, he nevertheless he asked PSU to interview them and find out if they are suitable for the KCCA positions.
Friday (Oct.23), Sony confirmed its new strategic creative partnership with the Houston rapper and his popular Cactus Jack brand.
