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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, all Zanu-PF’s 10 provinces endorsed President Mugabe’s candidature during the Zanu-PF Annual National People’s Conference, which was held in Bulawayo in December.
President Mugabe has said elections will be held this year with Zanu-PF saying further delaying tactics by the two MDC formations could force President Mugabe to issue a
decree to dissolve Parliament and call for Presidential and Parliamentary elections.
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 and Professor Welshman Ncube have been criss-crossing the country addressing campaign rallies.
Meanwhile, the traditional leaders complained about delays in the payment of their monthly allowances, saying they were now two months behind.
They said as a result of the delays in receiving their allowances, they faced a number of challenges as at times they failed to attend important meetings.
The chiefs said as things stood now, they last received their allowances in January and called on the Ministry of Local Government, Urban and Rural Development to address the issue of the payment of the allowances.
The traditional leaders argued that they should also be given increases each time civil servants were awarded an increase, noting that they last had a raise in September last year.
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 warrants.
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 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 and they want an assurance that they do not become victims of political violence during election campaigns.
They also expressed concern over delays in appointing new chiefs where a vacancy would have arisen and urged the parent ministry to speed up the appointment of headmen as that reduced the workload on them.
Online Reporter