By Brighton Chiseva
ZAKA – Under fire Zaka Rural District Council Chairperson Fungai Maregedze has been warned by the Ministry of Local Government and Public Works for overstepping her boundaries, and was ordered to know her role in council operations.
Maregedze, who is wife to former deputy Minister of Finance Clemence Chiduwa was left with an egg on the face after she had written to the ministry accusing council Chief Executive Officer (CEO) David Majaura and his management for hindering development in the district, among an array of other issues.
The Council chair was recently arrested by the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission (ZACC) for abuse of office, where she is being accused of convening unsanctioned meetings and forcing council to pay sitting allowances.
After she wrote the letter, the ministry responded by sending a five member investigation team whose findings were presented to the full council on November 7.
The findings indicated that the council chair was at fault as she regularly interfered with management work and overstepping her role.
Presenting the findings, ministry deputy director for development Cephas Mudavanhu said the council chair would attend committee meeting and dominate there whereas she is supposed to allow the committee members to deliberate and give advice or seek for her input where necessary.
“When the council chair is invited to committee meetings, she should be there to advice not to dominate. However, we noted that she would be dominating telling councilors that all they were saying was not correct. That’s wrong, the committee members who are councilors should be debating,” he said.
He went on to say Maregedze does not listen to advice from technocrats including the CEO and District Development Coordinator (DCC), breaking the law saying statutes they were implementing were archaic and they should formulate new ones.
“We also noted another challenge; the chair does not listen when she is advised by the CEO or DDC especially on issues related to the law. Very few advices were taken. In most cases she would say the Act you are using is archaic. There is no archaic law, if it’s archaic it will be repealed by the parliament not by us here,” said Mudavanhu.
The investigation also revealed the council chair was overriding committee chairpersons and inviting people to the meetings wantonly and in some cases some of them would not even be relevant to the matters under discussion.
“On invitation to stakeholders, we noticed that some were invited without notice and some were invited to all committees whereas the committees are the workshop of council, stakeholders are invited when they are considered to be relevant to that committee, not inviting everyone. The committee chair is the one who knows that this person should be invited. So we saw the council chair was not following statutes especially on convening meetings,” said Mudavanhu.
One council committee chairperson who spoke on condition of anonymity said they were happy that the ministry picked the anomalies because the committee meetings were no longer serving any purpose because the chair would always impose her will.
“The ministry has relieved us of the burden we were carrying, the committee meetings had become talk shows since none of our contributions were considered, she would simply say all you have been debating is useless, and tell us what she wants. So most of the reports given in full council meetings by committee chairpersons were not a reflection of the councilors but her own will,” said the councilor.
Another councilor said the chairperson wanted to attend all committee meetings and often clashed with other committee chairperson who didn’t invite her.
“She wanted to attend all committee meetings to get allowances, she needs every single dollar that comes her way and after attending she would not want to be backstage, she would want to chair the meeting as well,” said another Councilor.
Efforts to get a comment from Maregedze who did not attend the meeting were futile as she was not responding to questions sent to her.
There has been growing tension between the council chairperson and management as well as other councilors.
The divisions between the council chair and other councilors are reflection of a bigger division within Zanu PF in the district where bigwigs fight for control.
The factions are between Chiduwa who is the Zanu PF district coordinating committee chairperson and also Zaka South MP and Davies Marapira, a central committee member who is also Zaka Central legislator and deputy minister of agriculture.
