Newsday 7 June 2014

4
NewsDay saturday june 7, 2014
FEATURE
Fr Oskar Wermter SJ
Leaders are responsible
for those whom they
lead. The lives of the
people are entrusted to
them. The leaders must
create conditions which allow
people to make a living and stay
alive. Of old, chiefs provided food
for the people in times of need
from a granary (zunde raMambo)
for that purpose.
In our day land, manpower,
skills and expertise, as well as investment
capital must be organised
in such a way that the people
use the land productively.
Indigenisation and greater equity
in the distribution of land and
the means of production may be
an excellent long-term goal. But
if it does not provide work for the
workless and give them food, at
least in the short term, then the
welfare of the people may demand
a different strategy.
The people and their welfare,
their sheer survival, come first.
They must not be sacrificed to an
ideology, splendid in itself, but of
little practical value in saving the
people from economic ruin and
starvation.
Leaders with political responsibility
must study these problems
intensively and be engaged with
industrialists, agricultural economists,
trade unions and employers
at all times.
Alas, politicians care little about
the real problems of the country.
With a few laudable exceptions,
most of the time they are busy
fighting each other for top posts.
The struggle for power and the acquisition
of wealth occupy them
much more than the worries of
the people whom they represent.
A true leader must care about
the little people, the ordinary citizens
in town and country. True
leaders must be unselfish. They
must make the worries of ordinary
workers, and even more so of all
who have no work, their very own.
A leader is not one who “has
made it”, at long last free from all
NOTICE is hereby given, in terms of Section 153(2) of the Urban Councils Act [Chapter 29:15], that the Municipality of
Chitungwiza is offering some premises for lease as summarised in the table below:
Type of Premises Number
1. Crèches 13
2. Corner-shops 40
3. Shops 3
4. Butcheries 2
5. Offices 2
Interested persons may approach the Registry Office, Municipal Head Office, for bid documents available to them upon
payment of a non-refundable fee of US $10,00. Proposals must be made on and in terms of the original bid. PLEASE
NOTE: photocopied or any replica of the bid document shall not be accepted.
Current occupiers/tenants with expired leases and applicants who had previously expressed interest are also required
to apply in terms of this advertisement.
Bid/offer documents, in sealed envelopes, clearly marked “Council Leased Properties” should be addressed to the
undersigned and placed in the Town Clerk's Tender Box, Registry Office, Municipal Head Office on or before the closing
th
date, which will be Monday, 16 June 2014, at 10:30 hours; and immediately thereafter, the bids/offers will be opened.
G. MAKUNDE
TOWN CLERK
Municipal Head Office
Stand No. 6004
Industrial Drive, Zengeza
CHITUNGWIZA
NB:
Distressed people
caught in the middle
A leader is one who does not see old widows and young single mothers sitting as vendors at street corners as a problem of policing and security, of law and order,
but as a human problem
financial worries, with a luxury
car that takes him away from the
people, not to them. Quite the opposite,
true leaders must go out to
the people and share the heavy
PUBLIC NOTICE
OFFER OF PREMISES FOR LEASE
burden of their lives and carry it
with them.
In our Zimbabwean situation,
unemployment, especially of
the youth, must give them a real
Council is not bound to accept the highest bid/offer and reserves the right to accept any bidder who
meets the set conditions.
headache. Old widows and young
single mothers sitting as vendors
at street corners are for them not
a problem of policing and security,
of law and order, but a human
problem. They must feel in
their hearts what life is like for
self-employed women in the informal
sector who have to send
their children to school from the
tiny income they get from selling
vegetables or handicraft or even
themselves at night.
This hopeless situation drives
many across the Limpopo to South
Africa. Having escaped the crocodiles,
they may fall into the hands
of the maguma-guma, robbers
and rapists. Some social workers
of the church, eg nuns, try to help
the shocked economic refugees.
But that can only be First Aid.
A priest friend from Tzaneen
tells me that he has never seen
Zimbabwean leaders seeing for
themselves what happens to their
own people stuck between their
own country that has abandoned
them, and their host country that
does not want them.
Surely our leaders know that it
is two main causes the world over
that drive people into exile: war
and violence, and poverty and
unemployment. Charity, though
welcome in the midst of acute
hunger and misery, cannot solve
the problem. Our economy must
be revived and factory gates must
be reopened, workers must take
up the tools once more and restart
production. Ideological obstacles
must be removed.
The shouting of slogans in support
of one’s own party at the
forthcoming election must stop.
The survival, not just of one’s own
friends and clients, is at stake,
but of the people as a whole, regardless
of their political sympathies.
For such magnanimity and
humanity we need statesmen,
not just party agents, mothers of
the nation, not just female party
propagandists.
It seems our government does
not bother about migrants; “good
riddance” seems to be the feeling
in the corridors of power, though
combined with hoping that eventually
the migrants will send remittances
back to Zimbabwe.
South Africa does not see distressed
neighbours in them, not
even potentially useful workers,
but only troublesome vagrants.
Should not the two countries
come together and negotiate a
solution? Would it not be in the
long-term interest of both countries
to relieve the suffering of
their people, African brothers and
sisters? Is this not the humanism
a people proud of their heritage of
unhu/ubuntu should have?
Is this not the job of Sadc to
bring the two together and assist
them in rebuilding the Zimbabwean
economy, the root cause of
this migration?
It must be in the interest also of
South Africa to restore economic
sanity north of the Limpopo (ignoring
the current economic advantage
for South African business
which sells Zimbabwe what
it cannot produce itself at the
moment).
The people must come first, and
the economy must serve them.