From our subscribers – Zimbabweans share their feedback on the media, voter registration and the upcoming elections:

ZBC s acting like a Zanu-PF entity only serving one party. It shall come to an end come 31st July. Enough is enough.

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MDC-T should have a TV station on satellite like Evangelist Guti and Prophet Hubert Angel have done.

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Quite an informative and inspirational letter.It makes me reflect on some self imposed leaders who claim to be commanding a huge following when,in fact they are taking a walk.Secondly,such persons are not accountable to anyone because they are either volunteers or rigged to their way to the appex through coercion,chicanery or any form of pressure on the so called supporters.We have among us some MPs who forced their way through the primaries by hiding some structurers in order to disenfranchise some potential voters who could have blocked their confirmation.Thats an open secrete where l am.The same people are back on the same electorate canvassing for their support vote in the dreaful contest of 31st July.ls that democracy and the really change the Zimbabweans are longing for?Worse still the same chaps l am reluctant to call leaders,boast of enjoying the support of  the second most senior leader in the organisation in their showdy deals.Is that permissible when someone is using his position of trust in an organisation as an organiser to hide structures leaving people in spoiled mood?That trully happened and can such characters be expected to give a full AND transparent report on how they spent the CDF?

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Lets ZEC be fair.Kuno kuZengeza paHead Office tirikuswera paQ vachiserver a selected group of people mayouth emusangano achitoboaster kuti tinoregister vedu ava vakawanda ndeveChinja

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I’m from St Mary’s.I Want to tell you what transpired to the CDF.We excavated drains in our constituency and were promised 5dollars per given hours but we just did all for nothing.I don’t know kana Chibharo chakadzoka. Vakazongobhadarwa matop face vamwe vese ruzha rukabva rwapera.

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Some pple in makoni south risk not voting after about 200 lost their ids through a food scam by cios

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Voter registration ended in marondera ystdae at mbuya nehanda hall with a lot of delaying resulted in many youths unable to register disappointment

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Its unfortunate that our mp is late but he abused our cdf. I am in Mberengwa North constituency. Our mp was jabulani mangena. He abused our cdf. In ward 12, nothing was developed becoz thats where  the man he beats in Zanu pf pry elections come from. It was a sort of fixing us. In ward 15, he donated material for building a teacher’s house at Ruzengwe sec school. The material he donated was scrap material. Asbestos sheets were broken and insufficient. Only 150 bags of cement was tangible and worth receiving .The house which was to be built was already on foundation level but when auditors came, he said he had  built the house from the ground.  But it was foundation structured by the school 6 years b4 cdf was disbursed.  Some asbestos sheets , all door frames, windor frames,  money for builders and paint was paid by the school. At first, he had promised to pay builders but when it was due to pay them, he backtracks . He said the school failed to take the money from council in time and was frozen. Finally , the school had to foot the bill. I was there when auditors came  with cameras to see the project. I was totally surprised to find the mp claiming to have sponsered everything. When auditors came only selected zanu pf people were selected to meet them including the local councillor. Infact people were not told they were auditors . They were told they were meeting mp’s visitors. They were told what to reply when questioned. Truly speaking, everything was inflated in terms of prices. Auditors were taking pictures of things the mp had not sponsered. This is  just a microcosm of what was happening in all other wards in mberengwa north constituency.

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For the first time since 2000, Mberengwa is towards election with a peaceful environment.  No youth camps

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Can someone who know how ZINWA works explain to Chimwe Irrigation Scheme farmers in Mberengwa. We buy water  to irrigate our crops from Zinwa on a commercial rate from Chimwe Dam which is 1km from the irrigation scheme. The dam was donated by the Dutch government as poverty alleviation  mechanism . Zinwa is forcing us to pay ZESA  bills for the electricity they use on their pumps to give us water. Which means we pay two bills per month. One for water and the other one for electricity. The reason given by ZINWA for not paying Zesa is that they only sell water not electricity. But they use electricity to supply their product to its customers.  What surprises Chimwe irrigation farmers is, ZINWA has a domestic water treatment plant at the dam which uses electricity and they are paying Zesa for the electricity they use to treat water. Treated water is sold to villagers on  a domestic rate and villagers are not paying electricity used by Zinwa to purify water. What boggles the mind is that raw water sold to irrigation farmers is more expensive than treated water. But treated water has more expenses like electricity, chemicals and many workers who man the plant. I think the minister of water must help correct the rot and make irrigation farmers only pay for water they use than to pay for electricity used by some other entities.

What people are saying:

The election date should be announced later on after the fulfillment of the GPA principles. I’m not sure of free and fair elections when the people in the countryside are written down names and ID numbers by ZANU PF members in what they call a party register. Anyway, lets watch and defend our liberty.

I do not know how our outgoing MP used the Constituency Development Fund. He never showed up for consultations, which were supposed to be inclusive, with the electorate on how best & developmental the CDF can be used in our constituency. To date & truly speaking many people in the area do not know of such a fund. Only to be surprised to read an article in the print media where he lied of carrying out developmental projects in the area, which were being done by a legislator aspirant of a different political party thus hijacking projects of others. Shame.

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Finance and Administration Officer: WiPSU
Deadline: 12 July 2013

WiPSU has a Finance and Admin Officer vacancy in the organization; this is a female environment and hence men will not be considered.

The job description will among other things involve managing the organisation’s finances, preparing for internal and external audits, prepare monthly financial statements for the board and Director, prepare and sent to donors financial reports as per requirements and meeting deadlines, submit a monthly narrative report on the status of funding in the organisation. A detailed job description will be made available to the short listed candidates.
 
To apply
Submit your applications to the WiPSU Acting Director by email: wipsudirector [at] gmail [dot] com or patriciawipsu [at] gmail [dot] com

I couldn’t help but laugh at what can only be described as unintelligent remarks attributed to Zanu PF chair Simon Khaya Moyo – yes the one with a stuffed face that tells you he only knows hunger from news reports – who actually said: “you don’t provoke the military, let’s not pretend that our own security forces are not sensitive to insults. They have been insulted and when they respond let us not cry foul. They are not only security forces but liberators.”

I would love to hear Paul Themba Nyathi’s response!

You see Paul Themba Nyathi recently reminded one Chris Mutsvangwa that he (Paul) also fought for the liberation of Zimbabwe and he is not Zanu PF!

And Paul Themba Nyathi and Simon Khaya are both supposedly ex-ZAPU! Irony of ironies.

So much for Simon to try and tell Paul that he should be grateful for being liberated by people who are today blocking Paul and other progressives on their march to a liberated Zimbabwe, 33 years after Zanu PF handed back the country to black Zimbabweans! What bollocks.

Yet as polls approach, we can be sure of such wild statements that one day will only expose the futility of trying to reverse a revolution whose time has come.

But then Zanu PF knows a revolt as a violent takeover, yet these polls are an opportunity for a “peaceful revolution” of sorts that will serve as a rather painful reminder to the plutocrats (read kleptocrats) that Zimbabweans have had enough of this nonsense.

It is hardly surprising to hear cops threatening the MDC-T “against fomenting violence”and threatening to throw both supporters and officials into the dingy Matapi holding cells.

I would like to hear the cops threatening the same for Jabulani Sibanda and other characters of doubtful sanity who are on record saying they will return to the bush if Morgan Tsvangirai wins the elections.

You wonder then what kind of conditions are being set in the run-up to the poll which is only three weeks away.

This is the sort of thing that only buttresses criticism of the force being partisan which they should know alongside Zanu PF that this has quite a bearing on the legitimacy of the poll.

In any case, diplomatic missions who have already been denied observer status are watching and so is SADC, but then these people ceased caring a long time ago.

A flawed poll certainly is what Zanu PF seeks.

Internet security remains a major talking point what with the PRISM controversy where the US government snooped on virtually everyone’s internet traffic.

I recently participated in a training workshop in South Africa themed around protecting ourselves from cyber spies who apparently are now making themselves permanent features in the World Wide Web.

It was instructive that the monitoring of private online conversations has become a matter of concern as Zimbabwe heads for polls amid reports that the former ruling party is pulling all the stops bringing in Chinese and Israeli internet minds to launch an assault on people using cyber platforms to “push the regime change agenda.”

And the presence of characters like Baba Jukwa has made issues of internet security even more pertinent in the aftermath of claims that Zanu PF was hacking into the Facebook page in a bid to unmask BJ.

Yet not many people will consider internet security as something of major concern.

Ours is a country that has become a very bad model of freedom of information and freedom of expression where a simple political comment is enough to get you into trouble, yet as we celebrate social media and how it has provided space for conversations about political developments, it still remains open to snooping by a paranoid State.

The workshop I attended brought insights into a multitude of security options, yet like everyone else who attended, I found it amazing if not scary that we are virtually naked each time we are on Twitter, Facebook, sending emails etc.

There is a huge footprint that we leave, and for anyone seeking to rage against the machine, you are effectively having someone standing over your shoulder watching.

A mobile phone application called Layer enables you to read other people’s Twitter feeds, and if that is not scary, I don’t know what is.