Zapu national secretary for security Canaan Ncube has died.

BY SILAS NKALA

Ncube died on Monday at the age of 80 after a long illness.

Zapu spokesperson Iphithule Maphosa yesterday confirmed the death, saying the party had lost a dedicated cadre who fought for the liberation of the country and continued to fight for the democratisation of the nation.

“Ncube was recently out of hospital, and we are yet to get the specifics on the funeral arrangements,” Maphosa said.

“Ncube is a product of the armed liberation struggle during which he was an official in the party’s national security and order, the intelligence outfit. He served under the late (Zapu leader — former Zipra intelligence supremo — Dumiso Dabengwa.”

Maphosa said Ncube was the inaugural chairperson for Bulawayo province in the revived Zapu in 2009 on an interim basis.

“He also served as the national people’s council member for Bulawayo before his election to head the national security department in 2016,” Maphosa said.

Zapu lost its leader Dabengwa on May 23 this year. The party also lost a youth leader Thamani Ncube in a road traffic accident sometime in June, as well as secretary for health Nikela Ndebele in the same month.

Mourners are gathered at 26 Sherwood Road, Woodlands, Bulawayo.

Ncube is survived by his wife and several children and grandchildren.

It’s a group of minerals used in everything from LCD TVs to batteries and defence technology, but rare earth elements (REE) have barely had a mention in any talks about Zimbabwe’s mineral potential.

— newZWire

Now the acquisition of ten claims by an East Africa-focused UK firm could point to new interest in the country’s rare earths, a part of the country’s mineral resource whose prospect has gone largely unexplored, until now.

Rainbow Rare Earths, listed on the London Stock Exchange, says the land covers a total of 12,6km² in northern Zimbabwe. The acquisition is part of the company’s strategy to augment its rare-earth portfolio, it says.

The ten properties acquired by the company have only previously been explored for phosphate and cover, the company said in a statement.

Rainbow Rare Earths has acquired these licences through its wholly-owned subsidiary Rainbow Zimbabwe, which will hold 100% of the licences, with no free-carried interest for the government after Zimbabwe dropped the 51% local ownership requirement.

The acquisition, Rainbow says, “aligns with the recent changes to the legal framework covering mining in Zimbabwe”.

Rainbow Rare Earths will immediately begin an exploration programme on the claims including geological mapping, sampling and assaying to conclude an interpretation report that will evaluate the new claims for rare earth elements.

The firm’s chief executive George Bennet said: “With our strategic intent for our licences in Burundi well on track, the company stabilised, I believe this is a great opportunity to diversify the portfolio, with low risk and minimal capital outlay.”

Rainbow’s current focus is the Gakara Project in Burundi, one of the highest-grade rare earths projects globally and the only African producer.

Rare find?

Could this acquisition point to a new front in the race for minerals used in anything from renewable energy to defence technology?

In June, President Emmerson Mnangagwa told Bloomberg that “we have been sleeping on them (rare earths); we didn’t know that they were useful”. But he said that Zimbabwe was now looking for the technology and skills needed to extract them efficiently.

According to the Mines ministry, Mashonaland Central hosts three likely resources at Gungwa, Mutondongwe, and Nanuta. “While there has not been exploration for REE at these complexes, Gungwa is known to be rich in lanthanum and cerium,” the ministry website says.

According to Rainbow, a 2002 report by the US Geological Survey provides a record of rare earths content in the Gungwa deposit, which is described as “probably a metamorphosed carbonatite containing several thousand ppm cerium and lanthanum”.

In preparation for widening its exploration portfolio, Rainbow raised US$5,1 million in a share placing in London in July.

Rare earth metals are used in the production of tech products such as computer memory, DVDs, TVs, rechargeable batteries and cellphones. Demand is also being driven by prospects in the growing electronic vehicle market.

Some rare earth elements are also used for components used for defence systems, such as for fighter jets, night-vision goggles, precision-guided weapons, communication equipment and other defence electronics.

Worldwide demand for rare earths is projected to increase 3,5% per annum to 149 500 metric tonnes in 2019, valued at US$4,5 billion. However, demand is seen rising, with one new report from Adamas Intelligence forecasting a 350% increase in rare earths demand from electric vehicles alone between 2018 and 2025. Other estimates see a further 127% increase from 2025 to 2030.

SEVERAL months after Chief Bere was installed in his motherland, the Bere people are still waiting for the promised land and are being haunted, divided, harassed and traumatised by illegal settlers who took advantage of their displacement about 100 years ago.

By Gugu Magorira, Our Reader

I am a biological descendant of the late Bere, currently resident in some sandy location near Runde River, under threat from Tugwi-Mukosi Dam expansion.

My fear is that I may be forced out of the land by government before being settled in my own motherland.

We have been to a number of meetings with the authorities, for example, district administrator, provincial administrator, Resident minister, Lands and Local Government ministries and others without any breakthrough.

Bere people are being harassed and threatened by a bogus chief close to Great Zimbabwe, who is a member of the G40 and President Emmerson Mnangagwa is either deliberately silent or badly misinformed by his emissaries.

The district administrator for the area is conniving with the so-called chief. They are buying time and frustrating Bere people, claiming to be auditing the land but until today nothing concrete seems to be materialising.

We are simply demanding our land from government, nothing else.

Mnangagwa must urgently intervene in the Bere chieftainship to save his people from daylight robbery by Local Government officials, who in our view, are leopards in sheep skin.

The Local Government officials in the area should be transferred or fired for undermining the authority of the President.

We are not happy with the handling of the Bere land issue by G40 criminals.

Mnangagwa must act on the Bere land issue currently being stalled by the Local Government officials.

I am a legitimate heir to the Bere chieftainship and badly frustrated by the failure to return to my land. I want to be buried in my motherland.

SINCE 1988, Zimbabwe has never seen a terrible government like that of President Emmerson Mnangagwa.

By Fanuel Chinowaita, Our Reader

The situation we are in now is so terrible and unbearable. We are treated like Dalstroy prisoners of 1937, who were routinely clubbed, beaten or in many cases shot.
If Mnangagwa is trying to copy the Soviet way of treating citizens, he is failing. This is not Russia, we are not prisoners and we are not in the 1930s. We have every right to be heard and treated according to the Constitution.

We have watched and seen the Mnangagwa-led government violating citizens’ rights, forbidding them to demonstrate, assemble, beating and abducting them. These conducts are shocking, disgusting and dishonourable.

Children are raped for a plate of sadza, parents do not have school fees, basic commodities are very expensive. All people, employed and unemployed are incapacitated.
If we have suffered during the late former President Robert Mugabe era, we have never seen this. Mnangagwa has no mercy and has no focus on people. He’s a megalomaniac who thinks he is above the law, kills without mercy.

The health of an entire society depends on the ease with which its individual members can get medical attention.

Thus, in Zimbabwe during Mnangagwa government’s era, there will be widespread “mental illnesses”, neuroticism, hatred, alcoholism, drug abuse, violence, and social disorder will certainly be prevalent.

Personal worth is not something human beings are free to take or leave. We must have it, and when it is unattainable, everybody suffers.
The abuses by Mnangagwa will not continue for long. We have learned a lot in the past. We have matured.

Mnangagwa is sailing in a clay boat.

BY RUTENDO MATANHIKE

REGISTRAR-GENERAL (RG) Clemence Masango has accused the Zimbabwe Human Rights Commission (ZHRC) of labelling his department corrupt and inefficient without proof or evidence to back their statements.

Presenting before ZHRC commissioners at a stakeholders hearing on access to documentation inquiry in Harare yesterday, Masango said his department was planning on seeking legal recourse.

“It is our opinion that your inquiry is no longer investigative or that it is seeking to establish the truth or veracity of the complaints that you have received from citizens.

Instead, it has gone on an attacking, confrontational and accusatory mode making judgment of a process that should be an inquiry and this is all against the department,” the RG said.

“Honourable chair, I am compelled to seek legal views on these accusations with a view to report to law enforcement authorities looking for a possible retraction of this opinion.”

Masango said some ZHRC commissioners had been quoted verbatim in the media accusing registry officials of inefficiency.

“This is no longer an inquiry in the sense of the meaning of the word because on many occasions, officials in the department have been labelled corrupt, inefficient and this has been reported in the various newspapers with some of the ZHRC commissioners having been quoted verbatim and as far as I know, those accusations have not yet been refuted,” Masango said.

Speaking to journalists on the sidelines of the inquiry, chairperson of the committee, Elasto Mugwadi said Masango should engage the commission and get records of what people said pertaining to the department’s officers during their ongoing inquiry.

“We have said if he is keen to find out on what exactly people said, there are records and we can make them available to him and he would see for himself. On the issue of him citing incidences from newspapers (RG officers accused of being corrupt by commissioners), getting information from newspapers is immaterial because newspapers report differently. We are, therefore, disregarding his reactions to the newspaper article,” Mugwadi said, adding that the commission was not confronting the RG’s Office.

“Why on earth would we be targeting him or his office for? None of us would need that office, after all our offices are bigger than the Registrar’s Office so why would we have an issue with him as an individual?” Mugwadi said.

BY RUVIMBO MUCHENJE

HARARE City Council has threatened to withhold salaries for striking nurses and take disciplinary measures because their job action was illegal, NewsDay can reveal.
About 600 council nurses are on strike.

In a memorandum seen by NewsDay dated November 20, the council, acting human capital director Matthew Marara cautioned nurses that if they are to receive their salaries they have to discontinue their industrial action.

“I have learnt with sadness that most of these ‘striking’ nurses have not taken heed of my call. I will reiterate that the action by the absenting nurses is illegal and in terms of Labour Act (Chapter 28:01) and section 108 (4), the employer is not obliged to pay employees not reporting for duty to render services as per their employment contracts,” Marara wrote.

Marara’s previous memo to the nurses’ union on November 4, directed them to report for duty while dialogue for better salaries was underway and made reference to the talks in the recent memo.

“Accordingly, council shall proceed and apply the legal principle ‘no work no pay’ and withhold payment of salaries in respect of all the nurses who are not reporting for their duties with effect from the dates they started absconding their duties. Council will continue to withhold the nurses’ salaries up until the time when the striking nurses report for their duty to render services,” Marara said.

“Nevertheless, continued strike action shall inevitably call for disciplinary action.”

Zimbabwe Urban and Rural Council Nurses Workers’ Union secretary-general Tedious Chisango dismissed the threats, saying the only condition for returning to work was when their demand for better salaries was addressed.

“The nurses are not moved by those threats; all they demand is their salaries. If you are trapped between a hard rock and a rough surface, you cannot move and that is the situation with the nurses right now,” Chisango said.

Chisango accused council of being insincere to their plight as it has failed to meet them to address the issues at hand.

“The same excuse, he doesn’t want to recognise us and we have to go through the NEC (National Employment Council) ,” he said.

The union wrote to the NEC and are yet to get feedback, Chisango said.

BY PHYLLIS MBANJE

Fired government doctors have said they will not reapply for their jobs and have instead asked Vice-President Constantino Chiwenga to first address their concerns as well as the chaos that is prevailing in public health institutions.

The Zimbabwe Hospitals Doctors’ Association (ZHDA) urged Chiwenga to bring normalcy to the healthcare system which has seen most hospitals shutting down their major service departments.

Chiwenga, who quietly jetted into the country on Saturday after spending almost four months in China where he was being treated for an unknown illness, is now faced with a massive mission of reassembling the collapsing health sector.

He, however, upon his arrival, did not have any kind words for striking civil servants, including the doctors.

Chiwenga also became infamous early this year when he fired more than 16 000 nurses.

“It is our sincere hope that the Vice-President will now take the opportunity to look into the Zimbabwean healthcare system and get things back to normal beginning with ensuring decent salaries for health staff working towards uplifting our system to first class standards,” the doctors’ grouping posted on its official Twitter account.

The doctors have also said they will not reapply for their jobs and will instead wait for the government to reinstate them.

Acting secretary-general Tawanda Zvakada told NewsDay that the decision was made unanimously by the members.

“The message from the constituency is that no one will reapply and government should instead reinstate us as per our signed contracts,” he said.

Self-exiled doctor Peter Magombeyi, who was abducted and tortured a few months ago by suspected State security agents and later ferried to South Africa for treatment also tweeted that none of the doctors will re-apply for their jobs.

Magombeyi whose location remains unknown and shrouded in speculation has not returned since he went for medical treatment in South Africa.

“As doctors, we are cocksure that our future is bright; no one will reapply for the job. These are bread and butter issues. To our patients, we love you all,” he said.

This follows sentiments by the Acting Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services minister Mangaliso Ndlovu during a Cabinet briefing last week that the government would not budge on its decision of relieving 400 doctors of their duties.

He instead said if the doctors so wished they should reapply.

The doctors have cited incapacitation and following a protracted battle with their employer, they were dragged to the Labour Court where they lost their case.

They were later served with letters to appear for disciplinary hearings which they snubbed, resulting in the government firing 435 doctors.

Senior government officials, however, have been berated for becoming medical tourists while the rest of the country has had to contend with the local facilities which are ill-equipped and have no drugs, inadequate personnel as well as equipment for various medical procedures.

The facilities do not even have basic medication like pain killers. Hardest hit are pregnant women who have now resorted to giving birth outside h