AFRO-JAZZ artiste Hope Masike has described some of the steamy poems in her debut collection to be officially launched on February 7 at Delta Gallery in Harare as adult material that was likely to make conservative people uncomfortable.

BY FREEMAN MAKOPA

The artiste, however, said the poetry collection titled Ask Me Again was designed to bring better understanding between men and women in relationships.

Masike, however, told NewsDay Life & Style that open-minded readers would enjoy the “steamy” poems in the new literary offering that would come out in time for Valentine’s Day on February 14.

“A particularly steamy section of the book shall get many definitely hot, appropriately so as we approach Valentine’s Day,” she said. “So I must add, this is an adult book; not for persons below 18 perhaps.”

Masike said with the book, which contains 36 pieces, she sought to open the lid on sensitive subjects that people would rather keep under wraps.

“My genuine aim, however, is to bring better understanding between men and women, by inviting into the light the things we comfortably prefer to hide,” she said.

The musician said some difficult life experiences enabled her to explore her poetic talent, which saw her publishing the poetry collection.

Masike said publishing poetry was a long-cherished childhood dream.

She said parting ways with her management two years ago and the subsequent dry spell during which her show roster contracted helped her rediscover the poet in her.

“I have always written (poetry), especially in my younger years when I didn’t have much to do. I even dreamed to publishing books,” she said.

“So when I broke up with my management in 2018 and my gig roster started thinning out, I found myself in a place where I had plenty of time and for the first time in a long while, I read again. Without planning it, the reading brought back the obsessive writing.”

She said the lean spell forced her to make significant life adjustments, including going back to her family home rather than keep up appearances.

AFRO-JAZZ songstress Selmor Mtukudzi’s new album set to be launched on January 31 will mark the rebirth of the musician as she seeks to move away from her late father music superstar Oliver Mtukudzi’s shadow and reinforce her own brand as a musician, NewsDay Life & Style has established.

BY FREEMAN MAKOPA

The musician’s publicist Reginald Chapfunga last week said they were in the process of rolling out the new strategy.

“Our vision is to establish Selmor as her own musician. Yes, she is the daughter of Oliver Mtukudzi, but she can’t live in the shadows of Dr Mtukudzi or on sympathy forever. Besides, she has been her own for a decade and a half,” he said.

“We are also focusing on the international market and one of the strategies is to attend music trade shows and festivals as exhibitors or performers. This will help us market the brand. We are also approaching international music agents.”

Following the death of Tuku last year, Selmor has drawn the sympathy of the late superstar’s fans in a development that saw many of her shows oversubscribed.

Chapfunga said they were working on striking a balance between maintaining Tuku’s legacy and getting Selmor out of her father’s shadow.

“Our thrust now is to preserve Tuku’s music legacy while establishing Selmor as a brand. However, you will see from the forthcoming album that we have a collaboration with South Africa’s Vusi Mahlasela and Steve Dyer also features on the album,” Chapfunga said.

“The year 2020 marks Selmor’s rebirth. Besides an 11-track album titled Dehwe Renzou, we are also going to embark on a nationwide tour. The tour is meant to promote the album and will also serve to take Selmor to the people and reignite the romance with Tuku’s fans.”

Chapfunga said they will mark the first anniversary of Tuku’s death on January 23 with the release of a video of one of the tribute songs from the album.

Selmor will, however, continue to play her father’s music during live shows while producing her own music.

Chapfunga noted that the songbird’s desire to preserve her father’s legacy kept her going during a difficult year as it was “not easy to pick up the pieces after such a loss”.

He also hailed their partnership with Impala Car Hire, saying that has helped the musicians to work with Steve Dyer and also improved many facets of the band and Alick Macheso for touring the country with Selmor.

HARARE — Six years ago, it was only a dream for Michelle Chitembwe (47), who slept on the floor of her slum house in Harare, to own a bed.

But challenging the difficulties, Chitembwe launched a soap-making venture and has shifted to a life of the rich from that of rags. She now enjoys her luxurious house in a Harare suburb.

Her initiative was a magic touch on her life, but it also changed the lives of many women as she employed scores to ensure a future for them.

For entrepreneur women, there are organisations in Zimbabwe showing them a way to help elude poverty.

“Apart from working my way through single-handedly to where I am now, I have also obtained support from organisations like Usaid (United States Agency for International Development) to shape my vision,” she said.

Chitembwe said she can now afford a private school for the education of her children thanks to her soap-making venture.

Actually, Zimbabwean women like Chitembwe have turned to forming home-based industries, with some of them even creating and producing dishwashing liquid, soft drinks and perfumes.

“These entrepreneur women have become sources of most of the domestic products many of us sell in our shops,” said Humphrey Gatawa, a Harare-based indigenous businessman.

Agness Chiramba, who lives in Harare’s Mbare township and makes dishwashing liquid, said the market for her product has never ceased to amaze her.

“I’m so amazed at the way local retail businesses have clamoured for my dishwashing liquid. I tell you, I’m making money just by making dishwashing liquid, pocketing over $200 every day in sales,” Chiramba said.
She was an unemployed woman with academic education in chemical engineering. Chiramba, without options, turned to making dishwashing liquid in order to support herself as a single mother.

Benefiting the support of non-governmental organisations, women entrepreneurs are thriving in Zimbabwe although their activities are not regulated by government due to bureaucracy and corruption which many fear would derail their success.

“Usaid Zimbabwe funded the course through its partnership with Junior Achievement Zimbabwe, a forum for youth business growth aggregators and that has helped women like me,” Chiramba said.

As a result, Chiramba and Chitembwe have become self-assisted, at a time Zimbabwe’s economy teeters on the brink of collapse, with inflation nearing 500%, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Zimbabwe is battling with a 90% unemployment rate, according to the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions. However, women like Chiramba and Chitembwe have challenged the crisis with their entrepreneurial skills and have mastered over the years.

Based on statistics from the Ministry of Women Affairs, Community, Small and Medium Enterprises Development in Zimbabwe, about 261 000 women are involved in self-assisted projects, like soap- and detergents-making, among other income-generating projects.

Of late, development experts have attributed the rise in women venturing into home-based manufacturing industries to the hostile economy of the southern African nation.

“The women have seen that men are losing their jobs as formal industries are closing down and the only option they have hatched for survival over the years is to leap into self-aided projects in order to survive the harsh economy,” Donald Sengwayo, a Harare-based Zimbabwean development expert, said.

Except for the technical and financial support they have earned from non-governmental organisations, the women say, the Zimbabwean government itself has not moved in with any help.

“NGOs have seen the need to support women and our government has not so far done anything meaningful to back our strides, leaving us to progress with the help of non-governmental organisations like Usaid,” Chitembwe said.

For Zimbabwe’s entrepreneurial women, working at the backyards of their homes is not enough — they are seeking more.

“Personally, what I wish is to end up, one day, running a huge industry producing soaps and even exporting,” Chitembwe said.

But for many women like Chiramba, this may not be easy.

“We have no access to loans at banks here because most of us don’t have collateral to enable us secure more capital from the banks,” she said.

Apart from difficulties in accessing capital from banks, Chitembwe and Chiramba said they also had to struggle to get customers for their homemade products, although they have now gone past the stage.

“Shop owners and ordinary people didn’t really trust my products at first, rather preferring ordering stock from countries like Dubai, South Africa or India; you see, naturally as Zimbabweans we shun locally manufactured products. So, lots of hard work had to be done explaining to people why I was making my product from home before they could buy,” Chiramba said.

Now, thanks to their endurance, many female entrepreneurs in Zimbabwe have become optional sources of affordable homemade consumable products at a time inflation has shot through the roof in the southern African country.

“Due to rising prices, women who produce products like soaps, candles and dishwashing liquid have become providers of such items at quite low prices and I’m personally happy dealing with them,” Marian Sithole, a 26-year old Harare woman, said.

Even Taurai Kandishaya, national co-ordinator of the Zimbabwe Citizens Forum, a civil society organisation with links to the country’s governing Zanu-PF party, is excited about the products women are producing in their backyards.

“Homemade products made by these entrepreneurs are offering our citizens a cheaper alternative although they may eventually be affected by price rises in the raw materials they use, which may eventually force them to increase their prices as well,” Kandishaya said.

— Anadolu Agency.

It was just after losing the Constitutional Referendum held on February 12 and 13, 2000 that the current government went full throttle to rip apart what used to be a solid economy. They feared a looming major political defeat in the 2002 presidential election, judging by the outcome of the referendum.

So, they unleashed a reign of terror led by armed war veterans and youths causing violence, destruction and dismantling the commercial farming sector that was historically the mainstay of the economy.

Signs of an increasingly fragile economy were pulpable as early as mid-1990s, characterised by the major fall of the Zimbabwe dollar on November 14, 1997 — a day referred to as “Black Friday”, the labour movement-led mass industrial actions and the farm invasion by the people of Svosve in Mashonaland East.

The chaotic and violent land reform became the straw that broke the camel’s back sending millions of young people scouring for employment and economic opportunities overseas and into neighbouring countries. The economy on which they based their hopes and dreams was in a tailspin and was eventually decimated by Zanu PF.

Two decades after these events unfolded, it is still not clear how many millions of Zimbabweans are in the diaspora and neither has the economy improved nor the politics changed. Things are getting worse and more skilled young people are fleeing the country. Hopes for a diaspora return continue to diminish. This is a huge loss to the country.

During the early years of the mass exodus, mainly between the year 2000 and 2008, the majority of diasporas were still hoping to return once the situation improved. The same parents who sacrificed their assets to send their children to better schools, sacrificed more to buy tickets to enable the same children to fly overseas for greener pastures. The British pound and the US dollars were selling favourably on the local market so the little earned and remitted in the diaspora made a huge difference back home then. Some families recouped what they sacrificed while others were fed on empty promises. It is not easy out there.

In those 20 years, the losses are unquantifiable. Some shelved their educational qualifications to take whatever was on the overseas job market. A few more swallowed their pride and left high sounding, but less paying jobs in Zimbabwe to either return to study or take menial jobs just to sustain a respectable lifestyle in the diaspora.

Others reconfigured themselves from different professions into nurses mainly in England, a profession that absorbed a huge lot from Zimbabwe and other Third World countries. In doing so, families were left behind, separated and others eventually destroyed.

Some froze their plans, while others witnessed their savings back home being eroded by inflation. An unstable political and economic situation also meant a lot more has changed.

The local monetary environment has become increasingly flaccid and the remittances from meagre earnings in the diaspora no longer make sense as they used to between 2000 and 2008, putting some in a dilemma on whether to remit for investment back home or just for groceries. Either way, there are irreparable heartbreaks. The risk of losing investment and the lack of personal and family progress associated with it.

Our politics is giving no one any hope. This has thrust some in the diaspora into a major quandary mainly those who lived “temporary lives” with the hopes that one day they will return home.

This simply means instead of acquiring the necessary documentation to enable them to secure property, invest and take advantage of long-term opportunities in their countries of refuge, they had over the years remitted most of their earnings back home with a view to return one day. While there is no harm in investing back home, there is arguably greater gain in investing where one is settled, especially on account of not having guarantees of political and economic improvement back home.

The situation could be worse for refugee permit holders scattered across the globe, mainly whose status does not allow them to access gainful employment and have been surviving on host government or charity handouts.

While some of them can make ends meet, it is hard for them to make savings. This group is made up of both skilled and non-skilled people and again they also face various levels of dilemmas. Those who just recently crossed the border wish for the country to return to normalcy sooner than later so they can return and be economically productive.

But there is also another group of those who held asylum or refugee permits for decades who fear the embarrassing prospects of returning home empty-handed.

To understand their fears, one needs to picture this: There is a new crop of entrepreneurs in Zimbabwe who have mastered the art of “hustling” in a challenging economic environment. This generation of investors is largely made up of 30 year-olds, who were teenagers when the situation went on a tailspin in 2000. If the current state of the political and economic situation in the country continues, it will justify asylum or refugee permit holders’ continued stay in their country of refuge.

Whatever the case may be and no matter what justification one may give, these are crushed dreams. Let us hope for a better 2020 and beyond. We are tired of waiting in suspense.

Tapiwa Gomo is a development consultant based in Pretoria, South Africa. He writes here in his personal capacity.

The quality and accessibility of healthcare have long been known to have a disproportionate impact on the economic and emotional well-being of entire societies. The 54 countries that make up the continent of Africa are no different.

Like many of their emerging-market peers, these countries have been plagued by a combination of high disease rates and insufficient resources to tackle the health burden. But, after 10 years of mobilising more than US$300 million for healthcare providers across multiple African countries, I am cautiously optimistic that a transformation is beginning to take hold.

Four essential elements are driving the continent’s health-care transformation: Government-led efforts to achieve universal health coverage; market-led consolidation of health-care providers; major private-equity investors; and digital technology.

Political leaders across Sub-Saharan Africa generally agree that government-sponsored insurance is the foundation of universal health care. In Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda and South Africa, at least 60 million people now have some form of health insurance, according to health ministry data and a 2018 global analysis of sub-Saharan Africa’s insurance markets. That number is set to grow significantly.

As governments reimagine their role, shifting from care provider to payer, they could bring quality health care to millions. But much more needs to be done to make health insurance universal, comprehensive, and efficient.

For example, Ghana adopted a mandatory national health insurance programme in 2003, but the country’s National Health Insurance Authority reported that it had enrolled only 38% of the population in the programme’s first decade of existence.

Meanwhile, Rwanda boasts of more than 90% penetration, but the services covered are limited mainly to primary care.
Providing health insurance to everyone is difficult and complicated. Costs are a concern. Some government-backed insurance schemes are plagued by high overheads, inefficiency and allegations of delayed payments and corruption, all of which undermine their sustainability.

The solution is a combination of better governance and greater reliance on technology and the private sector to boost efficiency, reduce costs and improve quality.

Governments will continue to play an important role, but partnering with the private sector is essential to reach health goals.

I see great promise on this front. A sector traditionally dominated by thousands of small establishments is now benefiting from consolidation, which brings economies of scale, lower costs, consistent quality and the power to attract high-quality staff.

In Kenya, for example, the Ladnan, Metropolitan, Avenue, and Nairobi Women’s hospitals, among others, now form a seven-city network of eight hospitals and 16 clinics under common ownership.

Similarly, in retail pharmacy, Goodlife — a client of the International Finance Corporation, the World Bank’s commercial lending arm — runs 57 outlets.

Much of the market growth for these platform companies has come from mergers and acquisitions.

Looking ahead, I believe more players will grow organically through brownfield and greenfield developments of hospitals and by branching out into specialties.

As they grow, businesses must overcome stubborn structural hurdles such as low insurance penetration and medical skills shortages.

The third important element is institutional equity capital, which for too long was absent in Africa, but is now becoming more widespread.

In 2005, private-equity funds focused on African health care raised only US$100 000, but by 2015 that figure had skyrocketed to $2 billion, according to a study of private equity in African healthcare from Preqin, a company that produces proprietary research on alternative assets.

Vehicles like the Africa Health Fund and Investment Funds for Health in Africa (IFHA) have invested an estimated $200 million in the region, spawning successor funds totalling US$1,1 billion. This private-equity investment is helping to professionalise financial management, improve business strategies and governance and attract top-notch management talent. There is also a strong track record of profitable exits.

The fourth element, digital technology leveraging on the ubiquitous mobile phone, has enabled the deployment of healthcare to distant and remote regions.

Telemedicine apps such as Babylon, which provides virtual consultations, are gaining traction. As Africa’s disease profile shifts further to noncommunicable diseases, I expect that smartphones will increasingly be used not only for consultations, but also to diagnose pathological specimens and medical images, as well as to gather and analyse patient data to prevent diseases before they manifest.

Each of these interventions has the potential to dramatically reduce the cost of health care, improve quality and do more with fewer resources.

Clearly, there are many reasons for optimism. The building blocks have been laid: Health-care systems funded by African governments via universal insurance schemes are being bolstered (where necessary) by private institutional capital and/or development aid and by technology that broadens the system’s reach.

While a lot more remains to be done, Africa’s health-care sector is at an exciting crossroads. The meeting of public policy, private entrepreneurs, investors and technology is bound to transform the development landscape for the better.

– Project Syndicate

 Biju Mohandas is head of health and education for Sub-Saharan Africa at the International Finance Corporation

Artists come in a wide range of communities of practice, ranging from musicians, sculptors, poets, painters, photographers, dancers, drawing, landscaping, sportspersons, actors, cartoonists, cultural artists, motivation speakers, graphics, collage and many others. The artists’ efforts are quite critical in humanity’s efforts to address the climate change problems.

Artists can transform the climate change question by providing creative and innovative components of climate change adaptation, awareness and education through their versatile initiatives, creativity and diversity.

The idea of using art for climate change engagements is to provoke, evoke mental images, captivate, entertain and educate or even protest and advocate in order to influence environmental policies.

Observers always develop interests in various forms of art, and then they will make some follow-ups on best possible ways to interact with the environment.

As based on their mandate of inspiring their audiences, artists will do the same during climate change engagements, so that audiences are influenced, induced and motivated to associate with their favourite artists as a form of climate action.

Visual art is cross-cutting, cross-cultural and cross-languaging just as climate change visuals in the form of photographs, images of destructive floods and cyclone or hunger and famine appeal to overall human senses.

Visual arts communicate stories of natural or human influenced changes on the environment over the years.

Photographing of physical and social landscaping, deforestation and land degradations, including deteriorating infrastructure would save to communicate and transform the climate challenges in creative and multi-modal ways.

Through various forms of art, people are sufficiently eco-socialised, connected and engaged to conservation issues.

Works of art are comprehensive enough to build both verbal and pictorial bridges which appeal to human ecological needs, desires and necessities.

Various forms of art are expressive and impressive as well as being therapeutic through music, docu-drama, sculpturing, works of cartoons, landscaping, poetry and dances, among a host of many. In this regard, artists have unlimited roles to move the conservation discourse forward and change the human behaviours and attitudes contributed to global warming.

A wide range of arts are not designed in isolation or for communication massaging, but they are composed according to the people’s underlying needs and world-views. These are results of creative self-expressions, intrinsic motivations, leading to environmental awareness and innovations, because creativity connects and binds, informs, empowers and engages.

Environmental conservation and climate action strategies through works of art, leading to resilience should not just be empty, flat or uninspiring, but should be unifying and goal bound.

These various forms of art are part of a wide ranging tools, designed to add value, not only to the people’s lives, but to the environment as a laboratory of human livelihoods and learning.

A number of environmental themes like deforestation, pollution, global warming, hunger and famine, flooding, forest fires, fossil fuels burning or land degradation are well communicated and expressed through visual art.

Instead of marketing and designing, environmental art can be used for environmental activism and advocacy in order to influence policy changes. In this regard, various forms of arts on environmental issues can be integrated with climate change discourse so that climate action and adaptation can be realised for the overall greening processes.

Therefore, the partnership between artists and environmentalists can be the missing link in this climate change discourse. It is high time artists, environmentalists and policymakers worked hand in glove in shaping the environment positively.

Above all, effective communication tools should be designed so that they appeal to both artists, environmentalists and policymakers.

Artists, through their enterprising forms, have creative and versatile ways of conveying information to the public, in a manner that can stimulate climate action.

Audiences can learn about critical adaptation strategies according to their cultural standpoints as opposed to being continuously lectured and tutored without being participatory. These modes of learning normally compromise the aesthetic elements and values of works of art.

Artists’ advocacy cut across literacy boundaries by driving innovations and moulding communities’ cultural character, as climate change advocacy is about building characters and human preparedness.

 Peter Makwanya is a climate change communicator. He writes in his personal capacity and can be contacted on: petrovmoyt@gmail.com

ZIMBABWE must be the only country on this planet that does not allow its aged, ailing leaders to have a piece of mind. Daily, thousands of pensioners sleep and wake up in bank queues trying to access the paltry rewards of decades of faithful dedication to the building of this country. And as if this is not sad enough, we have thousands of more people failing to even access a small tablet to relieve pain in a country whose misery has long gone beyond being bearable.

NewsDay Comment

But most astounding is when we have leaders who have access to money and the best medication money can buy refusing to retire from public office and let all the money they have amassed to give them peace of mind. A case in point is of our beloved Vice President Constantino Guvheya Chiwenga, who has been not so-well for quite some time now, despite making a brief appearance in public recently.

The man was supposed to be acting President after President Emmerson Mnangagwa went on leave early this month, but Mnangagwa had to return to office simply because, we hear, Chiwenga is nowhere to be seen. Chiwenga’s case is both touching and embarrassing for Zimbabwe.

Chiwenga’s case is, on the one hand, touching in that Chiwenga, at 63 years, should not only be enjoying his pension after serving in the national army since Zimbabwe gained independence in 1980, but enjoying the fruits of having helped liberate this country from colonial rule. On the other hand, his case is embarrassing because unwell as he is, should we not allow him to quietly fade out of the public glare and convalesce in peace?

Why is he being forced to remain in office when everything is pointing to the fact that the man is indeed struggling to optimally perform his duties? What favour are we doing to him or ourselves by keeping him in office when it is obvious that the man really needs to rest? Are our demands on him not helping to worsen his health? Where is our heart as a nation? What kind of love is that of making someone who is unwell to work, especially in old age?

Or is it Chiwenga himself who is refusing to retire from public office? If this is the case, why is he holding the nation to ransom by continuing to occupy a public office he clearly is not fit to keep holding on to? Why does it even appear that this whole issue is taboo to freely discuss it? What does he hope to achieve by making himself suffer by continuing to work when he is unwell? What does the Constitution even say about this? Or maybe this has nothing to do with the Constitution. And if this has nothing to do with the supreme law of the land, then we are, indeed, a heartless nation.

MINERS have called on the government to impose a shoot-to-kill policy when dealing with machete gangs, popularly known as MaShurugwi, who have unleashed a terror campaign in the mining sector.

BY RICHARD MUPONDE

In an interview yesterday, Zimbabwe Miners Federation secretary-general, who is also Matabeleland South provincial secretary for small-scale miners, Philimon Mokoena, said it was high time the government adopted a hard-line stance against machete gangs.

“This is the right time for government to put such policy on the machete gangs. They have caused enough problems for miners and government should put a stop to it right now. A shoot-to-kill policy will work to put deterrent measures to their activities,” he said.

Also calling on retailers who sell machetes and pangas to be regulated, he added: “They should not sell these weapons over the counter to anyone who just walks in to buy. I think there should be a good reason given by someone buying these weapons. It should not be that everyone who thinks of buying a machete will have it readily available,” he said.

The call comes a few days after the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Mines and Mining Development asked the government to impose stiffer sentences against the machete gangs, who they said were now a danger to society.

The call was made as part of its resolutions following an urgent meeting on the activities of the terror gangs at Parliament last week.

The committee also resolved that government should kick-start legislative procedures to allow for stiffer penalties with regard to such perpetrators as was done in the Criminal Procedure and Evidence Act regarding the vandalism of railway and electrical material, among others.

The machete gangs have unleashed a reign of terror in the mining areas where they have killed dozens of people, robbing them of their gold and other valuables.

Their actions have prompted the government to declare war on their activities and deploying security agents to restore sanity in the mining sector

According to statistics, machete gangs have killed over 100 people in gold wars.

Last week, 47 machete gang members were arrested after two of them were shot by the police when they hired commuter omnibuses from Kwekwe to attack a police station in Gokwe North.

The gang intended to force the release their colleagues who were in police custody.

THE State’s plot to “fix” MDC vice-chairperson Job Sikhala’s trial on treason charges has been exposed after it allocated the case to a Masvingo legal practitioner who it gave the indictment papers with instructions to represent the legislator on pro deo without his knowledge.

BY DESMOND CHINGARANDE

A pro deo refers to legal representation of a person accused of a capital offence, but is unable to afford a legal practitioner and is funded by the State.

Sikhala, who is being represented by the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR), only came to know of the issue after the State-appointed lawyer, Charles Ndhlovu, approached him saying he was instructed by the Masvingo High Court registrar to represent him on pro deo.

The MDC vice-chairperson blew his top and said he suspected a plot by the State to interfere with his trial.
“How did the registrar just pick a legal practitioner when it is clearly indicated on the indictment papers that they were served to my legal practitioner,” Sikhala said.

“I wonder what their motives are. At law, someone can be allocated a legal practitioner to represent him or her on two grounds. Firstly, when the accused person has requested it and, secondly, when the accused person is not able to choose a legal practitioner of choice on a serious offence.”

Sikhala said he had a competent legal team that had walked with him from initial remand to date.

“The ZLHR are available. Would they allow me to go on a State persecution trial without legal representation?
Common sense should have spoken to the State that I have got enough legal ammunition to face the trial. My party president, vice-presidents and treasurer-general are all lawyers!” Sikhala fumed.

The MP said six South African advocates had also volunteered to represent him in the trial and he is discussing the issue with his legal practitioners on how to accommodate them and seek temporary practising certificates with the Justice ministry.

However, Ndhlovu told NewsDay that he did not know why he was given Sikhala’s indictment papers with instruction to represent him.

“I only received Sikhala’s indictment papers with instructions from the registrar of the High Court that I must represent him on pro deo,” he said.

“I do not know why they chose me, but I contacted Sikhala knowing he has the capacity to fund his legal fees.”

Masvingo deputy registrar of the High Court Hazvineyi Mwanyisa confirmed to NewsDay that Sikhala’s case was allocated to Ndhlovu, saying if he did not want his representation, he could choose a legal practitioner of his choice.

Mwayisa invited NewsDay to her office to verify with the record, but after being asked if it was procedural to allocate an accused person’s case to a legal practitioner without his consent, she said they only did that because they did not attend his indictment at the magistrate’s court.

“You can come and verify with the record. Ndhlovu is Sikhala’s lawyer. We allocate any case to a lawyer, but if he does not like him, he can choose his legal practitioner of choice. When he was indicted, we were not at Bikita Magistrates Court, but here we only allocate cases to lawyers and it will be up to accused to proceed with him or not,” she said.

But Sikhala insisted that it was not the norm in the administration of justice in the country that a person who has not declared legal incapacitation would have a lawyer chosen for them.

The MDC has been accusing the State of persecuting its members with more than 10 senior members of the party charged with treason which carries a death sentence.