Informal traders accuse Zanu (PF)

rty officials are denying its members a chance to earn a decent living through this partisan allocation of properties.
ZISA president, John Masekesa, says a senior ruling party official has ordered that no one shall be allocated a stall without producing his party’s membership card.
Masekesa said Zanu (PF)’s Harare provincial chairperson and former Zengeza legislator Christopher Chigumba is working in cahoots with the party’s local structures in Glen View 8 to disenfranchise his organization’s members of the right to work for themselves.
“The criteria they are using is that they are now dealing with what they call local political leaders, those are the people who introduce you to Christopher Chigumba then after that you will be allocated a stand and without having a card or a recommendation from these local political leaders you won’t be able to get a stand”.
As a result, Masekesa said his organization is dismayed that its members are not producing anything since their structures were destroyed at the height of Operation Murambatsvina last year which displaced over 700 000 people and left them without sources of income, according to a report compiled by United Nations special envoy Anna Kajumulo Tibaijuka who assessed the impact of the “clean-up” exercise.
Although Chigumba refused to give his side of the story, Masekesa said several ZISA members were turned away for failing to produce Zanu (PF) membership cards.
Masekesa says the de-politicization of the allocation of operating stalls will help ease unemployment which is hovering at over 80 percent while. The ZISA official said a production boom in the informal sector gives life to the country’s economy adding that his organization’s membership is prepared to play a part in economic development.
The ZISA president urged government not to allow Zanu (PF) activists to interfere government-initiated programs adding that doing so would only discredit it and affect people who are not affiliated to the ruling party.
Meanwhile, Masekesa said the politicization of the allocation process is not only affecting Harare but all areas countrywide.
“We have received reports of the politicization of the issuance of stalls from all corners of the country and we are worried that if this trend continues, all apolitical would suffer at the hands of Zanu (PF)”. He claimed that members of his organization are not affiliated to any political party.
Efforts to get a comment from local government minister Ignatius Chombo were fruitless. – Wilson Butete