HARARE Serious financial problems have hamstrung Zimbabwes programme to heal wounds opened by a decade of political hostilities amid revelation this week that the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) was finding no takers for a collaborative project with the Office of the President and Cabinet.
Under the project, UNDP had agreed to bankroll a programme to strengthen the Zimbabwe governments capacity for conflict resolution and prevention. The main aim of the project was to create an enabling environment for sustainable human development in Zimbabwe through support to interventions aimed at enhancing national capacities for successful conflict prevention, management resolution and transformation (CPMRT). Implementation of the project, which was set to commence in June, with UN officials only saying it was in the pipeline.
The project has been delayed by a couple of months because we are in the process of mobilising the funds needed to take off, said a UN official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The UNDP is supposed to provide technical and infrastructural support for the project while the Office of the President and Cabinet would act as the national executing agency. The financial management arrangements would be monitored by the Ministry of Finance which has the overall responsibility for all UNDP-supported activities. Besides the UNDP and the Presidents Office, other partners for the project would include the Centre for Defence Studies at the University of Zimbabwe, national educational and training institutions, the
ministry of lands and rural resettlement and farmers’ organizations.
The project target groups would be the security forces, national and tertiary institutions, women’s groups, private sector, civil society, local authorities and the Tripartite Negotiation Forum (TNF). The TNF, which comprises representatives of the private sector, labour and government, is a platform for negotiations among the three groups and is an essential cog in efforts to foster tolerance among Zimbabweans. News of the slow start to the UNDP project came as the Organ for National Healing, Reconciliation and Integration had just postponed to
early 2010 an all-stakeholders conference to discuss findings from a nationwide outreach programme to gather views of ordinary Zimbabweans on reconciliation.
The conference was initially due to take place this month but had to be pushed to next year because of lack of funding. UNDP is also working with the Organ for National Healing, an arm of government which is meant to assist the state in addressing pre and post-independence conflict in the country. The Organ of National Healing has three ministers drawn from the
countrys three political parties making up the unity government between President Robert Mugabe and the leaders of the two MDC formations Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and his deputy Arthur Mutambara.
Since independence, Zimbabwes elections have been characterised by violence and political tensions, starting in the early 1980s when government cracked down on dissidents in Matabeleland. Political violence flared in the southern African country last year as Mugabe fought to reclaim power in a run-off vote after being defeated by Tsvangirai although the veteran trade unionist fell short of the margin required to take over power and avoid a run-off. The MDC claims that nearly 200 of its supporters were killed.
Tsvangirai eventually pulled out of the run-off citing violence that the MDC says left more than 100 of its members dead and at least another 200 000 displaced, leaving Mugabe to claim victory uncontested. Western governments and a host of African nations rejected Mugabes victory while the African Union and the regional Southern African Development Community piled pressure on the Zimbabwean leader to form a power-sharing government with the opposition.
Post published in: Opinions