Ginyinhlupho Old People’s Care Centre has 158 care-givers attending to 680 bed-ridden people across the district’s 30 wards. Ginyinhlupho was founded in 1995 by Sithabile Nyathi and registered in 1997.
Zapu confirms that Nyathi is the chairperson of our women’s wing, Zawu in Matabeleland North Province, and that she has of late been put under surveillance by the CIO. She has approached the provincial party leadership asking to step down from her post in Zawu and remain as an ordinary party member.
Nkayi RDC CEO Zimbabwe Ndlovu ordered the NGO to cease operations immediately, alleging the organization “was no longer operating according to its registration in terms of the Voluntary Organizations Act (Chapter 17:05)”.
Ndlovu claimed the NGO was keeping children at its care centre at Nkayi business centre, something which Nyathi vehemently denies. Zapu interviewed Nyathi who admitted that she used to house children long back, but stopped after the Department of Social Welfare Matabeleland North office advised her against it.
“In any case, the children were brought by the police and the department of social welfare to us to feed and house them either because they were homeless, abused or destitute. We then decided to apply for permission to extend our operations to cover children, which the department advised us against and we complied,” she said in the interview.
While the party was in the process of deliberating about her case, Ginyinhlupho’s warehouse was raised down by a fire whose origin has not been established, last week. The fire destroyed donated grain, furniture, stationery, blankets, books, soap, petroleum jelly, linen, clothing, mosquito nets, among other items earmarked for distribution to patients. Days later, the NRDC resolved to order her organization to cease operations.
Zapu believes there is nothing coincidental about the fire and the purported “cancellation” of the organization’s permission to operate in Nkayi. Ginyinhlupho is a victim of a double-pronged conspiracy from the MDC-T dominated council on one hand, and Zanu-PF on the other, who both realize that Nkayi is going to Zapu and are using all manner of dirty tricks to prevent the inevitable.
For the record, the CEO of Nkayi was in the company of a CIO operative when he delivered the letter to Miss Nyathi on Wednesday. We believe this was meant to intimidate her. Zapu has also been reliably informed that the RDC meeting at which the resolution to deal with Ginyinhlupho was taken was all about Miss Nyathi’s association with Zapu. The reasons given in the letter are just a smoke screen.
It is clear to us that the treatment of Miss Nyathi and Ginyinhlupho by NRDC is yet another blatant demonstration that MDC-T and Zanu-PF are cut from the same cloth. They think that power is about harassing the next person, instead of assisting them to achieve betterment. Nkayi councilors, through their decision, have thought it better to cause more suffering to hundreds of ailing elderly people in the district all in an effort to protect their ailing political careers. Zapu takes this opportunity to reiterate our position that MDC-T is another Zanu-PF and Morgan Tsvangirai is a younger Robert Mugabe.
Ginyinhlupho is a community-based development intervention project which has helped the people of Nkayi. That Miss Nyathi is an active member of Zapu or any other party for that matter is immaterial. MDC-T used to cry foul when Zanu-PF interfered with activities of NGOs but here they are themselves, doing exactly like Zanu-PF when it suits them. Ironically, the MDC-T has a plethora of NGOs calling themselves Nkayi Agenda, Tsholotsho Agenda for instance fronting for it all over Matabeleland, yet hell literally breaks loose when they hear that someone associated with Zapu is doing NGO work. What is good for MDC-T must certainly also be good for Zapu.
Meanwhile, Ginyinhlupho was in the middle of working with the community to build a Chief’s Hall at Chief Madliwa Khumalo’s homestead, and had launched a similar initiative for Chief Sikhobokhobo. All this brilliant people-based approach to local development may go down the drain just because of political cowards in the MDC-T and Zanu-PF.
Post published in: News