Mirror Reporter

Gutu – Government and local authorities are the biggest obstacles to development in this country, former trade unionist and opposition politician Matthew Takaona has said.

Speaking at a Gutu District Masterplan focus meeting held at Gutu RDC Boardroom at Mpandawana on Tuesday last week, Takaona told participants that Government and councils are the bottlenecks for development and argued that communities would do better without the two.

He said Government and councils dismantled all development structures that existed in rural areas at independence; ie women’s clubs, farmers’ associations and replaced them with political party structures. He said that there is no space anymore for the development agenda.

Any development project, no matter how small cannot take place without being sanctioned by a councillor or MP and this has snuffed out development, said Takaona.

He said people are controlled and have lost the freedom to develop. He argued that communities have capacities to maintain their roads but they are hindered Government and councils to take up such responsibilities.

 “The bottleneck for development in Zimbabwe is Government and councils. Those two are the bottlenecks! If you say to people today develop yourselves without Government, you will see a lot of things.

“I will give you an example, there is no meeting that takes place in rural areas without being sanctioned by a councillor or Government, even a meeting to discuss simple things like buying dipping chemicals.

“There is no meeting that takes place in rural areas that is not politicised. If you go into rural areas, the structures that you see there are political party structures and no developmental structures. At independence all the structures that you found in rural areas were for development, women’s clubs, farmers’ associations etc.

“If you see any meeting taking place in the rural areas today, it is either Zanu PF or former CCC. People must be free to meet, share their ideas and do development.

“If you ask us in our ward to do development on our own today. We can tell you that we have put together fuel to grade the roads or even hire graders.

“But the moment you suggest that, they start questioning your politics.

“Let people develop, let people come together and work for development on their own, in their own communities, you will see that there will be a lot of progress,” said Takaona.