Chombo embarrassed

Minister of Local Government Rural and Urban Development Ignatius Chombo was on Wednesday embarrassed by the  Head of the Zimbabwe Office of the United Kingdom's Department for International Development (DFID) Dave Fish after he told the Zanu-PF politburo member to stop blaming the country's woes on colonialism and concentrate on building the future.

Chombo had told journalists at a press conference after the launch of the Rural Water and Sanitation Hygene (WASH) in Tsholotsho that rural dwellers did not have access to safe water because of the disparities between the urban and rural areas created by the settler regime.

"The economy during colonialism was concentrated of benefiting the white minority yet the black majority in the rural areas were marginalised," said Chombo explaining why rural dwellers who form 60 percent of the country's population had no access to clean water.

But Fisher who was also at the press conference said it did not make sense to blame the country's woes on colonialism 32 years after Independence.

"What I would rather like to see is Zanu-PF and the MDCs working together to take the country forward and not go back to the past," he said.