'Mash Central is a one-party province'

Today, Guruve South Constituency in Mashonaland Central Province will hold a by-election for the vacant House of Assembly seat following the expulsion of Chriswell Mutematsaka by the ruling Zanu-PF party.

The battle for the seat will be between zanu-pf's Patrick Dutiro (PD) and the National Constitutional Assembly's Simbarashe Mutsvene.
The Herald's Political Editor Tichaona Zindoga (TZ) recently caught up with Dutiro – who appears set to romp to an easy victory – on his expectations and plans for the people of Guruve South.
TZ: You are contesting a seat that fell vacant recently following the expulsion of Chriswell Mutematsaka. How do you find the constituency now in terms of development and the general state of affairs?

PD: In terms of development we are looking at two things. There is what we can call immediate development and then long-term development. Guruve South is very lucky to some extent because it has a number of secondary and primary schools and clinics. The road network is also usable and most of the schools are electrified.

In the long-term I can say Guruve South is poised for growth as it has all the factors for long-term development. Even if you look at the number of dams which are in the constituency, mainly in the resettlement areas, we have quite a number.

But we are worried about short-term development. We are worried about the road network, the roads need repair and attention. We have got quite a number of schools and clinics which were electrified but we have not unlocked value in these institutions.

The constituency has around 300 boreholes and out of that only about 140 are functional leaving 160 which are not. It means we need leadership which can coordinate and make sure all the boreholes are functional.

The dams are there and we need irrigation equipment to be revived. Most of the farms have the pipes and equipment. It only needs to be coordinated for people to start irrigating in the constituency.

And if we look at schools, the curriculum has changed. In the past people used to go to Grade One when they were eight or nine years old. Now, children are expected to start school at the age of four. You can't imagine a four-year-old walking that distance to school which is covered by an eight-year-old. So we need satellite schools which can cater for ECD to Grade Three. We need to move with the times. So I think in short those are the main issues that we need to deal with in terms of short-term development.

Socially we need to support vulnerable people in the communities and help them to be able to sustain themselves. We are looking at provision of cowpeas and groundnuts to make sure that these vulnerable groups grow these crops because they don't need much fertiliser or rain and they can cultivate those crops with a great amount of success for us to have household food security.

When we talk about development, Guruve is a tobacco growing area and if we look at the production of maize, it has gone down because most of the farmers are growing of tobacco. The major reason why they grow tobacco is because it is more financially viable as opposed to maize. We would want to lobby for the tobacco companies for example to give the farmer (inputs for) an acre of tobacco and also give him inputs for an acre of maize. As the farmer sells his tobacco they deduct the credit from the auction floors. And I think by so doing this can increase maize production in our constituency by almost 30 or 40 percent.

TZ: You are talking about development and marshalling of resources for development, but do you have the capacity personally and as the ruling party to put this into place? Many rural outposts such as Guruve tend to rely on foreign funding and donor agencies?

PD: To be very clear I have travelled throughout the constituency. I grew up here. I haven't seen a significant role donors have played in the constituency and our people don't really rely on Government handouts. If you look at the people of Guruve South, we have the advantage of good rainfall such that even if the whole country experiences a drought, Guruve receives normal to slightly below normal rainfall. These people have been working very hard and I have never seen them appealing for outside help since I grew up in the constituency.

Yes, help comes from the Government system in terms of inputs but besides these inputs, you see these guys running around with their own bags of fertilisers and own equipment. I have also seen a number of families being supported by children who work outside the constituency. They come from Harare and assist them with fertiliser and the like and I think it is that spirit which continues. I think the people of Guruve don't necessarily need donor support and I haven't seen it coming in in a number of years and I don't intend to encourage it. Those people have got their land and have got their cattle.

TZ: You are going into these elections with good prospects of winning. There has been a high turnover of MPs in the constituency in recent years. How do you intend to do things differently from your predecessors?

PD: There is one thing that you must always remember. All my predecessors came from Zanu-PF. The first thing is to remain loyal and serve your party and respect the leadership. Consult the leadership, not only at the top but also the leadership who actually will guide you.

The first thing I would want to do differently is to continuously engage the political leadership in everything that we do that has an impact on the people's lives. Being an MP is not an individual position, it is a collective position for which you must always receive guidance and support from political leaders whether they are grassroots leadership or the leadership above you.

That is the first thing that I want to do. The second thing that I really want to do, we have got traditional leaders. In Guruve we all believe that we continue to receive rain because our traditional leaders still follow our culture and tradition and I think we need to respect them as leaders. We need to respect them and include them in all aspects of development.

I think I really need to make a very big difference. It is a matter of consultation and a matter of involving everybody else who matters.

TZ: You were telling us a lot about the history of your interactions with the rural communities and grassroots levels. In terms of the youth and the women who are at a disadvantage especially in the rural areas, what do you think are the programmes that can be implemented so that they do not remain powerless or on the fringes?

PD: I think if you look at youth and women as disadvantaged, the major reason as to why they are disadvantaged especially in my area is Guruve South has no technical colleges, for example. We must ensure youths go to school and ensure that they go to a technical college in case they fail to attain the five "O" Levels which are required.

The moment we have those in place they will start to acquire technical skills and take them to the farming communities. I am not very happy with the curriculum. Dynamism within the curricula is becoming very difficult. I will give you an example in Guruve. We have a number of farmers who grow tobacco and if you look at the method of curing tobacco, go to these tobacco merchants, they always complain about the quality of tobacco after curing; it is very poor.

It deteriorates from the best in the field and the worst after curing.

So I am saying if we can have those colleges in place where we can train these youths on how to come up with barns and learn the curing process, and provide the service to the tobacco farmers, it is a means of empowering the youth. They can be employed by these farmers who grow tobacco.

I think it is about having technical colleges which are relevant to the constituency. As for the women, we notice that they are mostly confined to menial and petty jobs on the fields. At the end of the day it is not really much of an income earner. What we need to do is to encourage women to go for big projects like chickens, they must not only look after 100 chickens but we are saying they must look after 1 000 or 2 000 chickens. We need to shift the way of thinking.

TZ: Lastly, it looks like you are headed for a stroll in the park with your challenger coming from the National Constitutional Assembly. One would guess Guruve South constituency is yours for the taking? As such are we not likely to see voter apathy?

PD: Well it is obvious, you know Mashonaland Central is a one- party province and we win all elections. All other guys are just looking for money from the donor community. We are going to beat them and are going to beat them hard.

People of Guruve are prepared to show their support for President Mugabe as the President by voting for Zanu-PF. There is going to be no voter apathy.