Open letter to President Robert Mugabe

We write to you at a time when your party is undergoing a historic transformation and restructuring and we wish you well in that endeavour. We wish to, first of all, salute you for ratifying the UN Convention on the rights of persons with disabilities in September last year. We think this was a major milestone in our jurisprudential and policy development.

We however, note with great sadness that the behaviour of the party and government over which you preside has not been such as to enable the translation of the good convention into practical policies from which persons with disabilities are able to fully enjoy their rights.

In fact, we dread to indicate that the convention could have joined many other files in government offices which have been nicely stacked and gathering dust.

Since ratification of the convention, we have not really seen anything worth talking about.

As we write, your congress is in its second day, simulteneous with the international day for persons with disabilities, and this is the third year your government has let this day pass without recognition.

The Disability Board continues under the department of social services where it is, in practice, non-existent.

What we notice is just an attempt by some of your officials to pay lip-service to disability development. In some cases, we have noted with sadness how some of your ministers have misled the nation on disability affairs.

We refer you to a parliamentary session of July 10, in which the leader of government business, while answering a question in the senate, on behalf of the minister of labour and social services, under which disability is currently housed, became a megaphone of prevarications to the whole nation on disability development and what the state is doing.

We are reliably informed that notwithstanding the silence over the Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation (ZimAsset) which characterised the last few months, your party, during the congress was to talk about how to implement ZimAsset.

We contend here comrade president that the language and spirit of ZimAsset on disability is a negation of the manifesto you used to campaign in the last elections.

Whereas in your manifesto, there is talk of inclusion of persons with disabilities to be part of the social and economic fabric of our society, in your economic blueprint, ZimAsset, the drafters reverted back to the old ways of thinking where they referred to persons with disabilities in incorrect terms such as "Those with physical challenges".

To us, comrade president, this is the state's denial of the universally accepted truth that when dealing with disability, the challenge is not in the disabled persons but in the environment. More explicitly, the challenge is in the societal barriers and the minds of our policy-makers and implementers.

In light of the foregoing comrade president, we urge you to do the right things:

Encourage the implementation of ZimAsset in a manner that will ensure that persons with disabilities are treated as having a right to an equal share of the national cake with their non-disabled counterparts.

Remodel your government in a way that ensures a better representation of persons with disabilities both at policy making and implementation levels.

May you, in your politburo appointments, ensure disability representation. We hope you have enough card-carrying comrades with disabilities and in good standing who are eligible for appointments.

We particularly hope that the post for the secretary for the ""disabled and disadvantaged" will logically be given to a person with a disability.

Finally, it is our fervent hope that your government will be open to persons with disabilities  to participate in issues relating to their welfare and further development.

With best wishes and thanks, we look forward to hearing news of a disability-inclusive Zanu PF party and government.

Yours

Abraham Mateta and Masimba Kuchera