ZCC kickstarts social accountability training
Thembelihle Mhlanga
The Zimbabwe Council of Churches (ZCC) held a Training of Trainers (ToT) on social accountability for vulnerable members of the Lupane community last week.
Andile Mnkandla, the Project officer said the scope of the project is to train communities on social accountability and devolution, mainly targeting marginalized members of the community such as people with disability, women and the elderly.
“This is a Provincial ToT that targeted training members of the church and other CSOs and stakeholdes on social accountability and devolution. Next up, we have district trainings that will equip members of the community to engage with duty bearers and service providers,” said Mnkandla.
Mnkandla added that, as an Ecumenical organization, ZCC encourages active citizenship and good governance as opposed to just preaching about the spiritual growth of the citizen. She said the main objective of the project is to raise informed citizens for enhanced development in communities.
Speaking to participants ZCC Project Assistant, Payton Sibanda said communities should be well versed with social accountability as it is the only way they can use to bring to account the duty bearers.
“Communities should be well vesrsed with social accountability which is a community led action to hold public officials and service providers to account for the use of public resources,”said Sibanda.
According to Sibanda, the relationship between duty bearers and the community should be a two-way process whereby the right holders have the right to interface with the duty bearers and vice-versa and that duty bearers should revert and give back to the community.
A representative from the office of the Provincial Secretary for Matabeleland North, Dhasai Parenda said it the citizens` right to understand what devolution is and how operations are.
“The citizens should understand what devolution is so as to know how best and who to approach in case of any discourse, as citizens have different perspectives about devolution and the system operations thereof,” he said.
One participant Simelokuhle Moyo said the ”devolution animal has not been explained to the understanding of lay citizens and this leaves them guessing.
“The officials are only politicizing devolution which they never come down to explain well and fully to the ordinary people, lami nginje khona ngisizwa khathesi ngayo, what more of umuntu osemakhaya khonale, we thank ZCC for bringing us here, at least I now have an idea about it,” said Moyo.
Chapter 14 of the Constitution of Zimbabwe establishes devolution and states that whenever necessary the powers of government has to be devolved to provinces and metropolitan provinces.
