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The government on 5 July 2019 gazetted the Freedom of Information Bill [H.B. 6 of 2019]. 

This is the first of three official Bills meant to replace the much-criticised Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA). AIPPA is the omnibus law that currently caters for access to information, protection of personal information and regulation of the media. 

When passed into law, the Freedom of Information Bill is meant to give effect to the access to information provisions enshrined in Sections 61 and 62 of the 2013 Zimbabwe Constitution. Section 3(a) of the Bill reflects this when it states that one object of the Bill is, “to give effect to the right to access information in accordance with the Constitution…” 

Unfortunately, despite this noble declaration, the Bill in its current state fails to give effect to either the letter or spirit of the right to access information found in Section 62 of the Constitution. 

The Bill is regressive when compared to the previous draft version of the Bill shared with and discussed by stakeholders during engagement meetings held by the Ministry of Information Media and Broadcasting Services in December 2018 and March 2019. In fact, it is a total departure from most of the positions agreed upon between the ministry and media stakeholders. 

The ministerial draft Bill circulated by the ministry closely resembled the African Union’s Model Law on Access to Information. However, the gazetted Bill has similarities with the condemned and outgoing AIPPA. 

Few of the recommendations submitted by civil society and other access to information activists were incorporated into the gazetted Bill. This shatters government’s narrative that this Bill is the result of a valid, wide, and balanced consultative process. 

Below is a summary discussion of the key provisions in the current Bill. 

Scope of the Bill

This Bill will set procedures for Zimbabwean citizens and permanent residents to access information held by public institutions. It also deals with procedures for the accessing of information held by any person and private entities if such information is necessary for the exercise and protection of a right.

It also puts in place voluntary mechanisms of disclosing data and information controlled by public institutions. Private institutions, on the other hand, have the discretion to voluntarily disclose any information within their control. 

This means the right to access information will apply differently to citizens and differently to non-residents and non-citizens. Yet the right to access information is a fundamental right enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and must therefore, be applied equally to all people. 

Furthermore, there is no justification for imposing compulsory, voluntary disclosure mechanisms only on public institutions and not private entities as well. More so, when one considers the amount of information controlled by private entities such as mobile network operators, medical service providers, private financial institutions and property developers. 

Just like AIPPA, the Bill also sets out the scope of limitations on the right to access information. Some of these limitations are reasonable, for example, the right to access information may not be relied on to access organisational trade secrets. 

However, some limitations are not justifiable in an open and democratic society that Zimbabwe aspires to be. One such limitation is the one on access to information on government borrowing. 

The Bill also sets out additional functions assigned to the Zimbabwe Media Commission (ZMC). The ZMC, will in terms of this law, be responsible for overseeing the fair application and exercise of the right to access information in Zimbabwe. Furthermore, the ZMC will receive and decide appeals against refusal of requests for the access to information. 

The ZMC has been assigned this function on the strength of Section 249(1)(f) of the Constitution which says one of the ZMC’s functions is “to ensure that the people of Zimbabwe have fair and wide access to information.” On the surface, this is a valid argument. 

However, it is more favourable to give the responsibility to oversee the enjoyment and exercise of the right to access information to the Zimbabwe Human Rights Commission (ZHRC). Indeed, this was the case in the ministerial draft of the Freedom of Information Bill. 

In terms of Section 243(1)(a) – (d) and (f) of the Constitution, the ZHRC is tasked with the promotion, protection, development, and attainment of human rights and freedoms. These human rights and freedoms indubitably include the right to access information. 

The right to access information applies to everyone and goes beyond the media fraternity. MISA Zimbabwe contends that placing the administration of such an important right under a Commission dedicated specifically to the promotion of media freedoms and rights will narrow the exercise and enjoyment of the right to access information.

MISA Zimbabwe recommends that the position espoused in the ministerial draft be restored. 

Summary analysis of the Bill

Section 3(b) and 5 of the Bill seek to cultivate a culture of voluntary disclosure of information by public entities and statutory bodies. Section 5 of the Bill imposes a duty on such bodies to produce a written information disclosure policy. The rest of the Bill is silent on the practical steps necessary to enforce or strengthen these voluntary disclosure mechanisms. This is indeed disappointing. 

The ministerial draft of the Bill contained comprehensive provisions on the voluntary disclosure of information controlled by public entities. MISA Zimbabwe recommends that those parts of the ministerial draft be revisited and incorporated into the current draft of the Bill. 

The Bill compels public institutions to designate information officers. These are organisational officers responsible for the handling and processing of requests for information. 

The Bill states that requests for information may only be in writing, this means that oral requests for information are not valid. This restriction on how information may be accessed will unjustifiably inhibit the blind and illiterate from being able to seek information. 

There is no justifiable reason to restrict requests for information to written form only. The draft ministerial Bill had made provision for the submission and processing of oral requests for information. No justification is given for its removal from the current Bill. 

Requests have to be finalised within 21 days calculated from the day the request is submitted. An entity may extend this turnaround period by an extra 14 days. If there is no response to the request for information within 21 days, Section 10 of the Bill regards that as deemed refusal to give the requested information. No explanation will be necessary in those circumstances. 

There is no mechanism in the Bill that would prevent the abuse of these deemed refusals. The only recourse an applicant has to a deemed refusal is to appeal the refusal with the ZMC. 

Appeals to the ZMC must be lodged within 30 days of the date of notification of the decision being appealed against. The Secretary of the Commission may condone the admission of late appeals, but this is at the Secretary’s discretion. The ZMC must finalise appeals within 30 days of receiving appeals. 

Under the ministerial draft of Bill, the High Court was the final appellant body on issues of denied access to information requests. The participation of the High Court in this process is desirable because of the court’s ability to enrich the promotion and protection of fundamental rights including the right to access information through its pronouncements, rulings, and judgments.

The issue of miscellaneous fees that may be charged when seeking information is another clawback contained in the Bill that will ultimately inhibit the right to access information. While fees associated with making copies of requested documents may be sensible, the charging of search fees, coupled with inspection fees is not justifiable and is open to abuse in a way that actually prevents people from seeking information. 

Lastly, once passed into law, this Bill will wholly repeal AIPPA. This is problematic because AIPPA is an omnibus law that also deals in part with the protection of privacy. This means that if the Freedom of Information Act repeals AIPPA before a Protection of Personal Information Act or a Data Protection Act is gazetted, that will create a gap in Zimbabwe’s data protection legislative landscape. 

A gap, that based on past experience, might take years to fill given Zimbabwe’s lethargy in coming up with a data protection law that it has been working on since 2013. 

In conclusion, the process to repeal AIPPA, gives government an opportunity to adopt a progressive law that reflects the principles of access to information found in the African Model Law on Access to Information and the progressive 2013 Constitution. 

It is unfortunate, that government has failed to seize this opportunity to give life to constitutional provisions and international best practices on access to information issues by choosing to retain the same restrictive measures currently plaguing AIPPA.

Post published in: Featured

While the leasing company, South Jet, says Air Zimbabwe needs to pay for the planes, the carrier maintains that they were a donation and that South Jet need to release the paperwork to allow them to repair the planes.

One of the Air Zimbabwe A320s, Z-WPM, parked up at Johannesburg. Photo: [email protected] via FlickrAir Zimbabwe is in a tug of war with the Isle of Man company South Jet over two Airbus A320s. The planes, which are apparently parked up and not suitable for use right now, were acquired by the airline in 2012. However, the circumstances of the acquisition are muddy.

The carrier claims that the planes were donated to the Government of Zimbabwe by authorities in the Isle of Man, and subsequently passed to the airline. However, South Jet maintains that the aircraft are dry leased from them and have taken Air Zimbabwe to court over its failure to pay the leasing fees.

Where did the A320s come from?

The two Airbus A320-200s, registered Z-WPM and Z-WPN, we arranged to go to Zimbabwe in a deal spearheaded by China Sonangol International. At the time, the Chinese partner was looking to bail out the Mugabe regime and help revive the debt-laden national carrier.

The deal was brokered through two Isle of Man ‘special purpose vehicles’, known as South Jet One and South Jet Two. Z-WPN entered into active service for a while, but Z-WPM has been parked at Johannesburg O.R. Tambo since the start of 2014, according to CH-Aviation.

Z-WPN was flying for a while for Air Zimbabwe. Photo: Michael Ward via Flickr 

The reason both aircraft are now out of service, Air Zimbabwe says, is because they are unable to access the software to perform necessary repairs to the planes. An official of the airline told Bulawayo that,

They are due for tests and we cannot service them because we need access to the software and computer platform. The access is closed because it is saying you (Air Zimbabwe) are not the owner. So we want to resolve this ownership issue so that we are able to use those Airbuses. One is here and the other is in South Africa for maintenance.”

The official said that Air Zimbabwe is keen to sort out the ownership paperwork because they do want to fly the planes. However, South Jet has another side to the story.

Who owns the A320s?

South Jet claims that the A320s are both dry leased to Air Zimbabwe and that the carrier has not been paying the leasing fees on the planes for some time. A speech back in 2016, by the then Minister of Transport, Joram Gumbo, seems to confirm these claims. At the time, CH-Aviation report that he said,

“The aircrafts[sic] were not purchased, but are being leased from China Sonangol since 2012. These were part of efforts by Government to support the turnaround process of Air Zimbabwe.”

However, now the Zimbabwean state claims that the two aircraft were donated in 2013. A senior official told the Zimbabwe Independent that,

“The Airbuses were a donation which was made to the Government of Zimbabwe which then gave the planes to Air Zimbabwe.”

However, the legal representative of South Jet, Honour Mkushi of Sawyer and Mkushi Legal Practitioners, has categorically denied that any such transaction took place. Bulawayo quotes him as saying,

“I represent South Jet One they are my clients. The two aircraft belong to South Jet and they are not operating at the moment because there are a lot of arrears to be paid in respect of the rentals. So, in a nutshell, the aircraft belong to them. If the airplanes were theirs how could they fail to service them?”

Losing these two aircraft and having the backdated lease account imposed on their accounts would only add to the challenges Air Zimbabwe are facing. It is currently estimated that the airline is in debt by more than $350m. Sole owner, the Zimbabwean government, has tried to resurrect the airline by appealing to investors, but as yet no entity has been willing to take a gamble on the beleaguered carrier.

Other missing planes in Zim

Aside of the two A320s, Air Zimbabwe has recently landed in hot water for three aircraft which have apparently gone ‘missing’. Three MA60 aircraft, which were purchased from China in 2005 for $12.5m each, are no longer present on the airline’s audit documents, as reported in Bulawayo.

Questions were raised over some missing MA60s too. Photo: Wikimedia 

At the time, the Auditor General of Zimbabwe said that none of the planes were accounted for in the airline’s financial statements. Assumptions quickly turned to the possibility that they had been ‘stolen’. However, the airline fervently denies the claims, saying that they know where they are and that ‘anyone is free to come and see them’.

As well as this, there was an aviation drama in December last year, when Air Zimbabwe was supposed to be buying four Boeing 777s. The deal, as reported in Aerotime News, began as a covert government initiative, and developed into a national scandal after the airline failed to make payments on two of them, letting the deal fall through.

Air Zimbabwe had to shut down for several days in January as they had no planes to fly. View From The Wing reports that their Boeing 737-200 needed extensive maintenance, lasting around 45 days, while their only other aircraft, a 767, needed a component upgrade which would take several days.

African aviation is a tough game to be in right now. Could the outcome of the South Jet wrangling be the final nail in the coffin for the Zimbabwean flag carrier, or can the airline resurrect itself despite the current challenges?

Post published in: Business

He told captains of industry and commerce at a meeting that drought, Cyclone Idai, foreign currency and power shortages were among major challenges curtailing industry performance, state news agency New Ziana reported.

“As long as our capacity utilization is less than 60 percent, it shows that there are inefficiencies that we have and that we are pushing a lot of overheads into pricing, which makes our products non-competitive,” he said.

In the past five years, capacity utilization in the manufacturing sector has failed to breach the 50 percent mark, peaking at 48.27 percent in 2018.

This year’s drought has impacted negatively on the agriculture sector, a key supplier of raw materials for the manufacturing industry.

The situation has been compounded by the shortage of foreign currency for imports of key inputs.

Power shortages, exchange rate instability as well as high inflation now at around 175 percent, were also weighing down the industry.

“We are monitoring the prices of 14 products which have gone so high in the past few months,” he said. “The price increases were mostly influenced by an exchange rate which was rising at an exponential rate,” he said.

However, Ndlovu lauded the return of the Zimbabwean dollar, saying the move would improve competitiveness of local goods on the export market.

“I have no doubt a local currency was what we needed now, particularly as we venture into the export market,” he said.

Post published in: Featured

Prices are soaring in Zimbabwe a decade after hyperinflation forced it to ditch its currency [File: Philimon Bulawayo/Reuters]

More than two million residents around Zimbabwe’s capital have no access to running water, as drought and breakdowns push the city system to collapse.

Just 50% of 4.5 million people in Harare and four satellite towns currently have access to the municipal water supply, the city authority told Climate Home News.

“There is a rotational water supply within the five towns,” Harare city council corporate communications manager Michael Chideme said. “Some people are getting water five days a week especially in the western suburbs, but the northern suburbs are going for weeks without a drop in their taps.”

Chideme said people were either depending on water merchants, open wells, streams or several council-drilled boreholes. “The situation is bad, period!”

Dr Jean-Marie Kileshye from WaterNet warned Harare’s water was highly polluted: “Water-borne diseases linked to these boreholes are on the rise, but people have had to take in their own hands water supply because the utility has failed to provide water.”

Hardlife Mudzingwa, of Harare’s Community Water Alliance, said 10 typhoid cases were reported during the first week of July in the southwestern suburb of Glen View.

Cities around the world are facing increased water stress. Last week, the Indian city of Chennai began using trains to ferry in emergency supplies after rains failed. In 2018, Cape Town in South Africa avoided a city-wide water network shutdown by just a few months.

Zimbabwe is getting warmer as the climate changes and heavy rains and droughts are becoming more intense. In Harare, rains are expected in October at earliest, according to James Ngoma of the Zimbabwe Meteorological Services Department.

In 2018, a drought warning was issued to Zimbabwe by the Southern Africa Development Community. But those messages were not getting through, said Brad Garanganga, a climate scientist from Zimbabwe. Under-resourced meteorological departments had not been able to help policy makers “make decisions to take action on this type of important information ahead of time rather than wait until a crisis hit”.

Harare obtains raw water from four dams: Harava, Seke, Chivero and Manyame. Harava and Seke are completely dry. This has led Harare city council to decommission the Prince Edward water treatment plant, which is fed by those dams.

This has left only one water treatment works – Morton Jaffray – supplying water to Harare and the four other satellite towns.

The dams that feed Morton Jaffray – Chivero and Manyame – are larger and closer to capacity, said Harare mayor Herbert Gomba. But they are “heavily polluted”, requiring more than 10 chemicals to purify. Upstream towns dump domestic, sewage, agricultural and mining waste into the rivers that feed the capital’s dams. The city is spending $3 million a month on water treatment chemicals, Gomba said, forcing it to restrict the amount released.

Harare’s daily demand is around 1,200 million litres (Ml). Gomba told CHN the city was producing around 450Ml a day. Last month, Harare City Council recommended the water situation be declared a national emergency.

Community organiser Mudzingwa said he believed the city supplies to be less than 100Ml/day. Companies that packaged and sold bottled water to supermarkets and hotels were still receiving municipal supplies, while residents saw their taps turned off, he claimed.

Harare’s water system was designed to service a population of 350,000 people, said Kileshye. The last upgrade was in 1994, but the country has since been in near-constant economic crisis. The city council’s website says some sections of infrastructure have been in use for more than 60 years, “way beyond their economic life of at least 15 years”.

With this in mind, in 2011, the Zimbabwean government signed a loan of $144m from the China Export-Import (Exim) Bank to upgrade its water infrastructure.

The government has accessed $72m, according to Gomba, with which the Morton Jaffray water treatment plant was rehabilitated. But five distribution centres and two sewage treatment plants were yet to rehabilitated.

Mudzingwa raised questions over how the other half of the loan was administered, saying: “A 2014 internal audit report produced by City of Harare showed that there was inflating of quotations on materials that were bought through the loan. Corruption marred the water project with commodities overpriced, hence the government was not able to access the full amount.”

Gomba rejected corruption allegations. “We never received liquid money, but equipment procured from China. It was due to the government’s inability to honour previous loans following the economic crisis that hindered access to the balance, not corruption.”

The mayor added that non-payment of residential and commercial rates was hampering his administration from effectively delivering water. Even after rehabilitation, he warned supplies from Prince Edward and Morton Jaffray works would reach only 770Ml per day, leaving a shortfall of 430Ml.

“We have to construct three new dams, to add about 840 million cubic metres. But over time Harare has to decommission the old dams and allow them time to rehabilitate naturally,” said the mayor.

Map: Two of Harare’s four reservoirs, Chivero and Manyame, seen to the west of the city, are heavily polluted.

In 2016, the Zimbabwean government signed a contract with a Chinese contractor Sinohydro to construct a dam northeast of the capital Harare. Mudzingwa said construction of Kunzvi-Musami Dam – 67 km outside Harare – was estimated to cost $850-900 million. But the project was not new.

“The discussion on the construction Kunzvi-Musami Dam as an alternative water source started as early as 1990 but is still not ready,” he said. “The central and local government have failed us on water supply.”

Mudzingwa agreed an urgent infrastructure upgrade was needed to solve the water challenges in Harare but he stressed the need for budget transparency. “We must also ensure citizens are involved actively in water governance framework and smart coordination between water sectors,” he said.

Council spokesperson Chideme said the city was running education programmes for citizens, “to minimize pollution of available water resources and while effectively using the available water sparingly so that we do not run out of water”.

“Technology by itself will not be good enough,” said WaterNet’s Kileshye. “The people across the whole spectrum from households, industries need to be made aware that they are part of the solution to sustainable water in cities.”

It is hoped that the elevation of Hon. Karenyi will help the MDC enhance its regional presence across Africa. Hon. Karenyi was over the weekend elected as the Women’s Academy for Africa (WAFA) Deputy Treasurer General.

HARARE – Zimbabwe annual inflation rate hit 175 percent in June, official data showed on Monday, stoking fears of a return of the hyperinflation that wiped out savings ten years ago when the economy collapsed.

Official inflation is the highest since hyperinflation forced the government to abandon the Zimbabwe dollar in 2009.

Supplies of essentials such as bread, medicine and petrol are regularly running short in the country.

“The year-on-year inflation rate for the month of June 2019 as measured by the all items consumer price index stood at 175.66 percent while that of May 2019 was 97.85 percent,” the Zimbabwe National Statistical Agency said in a statement.

Millions of Zimbabweans have fled abroad in the last 20 years seeking work.

Many others are now seeking to leave as conditions worsen under President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who had promised an economic revival after he succeeding long-ruling Robert Mugabe in 2017.

Mnangagwa vowed to end the country’s international isolation, attract investors and create growth that could fund the country’s shattered public services.

But the economy has declined further, with shop prices rocketing and long power cuts.

The US dollar has been the national currency since 2009.

But last month, Zimbabwe, in theory, ended the use of US dollars and other foreign currencies and replaced them by two local parallel currencies — “bond notes” and electronic RTGS dollars, which would combine to become the new “Zimbabwe dollar”.

The new “Zimbabwe dollar” does not yet exist in paper form.

Hyperinflation hit 500 billion percent in 2009.

Post published in: Business

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