Category: News Feeds

Ed. note: This is the latest installment in a series of posts on motherhood in the legal profession, in partnership with our friends at MothersEsquire. Welcome Cristina Hendrick Stroh to our pages.

We all know that misconceptions and stereotypes run rampant in the world of the working mom. Someone commented to me the other day about how “lucky I was to have a career.”  That is laughable. Any working mom knows luck has little to do with it.

Let’s face it. There are conscious and unconscious biases everywhere, one of which being that moms are less dedicated to their careers than — or don’t work as hard as — their childless counterparts. While we know that’s not true and there are employers that are making strides in the right direction, it is still a real issue for a lot of women. Don’t worry, I’m not going to tell you to limit the number of family pictures in your office to one. My strategy for combating this misconception is two-fold: results and relationships.

Results speak for themselves. If you always come through, your clients will have less reason to suspect that your children do or will have an adverse effect on your attention to their matters. Be efficient and be responsive. Get the job done even if it means answering a few emails after the kids are in bed.

Moms have to get lots of things done on tight timelines all the time. That skill might even make you better at getting the job done than someone without kids. If you have something that needs to be done, give it to the mom with 18,000 other things on her to-do list. She’ll handle it. I find that the more I have on my plate, the more efficient I become. I got my best grades in undergrad the semester that I took 18 hours and worked. Of course there’s a limit to this, and at some point, even Superwoman needs to evaluate her workload and set some boundaries.

Learn to effectively delegate what you can so that you can still deliver timely results for the client. This has been an area where I struggle, but it is a crucial aspect of workload management. It creates learning and career development opportunities for younger attorneys and paralegals, and it frees up space in your day for the next project on your list. Or for soccer practice.

Relationships are the other key to avoiding the misconception that work is not high on your priority list. Relationships with clients and colleagues are extremely important. It’s like any professional relationship — you need to keep it professional, but if you know each other personally, it makes everything a little easier.  

These days, it is perfectly acceptable in a group setting to ignore the people around you and work on your phone, but that sometimes leads to missed opportunities. When you are sitting around waiting for a meeting or conference call to start, instead of playing on your phone or responding to emails, actively engage the people around you. Ask about their families, their plans for the weekend or an upcoming holiday. Be genuine and be interested.

You don’t need to be their best friend, but if they like and respect you personally, it will be easier for them to give you the benefit of the doubt professionally. And let’s be honest, most people like talking about themselves. So it should be pretty easy to strike up a conversation instead of scrolling through Instagram. Obviously, the longer you work with someone the easier this becomes, but it’s a good habit to develop. You might even make some new friends.

I have two young children who are less than two years apart, and I’m consistently told how highly my clients regard me. When I need to reschedule a meeting because I have to go pick up a sick kid or I have to be out of the office to attend a school assembly, I can tell my clients that without the fear that they will feel like I am blowing them off.  My work speaks for itself, as does the giant bulletin board of family pictures in my office. Both are priorities in my life. Being a working parent is difficult, especially in these days when clients and opposing counsel often expect you to be connected 24/7. But if you deliver consistently and foster strong working relationships, it can go a long way toward making it easier to manage it all.

Earlier: Mothers At Law: Achieving Meaningful Success In The Legal Profession

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Cristina Hendrick Stroh serves as Senior Real Estate Counsel for J.C. Penney Corporation, Inc. in Plano, Texas, where she has practiced since 2007. She concentrates on all aspects of acquisition, financing, leasing and disposition as well as ongoing operations matters in a 20-state territory including California and the Pacific Northwest. Cristina received her J.D. cum laude from the University of Houston Law Center and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Texas at Austin. Prior to joining the Penney legal department, Cristina practiced real estate law with Schlanger, Silver, Barg & Paine, LLP in Houston, Texas. In 2015, Cristina was awarded the America Bar Association’s Excellence in Writing Award for authoring the Best Practical Use Article published in its Probate & Property Magazine. She currently lives in McKinney, Texas with her husband, two children, and two dogs.

A few years ago, representatives of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce rolled up on Above the Law’s offices to chat with me about their work. It was a perfectly lovely meeting even though they were mostly bemoaning “trial lawyers” who they said were lobbying legislators to allow driverless cars to be regulated exclusively through post facto litigation.

“Balderdash!” I said. “That’s inefficient and dangerous.” They giddily agreed. “So I assume you’re backing a robust federal regulatory regime instead.”

This prompted awkward silence for a few beats. Government regulation is, after all, what the group spends the other half of its time fighting. Pushed to face the logical conclusion of shutting down one avenue of consumer protection, they cringed a bit at the realization that there’s really only one option left.

And that’s the whole problem. When the zero-sum nature of the competing pillars of the right-wing legal project gets exposed, there really isn’t a unifying logic to playing both sides of it other than “whatever lets a business incur harm on others without oversight.” But that doesn’t play as well on television as the faux aphorisms about “greedy trial lawyers” and “business-crushing regulation.” Tort reform isn’t much of a core philosophical truth, it’s mostly a catchphrase.

This anecdote is fresh in my mind today as conservatives are taking a victory lap after a bunch of townies outside Oberlin College formed a jury and awarded $44 million to a bakery that students protested and the school stopped using.

A jury has awarded $33.2 million in punitive damages to Gibson’s Bakery, whose owners claimed Ohio’s Oberlin College and an administrator hurt their business and libeled them during a dispute over a shoplifting episode that triggered protests and allegations of racial bias.

The Chronicle-Telegram reported the same jury awarded Gibson’s business and family members more than $11 million in actual or compensatory damages, bringing the total award to more than $44 million.

The facts, as they seem to be coalescing, is that the white bakery staff confronted a black patron who they said was shoplifting and this incident triggered protests. Assuming the bakery is, in fact, right, then… well they still probably don’t have a claim against the students. That seems very much a statement of opinion, but whatever. Let’s pretend there is a claim against the students. Is it a $44 million claim? For a bakery in a town of 8,000 people? Absolutely not.

This isn’t even like the class actions that tort reformers routinely complain about where the whole point of the oversized award is to compensate a large class of not necessarily known victims and award lawyers taking a public interest risk of self-financing a litigation on behalf of those victims. This is a discrete incident. The damages are easily calculable and hardly $11 million.

And to go after the school?!? I’m old enough to remember when conservatives passionately argued that private schools, like Oberlin, should have the right to be segregated. Now private schools can get sued for making… business decisions on where they choose to buy cakes? Even taking the most tenuous “tortious interference” logic — which is really out there — to get the school into this case, it still couldn’t remotely add up to this award.

Meanwhile, the National Review, a bastion of conservative thought that has repeatedly trumpeted tort reform for years, called it a “Blueprint for Fighting Back.” Presumably the “fight” is against people who complain about “racism” and “sexism” and the like. Others derpheads joined in.

The last Tweet’s point is that the school was really asking for it when it suggested that a big award would hurt students… a group that the town almost assuredly loathes despite their economy largely revolving around the school. Cutting off noses to spite faces and all that rot.

Walter Olson of the CATO Institute deserves a lot of credit here since he appears to be the only prominent legal conservative willing to stand up for the principles he’s espoused his whole career:

He also shared a long Twitter thread that succinctly goes through how much of a non-case the bakery actually had:

I fear Olson may be learning what a lot of us already sussed out. There’s not really an appetite out there for his ideas on “tort reform.” There’s just an appetite for trolling “social justice warriors” and he’s only managed to intersect with those people throughout his career in an alliance of convenience. When the chips are really down, they’re ready to torch his passion project in an instant.

This is an embarrassment to the justice system even for those of us with a forgiving view of the appropriate extent of tort damages. For anyone who’s ever called for tort reform, it should be a disgrace.

But that would require internal logical consistency… something in short supply these days.

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Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

Pride month is in full swing, so it only makes sense to focus on some progress being made in Biglaw firms. We’ve been hearing that some prominent Biglaw firms are making a genuine effort to be inclusive to trans/genderqueer/nonbinary folks. As a tipster reports:

[The firm] offers She/Her, He/Him and They/Them pronoun options for students and attorneys to add to their nametags, if they’d like to do so, out on the nametag table at every event….Many students and attorneys [] have been wearing the ribbon in solidarity and to make those in the LGBTQ+ community feel more comfortable wearing one should they choose or need to.

The firm in question began using the ribbons during the last recruiting cycle, and now we understand the practice is set to spread to other Biglaw firms, just in time for recruiting season to begin. Hopefully, this soon becomes the standard in the industry. (We’ve reached out to the firm(s) involved but have yet to hear back. If your firm is doing something similar, please email and let us know.)

This serves as an important reminder that pronouns matter. And while this Biglaw firm may not include all gender-neutral pronouns in common usage (for example ze/zir), it breaks down the assumption that you should know someone’s pronouns just by looking at them.

It’s a remarkably simple move, but one that goes pretty far in setting the tone of inclusion.

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Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

If we’re being honest, the Hatch Act is annoying. It’s an 80-year-old law that prohibits federal employees from electioneering on the government’s time that has way more to do with appearances than reality. We know that political appointees are partisan. We know they spend most of their waking hours advancing their partisan agendas. The distinction between whether they’re doing it “at work” or not is a legal fiction, especially in the modern era where “at work” can easily encompass “all the time.”

Presidential propaganda officer, Kellyanne Conway, has been flagrantly violating the Hatch Act. It’s so bad that the Office of Special Counsel (not to be confused with Robert Mueller’s now-defunct position) has taken the unprecedented step of telling President Donald Trump to remove Conway.

He won’t, of course. Trump just publicly said he won’t fire his “loyal” advisor. Conway’s shameless electioneering is what he pays her to do. And Conway won’t care, because she knows the only thing her boss cares about is loyalty, not following the law. And Kellyanne Conway’s husband, George Conway, won’t care, because George’s attempts to re-make his slavish support for the Federalist Society assault on the nation’s judiciary as “Never Trump” principled disagreement only involves saying mean things on Twitter while looking the other way as his wife gaslights America.

Most likely the American people won’t care, because Kellyanne’s Hatch Act violations are not even the most flagrant violation of the rule of law the Trump administration has contemplated THIS WEEK. Trump has spent most of the week soliciting foreign help to influence the 2020 election, then pretending he’s not doing just that.

But before Conway’s Hatch Act violations are retired to the dustbin of “illegal stuff the Trump administration does on the reg,” I want to point out that this kind of open violation of a petty law like the Hatch Act vitiates the rule of law even more than some of Trump’s more egregious illicit activities.

Everybody violates the law sometimes. Everybody can think of that one time they drove over the speed limit or ingested an illicit substance or left dog poop on the street (though, the latter of you people should be shot). We have an impression that we, as humans, violate laws all the time, and since we expect Trump to act no better than a hormonal 15-year-old, sometimes his more petty violations feel like mere technicalities as opposed to serious problems.

But, most people, most of the time, follow the law, for no reason other than it happens to be the law. We don’t run red lights even when nobody is around, we don’t piss in the elevator, we don’t maliciously defame our enemies, we don’t solicit prostitution, we don’t leave the restaurant without paying our bill, we don’t cosh random black people in London. We follow laws we don’t even agree with. We follow laws that cost us time, money, and effort. We live in a free country and yet we follow totally stupid and unenforceable laws all the time. Why? It’s a tenuous thing. We follow the law because we imagine other people are also following the law and we perceive it’s in our societal self-interest for them to do so. We follow the law because we want other people to follow the law, and we don’t want to be the ones to ruin it for everybody.

The Hatch Act is one of those background laws. It’s not particularly important. People don’t really know why it’s there. It’s just a thing. It’s just a rule. People follow it because it’s a rule. For most people, that’s enough.

But not for Trump. And not for the people willing to work for him. And not for the Republicans enabling Trump. Trump and his administration have no moral or ethical center. They have no desire to be moral or ethical. NO RULE is accorded any deference just because it’s a rule. NO RULE is viewed through any other lens than how it helps Trump. Rules that help Trump should be strictly followed and enforced, rules that don’t help Trump should be entirely ignored.

It’s the definition of lawlessness. If everybody acted like Trump, it would be actual anarchy. But Trump and Conway count on people not acting like they do, so they can still have a society to pillage.

The problem that Trump and Conway don’t care about and moderate Democrats don’t perceive, is that once you have a guy like Trump who doesn’t respect any of the laws and receives no punishment for it, there’s no going back. There’s no going back to people slavishly following rules, just because they are rules, once we know that other people don’t follow the rules and face no consequences. If the laws no longer protects us from the bad behavior of others, then there’s no reason for anybody else to follow them.

Think about it this way: The Hatch Act is dead now. NOBODY has to follow it anymore. Not anybody else in the Trump administration, not anybody in future administrations. Kellyanne Conway has taken the Hatch Act from us, for whatever it was worth, for her own selfish reasons. There is no “return to normalcy” where the Hatch Act is still a thing. There’s no reason for one party to follow the Hatch Act when the other party has proven that it won’t when it is in power. That would just be STUPID. As I said, the Hatch Act was an annoying anachronism anyway, why should my guys be hamstrung by it when the other guys are not?

The most dangerous thing about acting outside of the law is that you no longer have the law to protect you. We’re in the endgame now.

Trump Is Urged to Fire Kellyanne Conway for Hatch Act Violations [New York Times]

Since the passage of the First Step Act in December, I’ve been speaking with people coming home from prison and learning about the challenges they are facing. While I have been able to offer support to some of the individuals I have met, the obstacles to success are an everyday struggle for thousands and more needs to be done. I’m honored to be a part of the announcement that the administration and the private sector are stepping up to create opportunities for these men and women to succeed once home. Proud to partner on this initiative with Lyft, a company with a history of taking bold action to do what’s right for our community. Thank you for providing ride share credits to formally incarcerated people when they come home.

— Reality TV star turned legal apprentice Kim Kardashian West, who made an unexpected appearance at the White House yesterday, announcing a new ride-share program with Lyft that will provide former federal inmates with the means to get back into the workforce with ride credits that will help them get to job interviews, to work, and to visit family once they are released from prison.

She announces how excited she is, with Jessica Jackson and Erin Haney of #cut50, her legal mentors, below.

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Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

It’s been too long since we checked in on the Law School Memes for Edgy T14s group to see what they’ve been cooking up as far as law school memes. As usual, we’re not disclosing the names of the meme creators just in case they want to have jobs someday, but if a brave soul does want credit, we’re happy to provide it. Just let us know.

We begin by reminiscing about product liability in Torts. That lesson where you came to the unfortunate realization that every warning label stems from some poor bastard doing something unholy with a product. Well, here’s a picture that we desperately hope isn’t real, but does encapsulate the Torts experience perfectly. The tagline is: “Safety Disclaimer challenge. What is the most ridiculous manufacturer liability warning label you have encountered?”

Linda Fairstein is facing public blowback from the whole “wrongfully convicted people” thing and she’s decided to double down on her scientifically confirmed errors.

Tagline: Siri, what is fighting the hypo.

I’m not a whiz with the whole Photoshop thing, but with Ava DuVernay directing a New Gods adaptation, I desperately want someone to convert this into an editorial by Darkseid or Granny Goodness.

Honestly, when I read this one to the assembled Above the Law staff, we couldn’t stop laughing for several minutes. Which is probably bad since someone died.

Tagline: “when you leave class feeling great about the cold call and then your friends tell you what the professor was actually asking.”

I don’t understand live-action remakes of old animated films. Given the way we bent over IP law for Disney in the 90s, there’s not even a copyright reason to do them. Anyway… welcome to a whole new world:

My only complaint with this next one is that you didn’t even need the Meso panel. The woman could have just stared for a beat and it would’ve been perfect.

This needs no introduction. Tagline: “Meeting attorneys who insist on calling themselves doctors.”

While we’re on the Marvel theme:

This image will now haunt your Property law studies forever.

We talked about wellness and pizza last week, but this is a concern I’d never considered in all those years of snagging free food from meetings.

Game of Thrones is gone, but let this be its parting shot to Law School Memedom.

Great job, everyone. Have a good weekend.

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Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

I’ve been thinking for a long time about a piece of advice I received back in my associate days. I was a freshly minted JD. Since I was a kid, I was always motivated to get that “A” in school, and doing so eventually helped me land my first law firm job. When I started practicing, I was confident those grades would translate into the success I could expect as a lawyer.

Then I heard an older partner musing aloud: “Ya know, if I was in charge of hiring, I’d only hire B students.”

This partner’s off-hand comment stopped me in my tracks. I’d spent my whole life struggling toward the front of the pack, and now this apparently successful senior attorney was telling me he would rather the firm hired the folks I’d worked so hard to beat out? I was perplexed. The partner continued.

“Your students who get Cs, you don’t want to hire them. They’re not gonna hack it. But we go out and hire all these law school kids with straight As, and all they know how to do is research, write, and watch Star Wars. They’re going to work a million hours, give you all this great written product, but they’re not going to be out there hitting the bars every night drumming up business. It’s your B students who are in the sweet spot. Smart enough to do the work, but social enough to bring the work in.”

The Right Kind Of Wrong

I’ve been mulling this partner’s concept since he uttered it over a decade ago, and I’m still not quite sure where on the spectrum between total nonsense to profound this theory lies. Early in my career, I convinced myself it was nonsense. The more I’ve practiced, however, the more I’ve come to believe that the partner may have been on to something.

One flaw in the theory presented is the stereotype that “A students” are all bookish nerds who suffer from social anxiety disorder and dress up like Chewbacca for fun. This is flat wrong (well, some may dress up like Chewbacca). I’m surrounded every day by brilliant, academically gifted attorneys who can absolutely crush it socially. Similarly, getting middling-to-poor grades isn’t a necessary indicator that you’re a fun time to be around. I don’t think it’s a hot take to say that some people are both anti-social and just lazy.

But I do think this attorney was circling a more basic tension that law firms place on their associates and many young partners: the tension between being a great attorney and a great business developer.

The Good Old Days

Join me on a brief mental journey. You’re a junior associate again. You had to be sharp to get where you were, but you’ve spent the first months and years of your practice starting to realize all the myriad things you don’t know how to do. You can almost taste your own ignorance. You’re trying to find a way to prove that, yes, you do deserve this great job you landed.

You’re told, either implicitly or explicitly, that your best bet is to throw yourself into your work. If you put in the time to generate great work product, you find more partners will want to work with you. If you bill gobs of hours, the firm stays happy and you’ll probably get a nice bonus. The incentives are all there, pushing you to keep your nose to the grindstone and spend your time working. Bill enough hours, invest enough into in improving your skills, and before you know it you’ll be a good enough attorney to carry the firm’s reputation on your back.

You follow this path, and suddenly it’s 10 years later. Your skills are unimpeachable. You’ve pulled in millions of dollars in revenue. And you have zero book of business to call your own.

I’ve spoken to many attorneys over the years who suddenly ended up in this position, and it can be heartbreaking. Just when someone thinks they’ve mastered the game, the rules change on them. Suddenly good work product is assumed, and the questions all turn to what kind of clients are being brought in. And for someone who’s spent their evenings at a desk rather than out in the world planting the seeds of future engagements, those are hard questions to answer.

Billables Now vs. Billables Later

Time is the fundamental currency of a law firm, and like all currencies, it can be invested, and it can be spent. The short-term economics of a legal practice strongly incentivize spending our time in a way that maximizes the revenue earned. If you want a big check, you need to send out some big bills.

But if a firm’s immediate prospects are determined by how much revenue it can generate from its existing client pool, its long-term prospects are determined by how much it can expand the pool altogether. If you want to be rich today, bill. If you want to be rich tomorrow, you need to hustle, network, and generally get your face in front of all those clients who just don’t know they’ve hired you yet.

It takes practice and repetition to learn how to connect with strangers, make the ask for new business, and treat the process with discipline and purpose. My personal goal has always been to spend at least 20 percent of my working hours actively trying to bring in new clients. That’s one workday a week that I’m committing to bringing in zero actual dollars, in the hope of bringing in far more down the road.

What Exactly Are Associates, Anyway?

Every firm in Biglaw at least pays lip service to the notion that it wants to encourage its associates to develop their professional networks, build their books, and be the leaders of tomorrow. But I’ve known very few who are willing to recognize that encouraging associates to invest in themselves for long term gain means trading off some of the performance that they could be giving us by just chaining themselves to their desk and making the firm money now.

Associates can be tremendous profit centers for a firm. They work hard, bill at high rates, and have little-to-no participation in firm profitability. Associates can also be the leaders of a firm’s future, rainmakers in waiting. Sometimes, very rarely, they can be stellar at both. But more often, they’re going to be great at one thing, or just alright at two.

Law firms need to decide what they want their associates to be and communicate that expectation to everyone in the firm. It’s acceptable to expect your associates to bill 2,400 hours a year if you’re clear with them that billing is an associate’s only job, and business development is something they can pursue on their own time if they choose. It’s equally acceptable to expect a firm’s associates to be actively developing themselves and bringing in new business early, but doing that means understanding that the amount of hours those associates bill will (and should) go down in the process. Either way, the key is being transparent with associates so they can make informed decisions and not be surprised down the road.

Some firms — I hope many — will heed the call to do more than just encourage young associates to build their network. Formal mentoring programs, encouraging partners to bring associates along to networking events, and business development training are all good starts down this path. For firms that prefer short-term financial benefits, I hope they take steps to ensure everyone in the firm, from the senior partners down, shares the same expectations.

More important than anything is that firms realize the trade-offs between being a great biller and being a great business developer, and make a conscious choice of what they want to encourage.

Happy hour isn’t free, but go out to enough of them and they just might pay for themselves.

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James Goodnow is an attorney, commentator, and Above the Law columnist. He is a graduate of Harvard Law School and is the managing partner of NLJ 250 firm Fennemore Craig. He is the co-author of Motivating Millennials, which hit number one on Amazon in the business management new release category. As a practitioner, he and his colleagues created a tech-based plaintiffs’ practice and business model. You can connect with James on Twitter (@JamesGoodnow) or by emailing him at James@JamesGoodnow.com.

Zimbabwe is battling an extended foreign currency crisis which has affected key imports such as electricity, fuel and medicines. Many firms with foreign ownership are also struggling to repatriate dividends to non-resident shareholders.

Its National Social Security Authority, a mandatory public pension scheme, said on Thursday it could miss a June 13 deadline for paying its members because a software platform it uses to make the disbursements was demanding payment in foreign currency.

“Payouts that were due on (June 13) might be delayed as the provider of the payment platform used by the banks is demanding to be paid in foreign currency, failure of which it will suspend services to them,” the authority said in a statement.

An aurhority spokesman said the payment platform was run by London-listed investment company Cambria Africa. One of the company’s subsidiaries, Payserv Africa, provides payment solutions to banks and 5,000 corporate clients in Zimbabwe.

On Wednesday, it announced it had suspended services over non-payment of foreign currency fees.

“The Company lost U.S. $170,000 providing services to banks in March and April 2019. Banks collectively owe Payserv Africa over U.S. $470,000 for over 4 million transactions concluded since 1 May 2019. The company cannot allow further accumulation of possible losses,” Cambria said in a statement.

It said Zimbabwean banks had frustrated its attempts to maintain the U.S. dollar value of its services following the devaluation of its currency, the Real Time Gross Settlement Dollar (RTGS) dollar, on the interbank market.

The Bankers’ Association of Zimbabwe, which represents the sector, was not immediately available to comment.

In February, Zimbabwe ditched a discredited 1:1 dollar peg for its dollar-surrogate bond notes and electronic dollars, merging them into the lower-value transitional currency called the RTGS dollar.

The central bank, which has tightly controlled foreign currency payments since May 2016, has moved to relax its hold, with most external payments now going through the banks and using a market-determined exchange rate.

The RTGS dollar has slid from a starting position of 2.5 RTGS dollars per U.S. dollar on Feb. 25 to 5.91 RTGS dollars to the dollar on Thursday on the official interbank market. It was trading significantly weaker, at 8.7 to the US dollar, on the black market on Thursday.

Post published in: Business

Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa (L, front) tours the construction site of Zimbabwe’s new parliament building in Mt. Hampden, on the outskirts of Harare, Zimbabwe, on June 13, 2019. Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa on Thursday toured the new Parliament building that is being constructed by a Chinese firm and expressed satisfaction with progress so far. (Xinhua/Zhang Yuliang)

“I am happy that the construction project is on course and that so far no incident has happened. I hope that this good record will continue until completion,” the president said after touring the project that is being undertaken by Shanghai Construction Group.

He said Zimbabwe was grateful to China for the grant it provided for the construction of the new building in Mt Hampden on the outskirts of Harare, and the site for a new satellite city near the capital.

“This edifice will be one of the most unique parliaments in our region. Besides being unique, its demonstrative of our deepened and comprehensive strategic partnership with China,” Mnangagwa said.

The six-storey structure has a construction time frame of 32 months but the contractor is optimistic of completing the project ahead of schedule in 29 to 30 months.

According to the contractor, the project is two weeks ahead of schedule and will be spared from the ongoing power cuts affecting the nation.

Mnangagwa appreciated the fast pace at which the project is moving, and challenged Zimbabweans to adopt the work ethic of the Chinese.

He expressed hope that the Zimbabwean engineers and artisans working on the project will benefit from the skills and technology from the Chinese construction giant, reputed for building the world’s second tallest building in Shanghai.

Mnangagwa applauded the company for its reputation in Africa, and hoped it will get more infrastructure development projects in the country.

The Zimbabwe parliament building is the company’s first construction project in Zimbabwe.

“The company has multiple skills in the area of construction of infrastructure. I have no doubt that the company will be selected to implement some of the projects that we are currently discussing and seeking finance for,” he said.

The president hailed China for being a solid friend of Zimbabwe, acknowledging its continued political and economic support to the country over the years.

Trade ties with China were also growing and this was good for diversification of the country’s economy, he said.

Chinese ambassador to Zimbabwe Guo Shaochun said the new parliament building was one of the largest grant-aided projects to be undertaken by China in Africa in recent years.

He said the project had come at an opportune time as it will afford Zimbabwean lawmakers an ideal environment to discuss important legislation to drive the country’s economic agenda of becoming a middle income economy by 2030.

“The new parliament building is the latest remarkable outcome of our cooperation,” Guo said, adding the infrastructure would help to prove wrong critics who say cooperation with China does not bring much benefit to African countries.

Deputy Speaker of Senate Mike Nyambuya said the new building will enable legislators to make laws and do parliament business efficiently.

The current Parliament building has become small and this was constraining the work of the lawmakers, he said.

Post published in: Featured

But President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government says a solution is on the way.

Fifty-one-year-old Nkululelo Mbambo broke his right ankle. He is outside Harare’s Parirenyatwa hospital after being discharged.

As the Zimbabwe economy falters, fewer people are seeking medical treatment because they can’t afford it, even with insurance.

Mbambo says he has no painkillers or any other drugs provided by the doctors to help him recover. He says his medical insurance is not being accepted by many health institutions and pharmacies.

“They said they are taking too long to pay for the services,” he says of his insurance provider. “So at times we pay cash if they do not accept these medical insurances. You know nowadays cash is scarce to get. That’s a big challenge.”

It is people like Mbambo who, according to the Association of Healthcare Funders, either limit their medical treatment or do not seek it out at all. They have medical insurance but health institutions do not accept it, or the cost of health services has gone beyond their coverage.

Herbs sold on the street

With nowhere else to turn, they seek out medical drugs or herbs sold on the street. Their sellers do not want to be identified for fear of being arrested.

This herbalist insists her products are a good replacement for medicine.

“So it is money problems and the strength of herbs which make people use them (instead of medicines). Some say medicines are now expensive but it is the strength of herbs, which bring them here after hearing from those who would have been healed.”

Herbs bought on the street are not the answer to the rising price of drugs and health care, said Dr. Norman Matara of the Zimbabwe Association for Doctors for Human Rights, in Harare, June 11, 2019, because some of the herbs have not been tested.

But Dr. Norman Matara from the Zimbabwe Association for Doctors for Human Rights says herbs are not the answer to the rising price of drugs and health care.

“Some of the herbs used have not been tested in the lab,” he said. “We do not know their effect on the liver, on the kidneys. We might actually end up having kidney failure from using herbs which have not been scientifically proven to be safe and effective.”

So what should be done?

“We really urge the government to consider investing into health care and providing national insurance scheme which is pro-poor people,” Matara said.

Government works on a solution

Zimbabwe’s minister of health and child care, Obadiah Moyo, says the government is working on the issue and it has started sourcing medical drugs. He says that Wednesday, the government of India donated drugs worth a-quarter-million dollars.

“The more medicine that we get, the less will be the cost to the client, so we are working on a plan that we fill up our warehouses, or pharmacies to the brim,” he said. “And we then shall be able to supply through that same mechanism, the private pharmacies. They will have to reduce their prices and we end up with more patients arriving at the institutions.”

Lower prices would be good news for people like Nkululeko Mbambo who cannot get the medications they need for a full and fast recovery.