BULAWAYO City Council yesterday made a major volte-face over proposals to honour Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai with the Freedom of the City award, saying the matter was yet to be raised in council.
Report by Nqobile Bhebhe
Debate over the civic honour has been raging for the past few weeks and there were suggestions that the matter would be discussed at the full council meeting yesterday evening.
The Freedom of the City is the highest civic honour for the city.
In a full council meeting, acting mayor Phenias Ndlovu said it was unfortunate that some organisations were this week distributing flyers in the city urging residents to throng the council chambers in the hope that the emotive issue would be up for debate.
“May I begin by saying that yesterday (Tuesday) and today this morning (Wednesday), some people where distributing leaflets calling on residents to attend the meeting. “They had hoped that the matter of the Freedom of the City would be debated today.
“However, we don’t have such an item and we don’t know when it will be brought for debate,” Ndlovu said, without hinting whether it was true that council had endorsed a proposal from the MDC-T-dominated council to give the award to Tsvangirai.
Ndlovu did not reveal the identity of organisations that were distributing the material.
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Council does not debate issues that are not on the agenda.
Only 14 people, including journalists and council staffers, followed the proceedings from the public gallery.
Besides proposing to honour the Premier, Deputy Prime Minister Thokozani Khupe and Minister of Water Resources Development and Management Samuel Sipepa Nkomo were also lined up for the award.
However, there were spirited moves to scrap Nkomo on the grounds that he was “too junior” for the award.
Ndlovu, who chaired the meeting, has been vocal in saying Nkomo did not deserve the award.
The Freedom of the City issue has drawn sharp criticism from residents and political parties and divided the MDC-T-led council.
Some sections of the community say Tsvangirai does not deserve the honour because he has not contributed anything to Bulawayo.
Civil society groups have questioned the criteria used in selecting the trio for the award and others have suggested that residents and interested parties should be allowed to contribute in choosing who gets honoured.
Past recipients include President Robert Mugabe, the late Vice-Presidents Joshua Nkomo and Joseph Msika, former South Africa leader Thabo Mbeki and industrialist Eric Bloch, among others.
