28th June 2021

On Sunday 27th June 2021, the Scotland Branch held their monthly meeting via zoom. The meeting was chaired by branch Vice Chair, Olivia Chamboko. Meeting commenced at 1400hrs

Minutes compiled and typed by Alvina Chibhamu

Register of Attendance:
Vongayi Mufara, Alvina Chibhamu, Olivia Chamboko, Harriet Ndlovu, Edineth Mtengwa, Collen Ndlovu, Malvern Dengu (Midlands Branch),Rosemary Guvheya (South Branch).

Apologies:
Masciline Mzondiwa

Olivia welcomed everyone to the meeting and everyone in turn introduced themselves and their respective branches.  Olivia briefly handed over to branch Chairperson Alvina Chibhamu to officially welcome two new members of the Scotland branch. Alvina updated that Edineth and Collen are now fully paid-up members of ROHR. She informed that meetings were usually reserved for Saturdays but could be moved to the next available date if circumstances meant we could not hold our meeting on the usual date. Edineth and Collen were encouraged to observe and learn as it was their first meeting but also to engage and feel free to ask questions.

Agenda:

  1. Adoption of minutes/Matters arising from last meeting
  2. Human Rights Violations in Zimbabwe (HRVs)
  3. Register to Vote Campaign
  4. Finance Update
  5. AOB

1. Adoption of minutes/Matters arising from last meeting
Olivia called for the seconding of minutes from the last meeting. They were confirmed to be correct and were adopted as a true record. Alvina recognised there were no other outstanding matters arising from the last meeting apart from the Campaign, which will be updated at Agenda item 3.

2. Human Rights Violationsin Zimbabwe
Vongayi and Masciline were on the rota for recording the HRVs for the month of June. Masciline did not submit any contributions, Vongayi reported the following:
4th June – release of two political prisoners- Last Maengahama and Tungamirai Madzokere (MDC activists) who were serving a 20 year sentence for allegedly murdering a police officer. They were falsely imprisoned for 5 years. There are no indications so far that they would be compensated for the 5years of their lives gone to waste.
4th June – Terrence Manjengwa, Barnabas Gura and Blessed Changara arrested and spent 4 days in detention accused of violating covid lockdown rules. This is the regime trying to clampdown on activists as they were arrested outside Harare Magistrates court while following the proceedings of the case of Job Sikhala-detained Zengeza West MP.
The demolition of beautiful, well structured and some near completion houses and vendor structures continued. ZANU-PF seems to be politicising this process as building plans are council approved but the same council is charged with demolishing the houses. ZANU-PF is purporting the councils are run by the MDC yet ZANU-PF’s central government calls the shots. The demolitions are a clear violation of human rights for the thousands of families being left in the lurch. Not only have they experienced the loss of their life-long savings which they spent on building materials but they are now homeless.
14th June – The arrest of Alice Guvheya – Director of Chitungwiza Resident Trust, charged with intent to promote or incite violence. She had obtained a court order to stop the government from conducting the unprocedural demolition of houses.  
14th June – Magistrates ordered the MDC trio (Cecilia Chimbiri, Joana Mamombe and Netsai Marova) back to court. This shows their continued persecution at the hands of ZANU-PF as they are always in and out of court on cooked up charges.
16th June – Zimbabwe Prison and Correctional Services (ZPCS) officer Peter Kudzai Mushonga suspended from service accused of insulting the President. President Mnangagwa was present at the erection of the Mbuya Nehanda statue and Kudzai expressed via his Facebook page that he wished everyone kneeling to the statue should go mad. This violation extends to all of us who are posting on Facebook or any other platforms; we could be arrested for expressing our views.
3. Register to Vote Campaign
Vongayi gave an update as to where things are since the last meeting. She handed over to Alvina who has liaised with Rufaro Kaseke who is passionate about the ghetto youths. He has expressed frustrations about the youth being sick and tired of voting year in and year out and still yield the same result of ZANU-PF winning. So it was put to the platform to draft a message that will tell or implore with the youth to register to vote with the encouragement that this time voting will make a difference. The branch resolved to work on the message with convincing messages that will somehow encourage people that the 2023 vote will be different. Another suggestion was to do videos in vernacular languages whose main audience would be people in the rural areas. Olivia posed a question that posters may be better as most people will not have the data to download videos. Edineth and Harriet concurred with the idea. The branch resolved to do both but also tasked each other to research on other languages in Zimbabwe such as Tonga etc.

4. Finance Update
Harriet encouraged each member to be up to date with the monthly subscriptions.

5. Any other business
Next branch meeting date announced for 24thJuly 2021.

All agenda items and any other business having been exhausted, Olivia Chamboko, the chair of the meeting, thanked everyone for attending and declared the meeting closed at 1500hrs.

To view pictures taken at the event, follow this link.

By: Information & Publicity Department