Harare Councillors Attend Meetings Drunk - Mafume
Harare mayor Councillor Jacob Mafume said that some councillors attend meetings under the influence of alcohol and drugs resulting in unnecessary disputes.
This comes after Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) Ward 43 councillor, Blessing Duma, disrupted a council meeting presided over by Mafume on Friday last week.
NewsDay reported that some councillors supported Duma after he was removed from the council’s influential audit committee.
Addressing the full special council meeting, Mafume accused councillors of attending council meetings drunk. He said:
As you all know when preparing to come for the meetings people take different substances.
So, certain substances then confuse the person and it takes time for the substance to subside so that they do well and will be able to hold the meeting properly.
Mafume also said councillors did not understand the law resulting in them raising issues that were “legally untenable”. He said:
Our understanding of the law is very different as councillors and sometimes our level of comprehension is different depending on the tools that we developed for ourselves before becoming councillors.
So, sometimes they misread or fail to understand the law completely and raise their hands to legally untenable mouth things.
On Friday, (there) was a robust debate by some who felt certain changes ought not to be done for one reason or the other. We welcome the vitality and the energy of debates.
People are free to contribute when there are debates, but then there are times when you feel that people are plotting to sink the council.
The constitution is very clear on how a councillor or a mayor leaves office.
And one of them is certainly not bypassing the motion in the chamber.
In September 2023, Masvingo City Council Town Clerk Edward Mukaratirwa banned employees from consuming the Kambucha/Kombucha drink during working hours on the advice of council doctors who established that the drink was an alcoholic substance.
The ban followed incidents in which some city workers reported to work drunk while others were openly drinking Kambucha at work claiming it has medicinal properties.
Kombucha is a beverage that was introduced not too long ago and some of its consumers consider it an energy drink with medicinal properties while others, mostly men, consider the beverage an aphrodisiac and consume it for its supposedly sex-enhancing properties.
In October the Ministry of Health and Child Care ordered an investigation into Kambucha to ascertain whether it has health benefits as claimed by its producers and consumers or is just an intoxicating concoction.
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