ANESU MASAMVU
Having been sworn into Parliament for the first time a few months before another election, Mutasa South MP, Misheck Mugadza (ZANU-PF) said what he will deliver during this stint is just a demonstration of what will come if voted again into the August House in 2023.
Mugadza was voted into office during the March 26 by-elections after narrowly defeating former MP Regai Tsunga of the Citizens Coalition for Change.
Mugadza who is a lawyer by profession and the current ZANU-PF Manicaland Province Secretary for Legal Affairs told the Business Times that his desire is to make sure that people have a good standard of living.
“I’m that person whose ambition is to see people living well, I am a philanthropist by nature, many people who know me can testify to that, well before politics I was in the habit of assisting people in whatever manner I could especially in matters of health and from my rural home I would make sure majority of the old people had access to medication that they required,” he said.
Mugadza, a Senior Partner at Muvengi and Mugadza Legal Practitioners in Harare promised to deliver, challenging his constituency to judge him during this period before the 2023 polls.
“The way I look at it is that this is just a campaign period that I have been in and is just continuing because this by election came unexpectedly. I wasn’t expecting it and I was already campaigning for 2023 so it’s just fortuitous that I have become the MP now but my ambition is to become the MP in 2023,” he said.
The legislators says he takes this opportunity as an added advantage so all I want to do is take advantage of it by working harder in coordinating development in the constituency by just giving a mini demonstration to the electorate of what happens when he is retained next year.
Mugadza has served on a number of boards such as the Postal and Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe and the National Prosecuting Authority, among others.
The lawmaker said his task to bring development in Mutasa South constituency is half done as he has projects underway.
“I have been running projects, I have been doing all those things that a sitting MP should do and there is so much evidence to prove it, I can tell you for example, I put a computer lab deep down at a school in parts of the farming areas, the school didn’t have power and I had to make sure that the school was electrified and I did all that when I was not an MP.
“During the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic I moved around the area and schools distributing PPEs that I sourced through my own means, so those are some of the things I was doing as a shadow MP. I have projects that are currently running,” he said.
The lawmaker said he never promised the electorate anything as they knew what he was doing.
This, Mugadza said, does not put him under pressure like others “to fulfill certain promises”.
The constituency is full of natural resources that can be used for development, he said.
“We have gold deposits that people are scrambling for but my thrust is on the agricultural side, I am an advocate for empowerment especially focusing on the you and I will fight to get a piece of land from the government, a minimum of 200 ha and I want to give 200 youths so that they practice sustainable agriculture models,” Mugadza said.
He added: “The gold sector in my constituency is more complicated but my view is that we need more organisation and that I am willing to participate in the setting up of that order, not everyone must be a gold miner but unfortunately in the current situation, everyone want their own mining claim.”
The ZANU-PF Manicaland Secretary for Legal Affairs with more than 30 years’ experience in the legal field said he will use that to influence laws that improve the lives of every Zimbabwean.
Mugadza said, “My constituency does not exist in a vacuum, so all legal issues that affect the whole country also affect my constituency from early child marriages and other legal niceties that need to be dealt with so the 32 years of experience that I have in the legal field must be put to good use.”
He added, “As a legislator obviously the job is to make the law and so shall the law be made and I will have a keen interest on all the bills that will be coming through Parliament. I always feel they is a time for everything and I think this is the time for me to give an input to my country.”
Mugadza was nurtured in politics by his uncle, Kenneth Manyonda, the former Manicaland Governor.
