Home Affairs geared for Vision 2030

Hon Cain Mathema
The Ministry of Home Affairs (and Cultural Affairs) is central to all Government activities and indeed in the security of every citizen and business in Zimbabwe.

In short, the Ministry of Home Affairs is responsible for the internal security of the country; it is responsible for the security of every child, every family, community in Zimbabwe — they all have to be protected.

No activity in Zimbabwe can, therefore, happen — either economic, social or cultural — without the Ministry of Home Affairs.

I am responsible for (administering) 38 Acts of Parliament dealing with security, cultural heritage, lotteries, monuments and museums.

Vision 2030 cannot be achieved without professional and patriotic participation of the Ministry of Home Affairs.

Economic development cannot be achieved without the participation of all organs of this Ministry, particularly the Zimbabwe Republic Police, which is responsible for our day-to-day security.

We are also responsible for passports, visas and immigration, which are all at the centre of Vision 2030.

Priorities

We have realised that all departments under the ministry have to be interconnected.

We need, as Home Affairs, to have a computerised communication system that interconnects all of us.

The ZRP has to be connected to immigration; immigration has to be connected to Registrar-General’s Office and, likewise, with all other departments.

But above all, the departments have to be connected to the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority, a department we deal with on a day-to-day basis.

In short, we have to have a highly modern and sophisticated communication system connecting the arts, the revenue authority, the investment authority of Zimbabwe and many other departments, and we are working on achieving that in the short-term.

One of the areas we are looking at is the chaos on our streets.

If you look at the traffic chaos in our cities, particularly Harare, ZRP needs to be aware of what is happening in each street.

The ZRP needs helicopters and drones.

We are saying the ZRP needs helicopters, they need drones; we can’t have a police force that does not have helicopters.

There are rallies and all sorts of events where people gather and the ZRP needs to be equipped to monitor that.

Also all our streets need CCTV monitoring; there is no street in London where you are not watched on CCTV and we want to have such a system.

We are working on a programme to install CCTV an all our roads, even on the roadblocks, we want to see them on CCTV.

We are working on these new technological innovations and they are all work in progress.

We have engaged Treasury to try and secure funding because we have already budgeted for these things.

In terms of the RG, we are looking at how to improve the issuance of passports, birth certificates, IDs at district level.

Nobody should be coming to Harare to have their birth certificates here; we want everybody to be registered at home.

That way, we move away from the colonial system where everything was centralised because for the Rhodesians, this was a security issue.

They needed to make sure that everything was so centralised so that they can be able to control Africans. Now we want things to be done with speed.

We want everybody to apply for their documents in their home districts.

The RG already has a highly computerised communications network that can enable them to decentralise their operations at the click of button. And we can know what happens in real time.

We also don’t want queues at the RG’s Office and we don’t want touts there anymore, so everything has to be computerised.

The RG’s passport factory will now be producing at least 2000 passports per day.

The technology and equipment is there but is a few years behind and needs to be updated.

So we just need new technology that will assist us achieve not less than 2 000 passports a day, up from the 30 000 passports we produced since the beginning of the year.

We also have a backlog owing to the shortage of paper, which has to be sourced outside the country.

We are also working towards the introduction of E-passports; that is the project we hope to be launched by end of year or early next year.

E-passports are coming indeed.

Our passports will change because the book form of a passport is dying.

All these are part of the 100-day programmes; as you know, the President has directed us to work on 100-day projects.

Corruption and Reform

Many people now look at the ZRP as a corrupt institution, but there is no Government institution that exists outside society.

So if there are corrupt elements in the ZRP or Immigration, it’s a reflection of what the whole society is doing.

But what the President has done is that he has asked us all as a society to help in the fight against corruption.

Those who have the money, why do they bribe police officers, immigration or Registrar-General officials? I have never heard of anybody who has been arrested for not paying money to a corrupt police officer.

For the police, we are trying to create a new environment altogether, it’s the new dispensation.

The new dispensation is not just affecting us, it’s affecting everybody, it is no longer business as usual because the world is moving.

For ZRP, because of the new dispensation, is being rebranded, but so are other departments being rebranded.

ZRP is actually working on that.

We have also witnessed the upsurge in the number of gun-toting criminals using illegal arms.

This why at times you see roadblocks on our roads, this is because we are trying to fight the prevalence of crimes such as that.

(On Wednesday) a man was shot in Harare in the street.

As such, we are working on deepening our surveillance to flush out people carrying dangerous weapons.

So people should not cry all the time they see roadblocks on our roads, it is because of the fact that people are carrying dangerous weapons.

ZRP is out in force to fight all crimes, including murders, rape, abuse of women and children.

We have high statistics and we are doing our best.

We want a one-stop shop at every entry point that can process a visa for a visitor in a few minutes.

We also want visitors to acquire their visas online so that in some instances, they don’t need to come here physically to apply for visas.

 

Hon Cain Mathema is the Minister of Home Affairs and Cultural Heritage. He made these remarks in an interview with The Sunday Mail Senior Reporter Lincoln Towindo in Harare last week