HARARE – Greatman Tongai Gwaze, a Harare-based musician, has taken a bold step towards promoting disability rights by filing a complaint against the City of Harare (CoH) for its alleged neglect of people with mobility disabilities.
Through his lawyer, Moses Nkomo of Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR), Gwaze has given the city a two-week ultimatum to ensure equal access to public and private amenities.
Gwaze, according to ZLHR, said the public and private amenities include shopping malls, boutiques, restaurants and police stations, which sites do not provide for universal design that facilitates accessibility by persons with physical impairments as well as other persons with other various disabilities.
The musician said such unfriendly disability environments had prevented him from living as independently as possible and had restricted his participation in public life and had forced him and other people with disabilities to navigate hazardous conditions, resulting in him and other similarly placed people like him having to rely on well-wishers who would lift him in and out of most of these amenities.
Gwaze’s complaint cited sections 56(3) and 83 of the Zimbabwean Constitution, which guarantee equal rights and protection against discrimination for people living with disabilities.
He also references the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which Zimbabwe has ratified.
Gwaze asked CoH to furnish him with its Disabled Persons Policy as a local authority, its current Building By-Laws or such other instruments and its plan to implement universal design on all buildings and public infrastructure in the capital city and other areas under its authority, the timelines for compliance by all building owners with international best practice in universal building design in Harare and its development plans which demonstrate that the specific requirements of persons with all forms of disability are a priority.
This information, Gwaze said, should be availed to him by CoH within 14 days failure of which he would institute legal action against the local authority to address all the concerns, which he noted and demanded to be fixed.
