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President Mugabe

Tendai Mugabe Senior Reporter—
Civil servants will get their salary increment next month and the delay in fulfilment of the pay rise promise made last year was a result of a technical hitch in resources mobilisation, President Mugabe has reassured. President Mugabe said this while addressing civil servants who attended his belated 90th birthday party celebrations thrown by the Civil Service Commission in Harare yesterday.

“We are currently going through a difficult patch as a result of the sanctions that were imposed on us,” he said. “This has resulted in a delay in the fulfilment of the promises of a salary increment that we made last year.

“It is, however, just a technical delay in the mobilisation of the monies, but the promise will be honoured. Takapromiswa kuti April ndopaichauya. Ndaiti kuna VaMariyawanda (Nzuwah) ivava ndovanowirirana naVa(Patrick) Chinamasa zvino vakati tichakubhadharai, naPresident wese is a worker also – 1st of April don’t fool us on that day.

“I want to assure you of my support for the improvement of your conditions of service. It is our wish, as Government, to have all our workers adequately compensated for their hard work.”

President Mugabe said he celebrated his 90th birthday on the backdrop of Zanu-PF’s resounding victory in last year’s harmonised elections.
“2014, the year that I celebrate 90 years, comes hard on the heels of a bruising and defining election year,” he said. “We first had the referendum, then the new Constitution and thereafter the harmonised elections, one resoundingly won by my party Zanu-PF, our party Zanu-PF and our people’s party Zanu-PF.

“I want to thank you for that historic act. It mesmerised not just masahwira edu atange tichimwa tea nawo; it disorganised them as you can see. Tave kutovanzwirawo tsitsi.”

President Mugabe said the victory had also “mesmerised the British and their allies, the Americans”.
“They actually did not expect it. For one reason or another they have been fed by their NGOs and others and meant to believe that the MDC was going to win the elections, to improve on its 2008 performance and so this came to them as a real shocker and that is why they refused to accept it.”

He said in disputing the election result they still could not offer any good reason for their loss.
“Kungoti chete elections were rigged,” said President Mugabe. “How rigged? Aaa, they were rigged. 2013 was also the year that we finally extricated ourselves from the crippling chitsutsukuviri, the GNU arrangement that had bogged us down for nearly five years.

“It was an arrangement that was counter-productive as all our efforts to make progress were consistently opposed from within, virtually bringing public administration to a standstill.”

President Mugabe said the victory paved the way for Zanu-PF to institute people-oriented policies such as Zim-Asset.
He reiterated that political power without economic independence was meaningless and hence the need for absolute control of resources.

“Kana mabhunu achiti tisu tine mamigodhi, tisu tine macompanies, madiamonds, gold, chrome, coal, iron, we have the technology, tine machines tisu because you still don’t have those machines or that technology, then you have been fooled into an independence without a meaning for your people,” said President Mugabe.

“An independence that has not benefited your people, you have been fooled to have a dummy type of independence and we have refused to have that dummy.”

To draw maximum benefits from the country’s resources, Government was going to reorganise the diamond industry and have just one or two companies mining in Chiadzwa, said President Mugabe.