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Lloyd Gumbo Senior Reporter
The Zanu-PF Secretariat has thrown its weight behind President Mugabe’s candidature ahead of next year’s harmonised elections.

Staff at the Zanu-PF Headquarters pledged their unwavering support as they presented the party’s First Secretary with a sculpture of a fist of freedom and pledged $10 000 towards the Presidential Scholarship Fund in celebration of his 93rd birthday.

President Mugabe turned 93 on February 21.

Sculptor Dominic Benhura did the sculpture for free.

Officiating at the presentation, Zanu-PF director for administration Cde Dickson Dzora said:

“We want also to categorically state today, Your Excellency, as members of staff, that we solidly stand behind you as the one centre of power and as the Zanu-PF candidate for the 2018 general elections,” said Cde Dzora.

“Your Excellency, we wish the good Lord will continue to bless you with more years of good health and wisdom and we are also going to extend our gift to your scholarship programme. We are going to contribute $10 000.”

In his acceptance speech, President Mugabe said he was moved by the gesture.

“Comrades, this once again is a great surprise,” he said. “I didn’t expect it, but surprises of this nature from comrades I have worked with for so long and I continue to work with, speak precisely one language.

“That you have love for me, respect for me and perhaps in the same way, I reciprocate and say I have truly the same love for you and respect. There is that reciprocity in our members of one family, that’s what it means, and what you do to me by way of a gesture of this nature, I appreciate quite a lot.”

The President asked the staffers to express his sincere gratitude to Benhura.

“Let me say it’s a moving moment for me, truly moving moment,” he said. “I really wish that all of us together have the same spirit that is shown and expressed by this gift.

“That all of us together have the oneness and determination that is expressed by this gift. That all of us together have the honesty and the truth to believe in our belief, to serve the nation, to serve our party, because we are only a chosen party. We are not the full nation.

“And as you stand here with me, I feel that we are the heart that speaks the wishes of our people. That beats also day in and day out, those wishes and the wishes that the people would want us to address.”

President Mugabe said that gave him great encouragement and hope as he could not lead alone.