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Mukudzei Chingwere Midlands Correspondent
Chiefs in Shurugwi district have dismissed private media reports alleging that the ruling Zanu-PF party forced villagers to donate money towards Independence Day celebrations, as malicious and unnecessarily divisive.

Chief Banga, born Lameck Toindepi, said the reports were only meant to tarnish the party and its leadership.

“Under the leadership of President Mnangagwa, the new administration has been on a drive to ensure that villagers have enough food and to accuse of the same Government of asking the same people for donation is mischievous,” he said.

Chief Banga said the reports were bent on belittling the highly successful independence celebrations.“Those reports are not only shocking, but false and unfair,” he said. “The job of journalists I think is to verify facts first and not just rush to write baseless stories which tarnish the images of other people.

“There is no way we can demand money from villagers because actually our job is to take care of these villagers.

“The problem is that people want to take independence celebrations as a Zanu-PF project, NO! It is a State function that is why you see us taking part because we are non-partisan. We had very exciting independence celebrations and I don’t know why people want to tarnish the memories with malicious reports.”

Chief Ndanga said they were also very surprised with the false reports.

“Nothing like that happened, I know we received some donations from our political leadership and that is what we used for the celebrations,” he said. “The rest of us just celebrated our independence.