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Daniel Chigunwe–Herald Correspondent.

President Mnangagwa has chosen Mashonaland Central province to host Zanu PF’s 2023 harmonised elections victory national celebrations on a date still to be set.

This gesture has been seen as an honour to the province where Zanu PF won all parliamentary seats and recorded the highest winning margin in the elections.

Speaking at a party provincial coordinating committee meeting in Bindura held to take stock of the party’s performance in the elections, Zanu PF provincial chairman Cde Kazembe Kazembe said the province was preparing for the national elections victory celebrations.

“We want to thank the President,” he said. “We have been informed by our Politburo member Cde Musanhi that as a province, we have been chosen to host the national victory celebrations. We are excited and we have been honoured and we feel humbled. We have already started preparing for that big day.”

Cde Kazembe said they were now focusing on working to fulfil the promises made to the electorate.

Mashonaland Central has seen a number of transformative projects under the Second Republic, with the target now being the implementation of programmes to improve the provincial gross domestic product by exploiting the rich mineral deposits, as well as harnessing farming opportunities which form the basis of the province’s economy.

“We had to convene this meeting which is our first after the general elections to reflect on what happened,” said Cde Kazembe. 

“We did well as a province, but we feel we could have done better. We are happy that the elections were free, fair and peaceful. These were the most peaceful elections ever to be held in our country.

“As a province, we are so excited that we managed to retain all the 18 seats and more than 98 percent of the local authority wards. However, we have since agreed that we start preparing for 2028 elections now by fulfilling electoral promises which gave us victory in 2023. We are now focusing more on development. The President has said ‘nyika inovakwa nevene vayo’ and now we are saying ‘province inovakwa nevene vayo’.

“We must work for the people who voted us into office. We should not expect anybody from anywhere to come work for us. We should do it for ourselves.” 

Cde Kazembe called for unity across all the sectors, saying that those bent on causing fights would be left by the wayside as the party moved towards development and uplifting the people.

“We have agreed that there should be no more fights,” he said. “Those who want to continue fighting will be left on their own because we are saying that all of us must move together as one team focusing on economic development.”