Staff Reporter
Government will continue decentralising national events in line with President Mnangagwa’s mantra of leaving no place and no one behind in terms of development.
Writing in his weekly column in The Sunday Mail yesterday, President Mnangagwa said that all communities must own and play host to national events.
“A precedent has now been set by Mt Pfura (Mt Darwin). Going forward; we have no excuse to keep national festivities restricted to cities and towns. All communities must own and play host to our national events, so none is left behind and uninvolved. As we decentralise the hosting of these national events, we must also leave commemorative footprints in these communities by way of new structures and modern amenities which will forever remind those communities that once upon a time they hosted our whole nation as it remembered and celebrated,” said President Mnangagwa.
The President said that he got the idea of decentralising national events from his Ugandan counterpart, President Yoweri Museveni who has since directed his Government to decentralise national events in that country.
“The thought of revolving venues for festivities marking our Independence came to mind after my visit a few years ago to the sister Republic of Uganda, on the occasion of its National Day. Unlike what had become a tradition for us here in Zimbabwe, the Ugandans, under President Yoweri Museveni and the governing National Resistance Movement, whose history of armed struggle echoes our own history, decided long before to decentralise and devolve commemorations of their National Day, thus yearly taking them to different communities, including the remotest and the least developed. We thought this was a noble idea worth emulating. As a result, we began moving commemorations of our Independence away from the capital last year, when, for the first time, we held them in Bulawayo, our second largest city,” said the President.
Meanwhile, President Mnangagwa said that he was humbled by the number of opposition party leaders who attended the 43rd Independence Day celebrations in Mt Darwin and claimed that their participation was important as it makes such events truly national.
