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Rumbidzayi Zinyuke, Harare Bureau

ZANU-PF provincial leadership from four provinces yesterday converged at State House where they met President Mnangagwa to congratulate him on winning the Presidential poll in the just-ended harmonised elections, and his party winning the majority in Parliament.

The first to meet the President was Mashonaland East Province. The provincial chairman Cde Daniel Garwe said the works of the Second Republic under the leadership of President Mnangagwa had brought a lot of development to the province.

“We came to thank the President for the great work that he did in Mashonaland East, the infrastructure development programmes implemented throughout the nine administration districts. In Mudzi, we had the Rwenya River bridge, we had the gold processing plant in Makaha, Mutoko Secondary boarding school, we also had the tomato processing plant. In Murehwa we had the district registry, in UMP there was construction of five blocks of flats, the first in Zimbabwe and indeed Africa, to have flats constructed in the rural area. This is the rural transformation programme that the President has embarked on,” he said.

Zanu-PF national Women’s League chairperson Cde Mabel Chinomona said the province had done well in terms of the Presidential vote, especially the women. 

“A total of 400 000 women voted in Mashonaland East, and this is quite a big number and it shows that women are voting. We had to vote for our President because he listens to what we ask for,” she said.

Next in line was Harare Province, which saw Zanu-PF winning four National Assembly seats and five council seats.

Provincial chairman Cde Godwills Masimirembwa said the province had benefited a lot from President Mnangagwa’s development programmes.

“We came here to congratulate the President because all these things that we have been able to achieve, it is because of the work of His Excellency. All that has happened around the country benefits Harare. As Harare province we got four seats, three which we took from the opposition this time. We now have five councillors from one. We are continuing to take seats from the opposition. Harare is a tough province but it is meant for the tough and our President is the toughest and we follow in his footsteps,” he said.

Mashonaland West party chairperson Cde Mary Mliswa said her province was ready to fight for the urban seats which they had lost to the opposition.

“It is not good for us that one of our constituencies, Chinhoyi, is going to the opposition. But the good news about it is that we are improving, as we are already preparing for 2028. We are working towards getting our towns and cities back and it requires all of us to work together, put our foot on the pedal so that we can get all our seats back,” she said.

Manicaland provincial chairman Cde Tawanda Mukodza said the province had improved in terms of the Zanu-PF vote and the provincial leadership would continue to work towards reclaiming the seats taken by the opposition.

Zanu-PF treasurer general, who hails from Manicaland Cde Patrick Chinamasa said the ruling party had to go back to the drawing board.

“We cannot surrender urban centres to the opposition but the bigger question is to do with industrialisation. When industries collapsed around 2001, there were no jobs for the people in the urban areas so much of their feeling against the party is arising from lack of jobs. Our economy is highly informalised, so we should transform from an informal economy to an industrialised economy and if we do that we will win back the urban areas. This is a strategy that the President has started to adopt,” he said.