Gibson Hwende
Beatific Gumbwanda
CHIREDZI – Ward 1 Chiredzi Urban Councillor Gibson Hwende last week walked away from the commissioning of the Chiredzi Rural District Council service equipment in protest against the politicisation of the programme by Minister Abednigo Ncube and other senior government officials who were present.
Hwende, who is the sole MDC-T Councillor in Chiredzi, left his VIP seat as a way of expressing his displeasure after Ncube started to abuse the event to campaign for President Robert Mugabe ahead of the 2018 elections.
He criticised the minister and other officials including Masvingo Provincial Administrator (PA) Fungai Mbetsa for manipulating the programme to advance the Zanu PF campaign agenda.
“I boycotted the programme because it was turned into a Zanu PF campaigning platform where senior government officials like The Provincial Administrator and Directors from the ministry chanted Zanu PF slogans and urged people to vote for the party in 2018,” said Hwende.
He also accused them of adulterating the MDC-T 2018 campaign slogan ‘2018 Tsvangirai chete chete’ to ‘2018 Mugabe chete chete’.
“Worse than that, they even went on to steal our 2018 campaign motto as shown by Minister Ncube chanting 2018 Mugabe chete chete,” he added.
Other senior government officials who also chanted ‘2018 Mugabe chete chete’ at the event were the Principal Director and Director for Rural Development and Rural Local Authorities C. Shumba and M. Mazai respectively.politics
