CommuTalk Reporter
SHURUGWI: Zanu PF held its 10th and final star rally at Tongogara business center in Shurugwi North, Midlands Province.
The party presidential candidate, Emmerson Mnangagwa, unveiled several developments that the community hailed.
These and are not limited to, a fully furnished clinic, a borehole, and a 40km tarred road.
In his remarks, President Mnangagwa said it was worth honoring the place in such a way as it was home to the commander of the ZANLA military movement Josiah Magama Tongogara.
“Many heroes hail from this province and it will not be proper to round up the campaign without honoring them. The late revolutionary commander himself (Tongogara) comes from here and I am happy that his family is with us today to witness developments brought in his honor,” said Mnangagwa.
However, a few hundred metres away from the venue of the rally, a district heroes’ cemetery named in honour of the late liberation icon is in a very bad state.
It tells a story of how successive Zanu PF governments have neglected shrines dedicated to those that fought for Zimbabwe’s liberation.
There was half-hearted painting of the cemetery ahead of heroes’ celebrations and the rally, but that has failed to mask the neglect the shrine has suffered since the early 1980s.
The perimeter fence is collapsing.
Rubbish is strewn all over the shrine.
In-between official events like Heroes Day celebrations, the graveyard is just one of those forgotten projects started by the government long back. No-one attends to it and there are fears that the heroes buried here will one day lose its identity.
Tongogara business centre where the rally was held has been stagnant for a long time.
It got growth point status in the early 1980s, a few years after independence in 1980.
It was meant to be the hub of commercial and industrial growth in rural Shurugwi but all there is to show are a few shops and drinking places, a largely abandoned green market and the mostly dormant Grain Marketing Depot.
