From a vantage point among the dilapidated grass-thatched huts in the Yafele village, one could not help but marvel at the massive show of grandeur at the nearby Goromonzi High school.
From chauffer-driven Mercedes Benz saloons to the latest SUVs from Japan, they were all part of the grand show of affluence that disturbed the tranquil environs of this rural setting.
Villagers going about their daily chores were searched at random by grim-faced security personnel and the notorious ”Green Bombers” (the government’s North Korean-style youth brigade).
So tight was the security at the venue of last weeks’ conference of President Robert Mugabe’s ruling Zanu-PF party that even fruit vendors were required to obtain special clearance from the party’s security personnel to be allowed into the school grounds.
Those who tried to circumvent the tough security measures by selling fruits from just outside the school gates were quickly rounded up, detained and questioned.
For the ordinary folks of Yafele and Chimanikire villages just outside the school gates, the conference was a massive show of affluence by ”foreign” people who had no knowledge of their daily lives of poverty and starvation.
That the conference may have had little to do with ordinary people could not have been highlighted any better than the spectacle of Zanu-PF delegates tucking into scrumptious food during the meeting, while not far from the conference venue, at Majuru rural shopping centre, scores of hungry mothers waited for hours on end for food handouts to take their starving children.
By the time the Zanu-PF officials left Goromonzi in their glitzy cars and luxurious buses after about three days of deliberations on the ”people’s welfare”, there was still no joy for the hungry mothers at Majuru.
”We are not sure whether the maize will eventually come but we are sleeping in the council hall [at the shopping centre] hoping that it will be delivered soon,” said 79-year old Margaret Chinzara.
For the two days that Mugabe drove in his presidential motorcade to and from Goromonzi, bemused villagers in worn-out clothes would look up from their parched fields, staring in awe at the one-kilometre long convoy of the 82-year old leader.
These villagers had no choice but to be seen in the fields because three weeks before the conference, the Zanu-PF senator for the area and a local businessman, Cyril Majuru, had distributed 25kg packs of maize seed to all villagers along the Harare-Goromonzi road to make sure their fields were ploughed in order to impress the visiting president.
Elsewhere, the Zanu-PF delegates expected nothing short of royal treatment. The sumptuous meals with ice cream and bananas for dessert, the expensive cars and the elegant clothes gave one the true picture of the Zanu-PF gravy train.
Fifteen kilometres away at Rusunguko High School where some of the delegates were accommodated, a row ensued after the Zanu-PF officials complained that the bedding ”was not good enough”.
Zanu-PF legislator Kenneth Mutiwekuziva, told the headmaster of the government-owned school, Norman Gombera, that delegates were finding the school’s beds uncomfortable to sleep on.
And in contrast to the fuel crisis gripping the country, Goromonzi resembled a car assembly plant with fuel readily available for delegates wishing to drive their latest acquisition there.
Meanwhile, government-owned cellphone operator, NetOne, was ordered to boost coverage in the Goromonzi area for ”security reasons” while the cellphone company also donated free lines to school and Zanu-PF officials who were helping host the dignitaries.
On the next Monday, a day after the conference ended, there were several things the community at Goromonzi could count — some good, some bad. You can take your pick from the list beginning with the beautiful facelift given the school by government hired construction workers, the new boreholes sunk to ensure water for delegates, the used condoms left strewn around by the dignitaries and not to mention the conference’s decision to extend Mugabe’s term by another two years. – ZimOnline