'Mazowe disGracefully crushed' in Gwanda

First lady Dr Amai Grace Mugabe was for the first time in her series of rallies today brought up to a hugely disappointing crowd of about only 3 000 to 4 000 people in the Matabeleland South capital of Gwanda.

Distributing white T Shirts marked with her face in front and written "Watch Mazowe Crush" at the back, the Mazowe farmer indeed came to a disgraceful crushing halt in Gwanda. In her previous rallies, Mugabe managed to draw crowds of about 12 000 people in Chinhoyi, 15 000 in Harare, 13 000 in Masvingo and 13 000 in Mutare.

Going to the rally, Matabeleland South ZANU PF chairman Andrew Langa had vowed to deliver 30 000 people to the rally. In the run up to the July 31 elections last year President Robert Mugabe pulled a record breaking near 25 000 people to his star rally at the same venue. It took more than two days for ZANU PF to ferry people back to their districts throughout the province.

Today, business went on as usual in the small mining town while the First Lady was addressing her rally one would have thought that the media had lied that Grace Mugabe would be in the town at that time.

Preparing for the rally, a Municipality of Gwanda vehicle was deployed on sunday evening to go around town announcing with a loud speaker of the First Lady's coming to town. By 7am two hours before the scheduled time for the start of the rally the vehicle was sent out again to call people to the rally. While the vehicle went on announcing for the rally until about 10am the people in the town went on with their usual business without any hid to the call.

The majority of the people that attended the rally started arriving at the venue around 10 am by trucks and buses from outside the town. Grace Mugabe arrived in the town shortly after 10am in an Air force of Zimbabwe helicopter but only emerged at the stadium at about 1pm after the crowd had grown a little bit bigger. Personnel in the organising of the rally kept assuring their leaders that more trucks were still on their way and that the crowd would grow bigger to no avail.

People attending the rally expressed their dissatisfaction at the way the rally was organised. Some claim to have been collected from their rural villages outside Gwanda as early 2am and got to the stadium at about 7am and had to endure long hours in the sun with no water and food. According to them police officers manning the entrances to the rally refused to let people leave the venue to go outside and get food and refreshments. Some claimed that at the entry points they were being forced to leave their cigarettes and matches for unexplained reasons and battled for hours without their smoke. A number of people had to be rushed out of the stadium to Gwanda Hospital after fainting in the hot sun perhaps due to hunger and thirst.

Skirmishes between the police and members of the public wanting to leave the venue were the order of the day. A larger contingent of people stood up to leave the stadium mid way the First Lady's speech when she started blasting some ZANU PF members for paddling factions in the party. Police officers had a hard time retaining the people in the stadium who wanted to leave perhaps out of anger or in protest. Several people were seen jumping over the stadium's perimeter walls while Grace Mugabe went on with her speech.

Visibly disappointed by the attendance and reaction from the crowd was Mugabe so much that immediately she finished her speech she got into her car and left the venue. Hardly 10 minutes after she left the venue the air force of Zimbabwe helicopters were up in the air making their trip back to Harare.

Tomorrow Mugabe is expected to address a similar rally in Lupane the provincial capital of Matabeleland North Province. On Wednesday she is expected to address another rally in Bulawayo at the Gold and Black Club after failing to secure a stadium venue as all council stadia are currently under going renovations for the region 5 games to be held in the city in December. Reports coming through from the ZANU PF sources in Bulawayo indicate that the party's Bulawayo Province is contemplating cancelling the rally following the low turnout in Gwanda.