Mnangagwa to headline Mugabe Day celebrations

PRESIDENT Mnangagwa is expected to headline the National Youth Day celebrations at Mushagashe Vocational Training Centre in Masvingo on Wednesday with Youth Development, Empowerment and Vocational Training Minister Tino Machakaire saying preparations for the day are at an advanced stage.

Speaking at the venue where he had gone to assess progress, Minister Machakaire said President Mnangagwa was going to be the guest of honour at the important event.

He said youths from the country's 10 provinces were expected to converge on the venue, which was deliberately chosen to showcase the technical ability of youths that were enrolling at vocational training centres (VTCs) and their value in the achievement of the country's vision of having an upper-middle income economy by 2030.

"I am happy that the preparations are going on very well here at Mushagashe in Masvingo. We are at 80 percent and the atmosphere is jubilant as you can see. People are very excited and eagerly waiting to be with the Head of State and Government, President Mnangagwa. This year we have changed our approach to the whole thing. We saw it important to have the commemorations at a vocational training centre because we want to be showing the country's youths that they can enrol here and learn a number of valuable life transforming skills.

"There are a number of them here including sewing, carpentry, welding, agriculture in all its facets and many others. We want our youths to be aware that they can do such courses, that way we can fight idleness which leads to drug and substance abuse and other vices that are caused by redundancy," said Minister Machakaire.

The day will be commemorated under the theme: "Positioning youth empowerment and development towards Vision 2030."

Minister Machakaire said the day was not going to see the youths getting T-shirts but they were going to have a number of critical life transforming tangibles.

"We have said T-shirts are not important. We want something tangible that will leave an imprint on the lives of our youths so we expect the President to leave something that the youths will enjoy."

The National Youth Day celebrates the works of the veteran nationalist and late former President Robert Mugabe, who was born on 21 February. The commemorations will be held outside the capital Harare in the spirit of devolution and in line with President Mnangagwa's pronouncements that the capital city should not have a monopoly over national events.

The President has reiterated that all national events were going to be rotating among the country's provinces in the spirit of decentralisation and devolution. He said it was going to afford the national leadership an opportunity to concentrate its focus on the specific and peculiar needs of the area hosting the national event.

Cde Machakaire who is also the Zanu-PF Secretary for Youth Affairs said they were alert to the fact that they were leading a highly expectant demographic dividend that expected the Government to craft youth development policies that address socio-economic and political issues affecting them on a daily basis. He added that the youths were an important political and economic constituency whose aspirations should not be ignored and were supposed to be mainstreamed in all development planning programmes for the attainment of that national Vision 2030.