Ray Nkosi | The ZANU PF national youth leadership has attacked the Matabeleland South provincial organising committee of the 21st February Movement, for falling under public pressure, by moving the venue of President Robert Mugabe’s 93rd birthday celebrations from its original site at Matopo National Park to Rhodes Estate Primary School.

Very reliable sources within the provincial organising committee told ZimEye.com in confidence that the national youth committee led by Kudzai Chipanga blasted the provincial organisers, describing them as being spineless at a briefing before the national committee met with the provincial committee to check on the progress in the preparations for the $2 million bash.

The sources claim that Chipanga and his colleagues in the youth National Executive Committee said that it was a serious weakness on the side of the local team to bow to pressure groups who were castigating ZANU PF for holding the bash at the park where thousands of people killed during the Gukurahundi atrocities of the eighties effected by ZANU PF lie buried in shallow graves and disused mine shafts.

The upset sources who are in the provincial organising committee claim that the mood in the organising team is very tense as there are clear factional fights within the team. The people who are said to have fronted the shift of the venue are said to be linked to the Emerson Munangagwa camp and pushed for the change of venue at the summit of the preparations to first exhibit a rare weakness within ZANU PF and secondly to distract the preparations and spoil the function.

The sources also claim that Chipanga and his crew further blasted the committee for moving the venue from the perceived Gukurahundi site to a colonialism depicting site inside Cecil John Rhode’s Estate.

At the progress review meeting Chipanga is further said to have told the local organising committee which had complained of shortage of funds to “go out to every business person in the province and get money from them.”

The provincial committee is said to have promised to visit fiery Minister of Provincial Affairs for the province Abednico Ncube to get a letter signed by him demanding for donations from the business people. According to the sources a hurried fund raising dinner will also be held in Gwanda within the next few days where business people will be forced to buy expensive dinner tables to raise funds.

The sources further revealed that so far local ZANU PF farmers recently resettled in the province have been pushed to contribute a total of 66 head of cattle of a budgeted 100 which will all be slaughtered at the birthday bash set for February 25.