By Own Correspondent- Matabeleland South residents and Zanu Pf stalwarts have accused President Emmerson Mnangagwa of ignoring them during his midweek visit to the province.

The residents, his ruling party members and sections of civil servants quickly blamed Mnangagwa’s failure to attend to them on what they called a “weak” provincial party hierarchy and “sleepy” government top executives.

Mnangagwa’s Spokesperson George Charamba was not picking his mobile phone yesterday when contacted for comment:

Matabeleland South ruling party supporters lashed out at Rabelani Choeni, their provincial head, accusing him of lacking initiatives to move the party into another gear in the face of development challenges in one of Zimbabwe’s least developed provinces.

Said a Zanu Pf member:

“President Mnangagwa came and left without talking to us, the people of the province.

We showed faith in him during elections. It can only be a result of our poor provincial representation, how else can we conclude apart from?

Known tradition is that such visits are used well to endear the president who can go out of his official schedule to address us or even take time to listen to our problems.

We expect the leadership to highlight to him all this and he should not be divorced from us.”

Mnangagwa was in Beitbridge, Matabeleland South’s biggest and Zimbabwe’s most strategic town and port, to commission a $98 million backbone optic fibre link between the country and the world through South Africa.

He arrived and officiated at a function hosted by TelOne, the country’s fixed telephone network provider, and left minutes later.

Departing from the norm, Mnangagwa, who flew into the border town aboard an Airforce of Zimbabwe helicopter that landed amid thick security, went straight into business.

He did not meet with the local leadership, business community or party representatives for a de- brief.-TheStandard