New ministry hits ground running

Harmony Agere
Government is establishing rural development priorities in keeping with its broad agenda of delivering countrywide socio-economic transformation.
Key to these goals will be building synergies with rural councils and roping in traditional leaders to promote culture and identify top development areas.
Leading this initiative is the new Rural Development and Preservation of National Cultural Heritage Ministry, which has hit the ground running.
In September 2015, President Mugabe extracted the Culture component from the then Sports, Arts and Culture Ministry and fashioned out a full-fledged portfolio focused on Rural Development and Cultural Heritage.
The new ministry will piggyback most of its work on various initiatives Government has rolled out over the years, with the Rural Electrification Programme being the foremost catalyst to development.
At least 5 000 rural institutions, farms, villages, boreholes, dam points and irrigation schemes have been electrified.
Rural Development Minister Abednigo Ncube explained his duties in an interview with The Sunday Mail, focusing on the significance of improving rural livelihoods and preserving culture.
“First of all, I will not be too ambitious and say I am going to do this and that. This is a new mandate assigned to me by His Excellency, the President, which I am supposed to carry out honestly and sincerely.
“It entails rural development whereby local authorities and the traditional leadership are involved in culture preservation, museums, monuments and other such areas. It is part of my ministry’s core business to protect and promote the diversity of cultural expressions.
“Such cultural expressions reflect varied values and norms that are fundamental cultural aspects of our identity as Zimbabweans.”
Dr Thokozile Chitepo, the ministry’s Permanent Secretary, said on-going consultations on culture preservation were critical to setting priorities under Unesco’s Promotion and Protection of Diversity of Cultural Expressions Convention (2005).
“Consultations are important because they help us in data collection. We have not been able to start or finish some of our projects as we have not been putting up backing data to get funds released.
“Chiefs and traditional leaders are very important in our plans of cultural preservation.”