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Leonard Ncube Victoria Falls Reporter
ALL roads lead to Victoria Falls as delegates to the 15th Zanu-PF Annual National People’s Conference are expected to start arriving this morning. More than 6,500 delegates are expected at the conference that began on Monday with a Politburo meeting in Harare followed by a Central Committee meeting yesterday, also in the capital.
President Robert Mugabe will officially open the annual event tomorrow. The closing ceremony will be on Saturday.
Delegates leave on December 13, according to the conference programme.
The party’s spokesperson Cde Simon Khaya Moyo on Monday said buses would be dispatched early to respective provinces to ensure delegates arrive early today in Victoria Falls.
Each province was allocated 10 Zupco buses to ferry delegates to the venue of the conference at Elephant Hills Resort Golf Course.
Today, in the afternoon, President Mugabe is expected to plant a tree at Baobab Primary School, one of the schools being used as accommodation sites for delegates to the conference.
President Mugabe plants a tree each year at the party’s conference.
Officials from the Forestry Commission yesterday said they were readying themselves for the annual tree planting which naturally falls on the first Saturday of December. “We are getting ready for the tree planting tomorrow (today) at Baobab,” said Forestry Commission spokesperson Violet Makoto.
The tree of the year is Vangueriain fausta, commonly known in English as velvet wild medlar or African medlar and umviyo in IsiNdebele.
The fruit provides valuable nutrition for humans, wild animals and livestock and contains significant amounts of vitamin C, sodium, calcium and magnesium, as well as carbohydrates and protein.
The motto for this year’s tree planting is Isihlahla namhla, igusu kusasa in IsiNdebele, Unti nasi ishanga mangwana (Nambya) and Musamu sunu lusaka junza in Tonga meaning a tree today a forest tomorrow.
The fruit can be eaten when ripe straight from the tree and it can also be dried for use in times of food scarcity. The theme for the conference is: “Consolidating people’s power through Zim-Asset.” Cde Khaya Moyo said the state of the economy driven by the economic blueprint Zim-Asset will be the main focus of the conference with deliberations based on how far the revolutionary party has gone with the four clusters of the economic blueprint.
The venue is ready for the conference and yesterday workmen were busy cleaning and making touch ups in preparation for the official opening by President Mugabe tomorrow.
Yesterday entrepreneurs were preparing to exhibit mostly craft ware while entrepreneurs had already set their stalls at the business expo tents.
Online Reporter