Source: Students’ interface rally cancelled – NewsDay Zimbabwe November 17, 2017
GOVERNMENT has cancelled President Robert Mugabe’s tertiary students’ interface rally which was scheduled to take place in Harare tomorrow following new political developments that saw the military intervening in an operation to “fish out criminal elements” within the ruling Zanu PF party.
BY XOLISANI NCUBE
Higher and Tertiary Education deputy minister Godfrey Gandawa told NewsDay yesterday that the rally had been postponed indefinitely.
“We have notified our institutions countrywide of the postponement and advised them that we shall have the same at an appropriate time,” Gandawa said.
Asked what had motivated the decision to postpone the rally which was supposed to be addressed by Mugabe and his wife Grace, the deputy minister curtly said: “Circumstances beyond our control.”
Mugabe has been holding interface rallies across the country with youths which have been used to attack a faction linked to former Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa and he was supposed to meet the students in Harare.
Due to the public attacks targeted at Mnangagwa, the military on Tuesday night “stepped in” and confined Mugabe to his house while they arrested Cabinet ministers and Zanu PF officials they labelled as the “criminal elements surrounding the President”.
Gandawa, however, said Mugabe would today officiate at Zimbabwe Open University (ZOU) graduation ceremony in Harare and proceed to Midlands State University for a similar function next week.
“As far as we are concerned, the chancellor of the university, His Excellency President Mugabe, is going to be the guest of honour. The team from ZOU were supposed to have gone for a briefing this morning with the President, but they were late and it has not been rescheduled,” Gandawa said.
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