ZANU PF officials in Manicaland province declared that civil servants are ZANU PF deployees and should not claim to be apolitical.
Addressing a Zanu PF Manicaland provincial co-ordination committee meeting in Mutare on Friday, Manicaland Provincial Affairs minister Ellen Gwaradzimba said that he had to teach civil servants how to chant ZANU PF slogans. She said:
Sorry, I am late because I was teaching government workers party slogans.
I told them that they should do party slogans because they are serving a government led by Zanu PF. I am grooming them to do party slogans.
I told them that if they let us down, they will decampaigning Zanu PF.
Meanwhile, speaking at the same event, ZANU PF Manicaland provincial chairperson Mike Madiro insisted that civil servants are government deployees. He said:
This meeting is a Zanu PF platform, we won elections and we have been winning elections. When we won the elections we had a manifesto we sold to the people of Zimbabwe, so these government workers have an agenda to implement Zanu PF policies and as a party, we are there to supervise.
No government worker should say no and no one should say I am apolitical, if there is someone like that then he or she is in the wrong place, but as a ruling party, we are not giving orders. Those in government are deployees of the party.