The ManicaPost
Captain Moreblessings Mugumbate
In the month of August every year, the Zimbabwe Defence Forces (ZDF) run a Community Assistance Week. During this period, ZDF embarks on carefully selected projects where the force will be carrying out various activities to help the communities from where they belong.
Throughout the year the ZDF carries out various projects, helping communities in building and maintaining infrastructures like clinics, bridges, schools and so on. It is mostly during the ZDF Community Assistance Week that they are handed over to their communities.
The ZDF Community Assistance week ‘s spirit and purpose is to allow members of the Defence Forces a platform to mix and interact with the communities within which they are tactically based and responsible over.
The main objective being to demonstrate that the ZDF is a people’s force being a product of the communities from where it recruits and gets its support.
It is therefore in the interest of ZDF to ensure that they give back to these communities by helping improve their wellbeing whenever possible.
The week will be marked by short term medical outreach programmes, construction and maintenance projects across the country. Vice President Retired General Constantino Chiwenga who is also the Minister of Defence and War Veterans Affairs this week on 08 August 2018, launched the ZDF community Assistance Week in Masvingo where he officially handed over a four block lecture room to the Reformed Church in Zimbabwe University.
This year the ZDF embarked on various projects across the country’s ten provinces which will see the programme extending beyond the usual period of a week.
With 3 Infantry Brigade tactically responsible over the general area of Manicaland Province, the Brigade’s participation in this programme will witness some of the projects that the Formation had been undertaking being handed over to their beneficiaries.
Commander 3 Infantry Brigade, Brigadier General Joe Muzvidziwa will officially hand over a two classrooms block at Mount Carmel Primary School in Headlands on 16 August 2018.
This will be followed by the handing over of a grade seven classrooms block at Nyamauru Primary School in Dangamvura on 21 August 2018 and lastly Mapako Complex Clinic in Nyanga on 23 August 2018.
The Nyamauru Primary School and Mapako Clinic projects will be officially handed over by Chief of Staff Quartermaster Staff, Major General Hlanganani Dube and the Chief of Staff General Staff, Major General David Sigauke respectively.
Currently, the Brigade’s other major projects underway include the construction of a block of two classrooms at Birchenough Bridge Primary School and a girl’s dormitory at Nyatsanza High School in Hauna.
The ZDF undertakes various projects across the country as one of its commitment particularly to less privileged communities in support of the government’s efforts to ameliorate the levels of hardships being experienced by the people. This is in fulfilment of one of the ZDF’s secondary roles that of providing military assistance to civil communities.
Other secondary roles that the organization is mandated to do involves providing military aid to civil ministries and providing military assistance to civil power.
