There’ll be dancing

SOMEBODY at the Zimbabwe Tourism Authority must love the sounds of Motown. Nothing else can adequately explain the huge amount of time and money that has been poured into organising the greatest street party the country has ever seen except a song like Martha and the Vandellas’ hit “Dancing in the Street”.

Written by, among others, the iconic Marvin Gaye, the signature Motown song goes: “All we need is music, sweet music. There’ll be music everywhere. There’ll be swinging and swaying and records playing, dancing in the street. Oh, it doesn’t matter what you wear, just as long as you are there.”

And that is exactly what the 2017 Harare International Carnival is all about.

A highlight of this year’s carnival is the Happy Week, which will be seven days of legalised public drinking.

Sugar Chagonda, speaking for carnival organisers the ZTA, said: “I’m sure there will not be any major issues arising because when we tried the concept in 2015, though it was just for a day, there weren’t any incidences. In fact, the people loved it and that’s why we brought it back — bigger and better.”

There are fears that a week of legal public drinking could result in chaos. “We want to assure the public that there is absolutely nothing they should be afraid of. We are working with our various partners to ensure that we have a fun-filled carnival that is incident free.

“To avoid having any unlicensed paddlers or hawkers getting involved, we are currently in the process of registering all the traders we shall be working with and this we are doing in partnership with the Harare City Council and the Zimbabwe Republic Police.

“Let me hasten to say that we will only be working with traders that are already licensed with the Liquor Licensing Board so we are keeping everything above board.”

Chagonda said the booze traders would be stationed along the route of the Carnival Street Party which starts from Fourth Street into Jason Moyo Avenue, leading to the Robert Mugabe Square. There shall be some who will be operating from other areas within Harare.

Some of the traders have also suggested that ZTA allows them to have braais at their selling points as they are saying meat and alcohol mix well.

Meanwhile, Chagonda said he was happy to hear that some hotels are already fully booked during the week of the carnival.