Aspiring Zanu PF councillor on drive to empower youths

YOUTHFUL Zanu-PF candidate for ward 4 in Victoria Falls City Council Cde Handsome Nyathi has called for capacitation of young people for them to be self-reliant and contribute to local economy.

Cde Nyathi said the upcoming elections should give hope to young people for the future.

He said part of his manifesto is empowerment of women and youth so they lead meaningful lives away from drugs and vulnerability.

“We started our campaign well without any challenges on the ground. There is peace and calm as the President has always preached and people understand that elections come and go but we remain together as people.

“I have lined up a number of empowerment projects and next week starting with Esikhwahleni, we will be engaging women to teach them how to start income generating projects so that they sustain their families and w reduce poverty in our community. I have been working with youth as well talking about how we can fight drug and substance abuse and child abuse, and values of Ubuntu. We want to come up with programmes for youth as we have to embrace them in development so that they are encouraged to voice and when they do, they know what they are voting for and that they are securing their future,” said Cde Nyathi.

He said his campaign has been in three stages and involves drumming up support for President Mnangagwa as the ruling party’s Presidential candidate and also for the Member of House of Assembly.

Cde Philani Moyo is the party’s candidate for Hwange West.

Cde Nyathi said his decision to vie for local authority came after being approached by ward 4 residents who expressed displeasure in lack of development, high water bills, high unemployment rates and poor service delivery.

Before even the primary elections, he had been working with people in the ward and empowered five families with chicken projects while also paying schools fees for vulnerable children in the ward.

He said after winning the primary elections and the party giving greenlight to campaign period, he started a door-to-door visit to electorates for a meet the councillor strategy so that electorates get to know the person they will vote for.

“We were interacting with residents and they were so happy to meet their councillor physically. Some are now helping us with strategies which has led us to a stage where we consult the electorate on what they want done and their expectations.

“The manifesto must come from the people and this is what we are doing getting their views so that we have one vision as a ward instead of me as a leader imposing. The stage is educating the voters. Now that we have the voter’s roll, we have been updating voters about their nearest and allocated polling station so that we don’t waste votes,” he said.

Ward 4 has five polling stations and because of the delimitation exercise, many voters were moved from their traditional polling stations.

Cde Nyathi said he is encouraging people in his ward to go out and vote in their numbers, for the party which is targeting 5 million votes for President Mnangagwa on 23 August.

He said on Friday he will lead a clean-up campaign in his ward with a motto of making sure every corner of the ward and household is clean in line with the National Clean-up Campaign that was started by President Mnangagwa.

There are 11 wards in Victoria Falls and Cde Nyathi will be up against the sitting councillor Rich Mguni of Citizens Coalition for Change, independent candidate Mr Shadreck Sibindi and Lukha Ncube of United Zimbabwe Alliance