Jomic commends parties for maintaining peace

Chronicle Reporter
THE Joint Monitoring and Implementation Committee (Jomic) has hailed all political parties for maintaining peace in Bulawayo where cases of inter-party violence have not been recorded ahead of the harmonised elections. In an interview, Jomic co-chairperson Ms Dorcas Sibanda expressed gratitude to all political parties for ensuring that Bulawayo had a clean sheet in issues to do with political violence.

“We have not yet received any incidences of inter-party violence, the peaceful atmosphere prevailing amongst political parties in Bulawayo show that Zimbabweans are politically mature.”

She applauded the levels of tolerance among parties saying the prevailing situation augured well for peaceful elections.

“Our organisation is happy with the peaceful co-existence and growing levels of tolerance among political parties,” said Mrs Sibanda.

She called on the relevant stakeholders to make concerted efforts to fight any forms of violence.

Zanu-PF Bulawayo provincial deputy chairman Cde Killian Sibanda said the code of conduct recently issued by Jomic would go a long way in promoting peace in the country.

He said he was happy that Zimbabweans were embracing a culture of non-violence.

MDC Bulawayo provincial chairperson Mr Oscar Ncube echoed similar sentiments saying MDC would continue to remind its members about maintaining peace all the time.

“We have had inter-parties meetings, peace marching campaigns, peace is central in Bulawayo and we hope to maintain that before and after elections.”

Mr Gorden Moyo, MDC-T Bulawayo provincial chairperson, said peace building was a continuous process and there was need for Zimbabweans to play their role in maintaining peace. “Peace building is a continuous process, there might be peace today and violence tomorrow thus why we continue to work towards creating co-existence amongst political players.

The three political parties in the inclusive government recently had a peace marching campaign spearheaded by Jomic, which advocated against inter-party violence and called for peace.