Chronicle Editor
Yoliswa Dube-Moyo, Matabeleland South Bureau Chief
Voter education kicked off in Matabeleland South Province yesterday as the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (Zec) also embarks on a voter registration blitz.
The mobile registration exercise will be key in ensuring people in remote areas successfully register to vote.
The voter registration blitz is also expected to give members of the public an opportunity to inspect the voters’ roll.
It has been previously reported that Matabeleland region has the least number of registered voters countrywide, a development that could eventually result in the loss of constituencies ahead of the 2023 harmonised elections if the trend doesn’t change.
According to statistics released by Zec recently, Bulawayo has the lowest number of registered voters with 254 630 followed by Matabeleland South with 259 689 registered voters and Matabeleland North standing at 335 851.
Matabeleland South provincial elections officer Mr Rabson Nyoni said Zec had successfully deployed voter educators in their respective operational areas ahead of the voter registration blitz.
“Voter education is kicking off today (yesterday). We successfully deployed voter educators in their respective operational areas yesterday (Sunday).
As I speak, the voter education teams are on the ground. We’re deploying the biometric voter registration (BVR) teams today (yesterday). We’re in the very last-minute preparatory work to the deployment of the BVR teams,” said Mr Nyoni.
He said the deployment of voter educators and BVR teams comes after a successful training exercise of voter registration teams.
“Come February 1 (today), everyone will be at their stations attending to our clients,” he said.
Mr Nyoni said through voter education, members of the public would be advised on what they should present to Zec teams in order for them to successfully register to vote.
“We’ve had voter registration before when we were preparing for the 2018 elections, that’s where we had responses of people coming forward to register and at the end of the day, we had a specific number of people who registered in the province in their respective constituencies.
But those numbers in most of the constituencies were low. What we’re going to do now is a voter registration blitz that will be conducted throughout the country and we will deploy our voter registration teams,” said Mr Nyoni.
He said voter registration teams would be fronted by voter educators who will be motivating members of the public on the ground to vote.
“Say for example, we go to a community and there’s a school or a business centre, we set up our machines there. Our teams would’ve gone ahead and made the people aware that we’ll be registering people.
That’s the approach we’re now using. With voter education, we will be educating them on what they should present to the team for them to successfully register,” said Mr Nyoni.
He highlighted that in order for one to successfully register to vote, they have to be a citizen of Zimbabwe, 18 years of age and above, they have to have a national identification document or valid Zimbabwean passport and proof of residence.
“Even when you don’t have proof of residence, the teams will be having an affidavit that you can complete in case you visit without the proof of residence. However, the voter education would be specifically emphasising that one should bring proof of residence. We will first check anybody who visits our centre where we’ll be registering people on the voters’ roll.
“We’ll be having a search facility that has the national voters’ roll.
First, we check the ID, once we punch in the ID number, it will indicate all the other details; that you’re registered and you vote at a specific polling station.If you’re registered, we’ll just confirm, if the information is incorrect and you need to correct it, we’ll give you the opportunity to correct the information,” said Mr Nyoni. – @Yolisswa
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