Chronicle Editor
Nqobile Tshili, Chronicle Reporter
ZANU-PF held peaceful primary elections yesterday to choose candidates to represent the party in the March 26 by-elections to fill vacant National Assembly and council seats. Matabeleland region has 20 vacant council and four National Assembly seats.
Bulawayo has nine vacant council seats; Matabeleland North has five and Matabeleland South has six.
A total of 117 council and 28 National Assembly seats are up for grabs countrywide.
Bulawayo’s seats fell vacant following the recall of eight councillors and the death of Ronnah Mudara all from the MDC-T party while in Matabeleland North two councillors were recalled in Victoria Falls and three Zanu-PF councillors died.
In Matabeleland South, the MDC-T recalled three councillors.
The ruling party held peaceful primary elections in the Matabeleland region with Politburo members who supervised them expressing satisfaction over how they were conducted.
Dr David Parirenyatwa who was in charge of Matabeleland South said it was important for the party to conduct internal polls as the best candidates come from the people.
“It’s a party strengthening exercise, it’s in-house and it should not cause much disharmony.
We are very proud of what has happened in Matabeleland South so far.
There was no incident of misconduct and violence.
We will be compiling a full report which we will make available tomorrow (today),” said Dr Parirenyatwa.
“The candidates must come from the people and should have requisite stamina to fight and promote their communities.
And what is important is to make sure that the candidates are coming from the people and have not been imposed on the people.”
Zanu-PF’s secretary for war veterans Cde Douglas Mahiya who was in charge of the process in Bulawayo said the internal polls were conducted in a peaceful environment.
“On Thursday we had a smooth day to prepare for today and all polling started on time.
The environment was very peaceful and our people were very disciplined and our people were not involved in any violence.
Everything is up to standard,” he said.
“Results are starting to trickle in now, but those results are only coming to the provincial command centre.
But we are not going to announce any winner at all because it is the duty of the national command in Harare.”
Cde Mahiya said the party’s national command centre will declare the primary election winners for both National Assembly and Local Government seats.
Cde July Moyo, who was supervising the polls in Matabeleland North, said besides a few logistical issues he was satisfied with the level of maturity in the province.
“Binga was a challenge because some of the polling stations are 150km from the centre and the roads are bad so we are waiting to see if all of them have voted. We are expecting that all the results will be in tomorrow (today) morning.
Tsholotsho is the same, but its furthest place was 40km from the centre and we expect that Tsholotsho might finish earlier than Binga,” said Cde Moyo.
He said there were no misconduct issues and the party had directed that all candidates should deploy polling agents across the polling stations for accountability purposes. – @nqotshili
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