Zanu-PF Mat South leadership challenged over voter registration

Yoliswa Dube-Moyo, Matabeleland South Bureau Chief
THE Zanu-PF leadership in Matabeleland South province has been challenged to encourage people in the seven administrative districts to register to vote as the province risks losing four constituencies if many people do not register to vote.

The province risks losing some parliamentary constituencies as only about 8 700 people registered to vote during the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (Zec) Biometric Voter Registration (BVR) blitz conducted in February and April.

Lack of information on voter registration exercise, lack of identity documents and general voter apathy were cited as reasons for the low numbers and Zec will soon conduct the delimitation exercise.

Delimitation, which is carried out after a population census and is provided for in Sections 160 and 161 of the Constitution, refers to the dividing of the country into constituencies and wards for the purposes of elections and involves coming up with a minimum threshold of registered voters in each of the country’s 210 National Assembly constituencies.

The exercise could see constituencies with a low number of registered voters being merged with others while those with a high number could be split, subject to the number of registered voters.

The numbers of voters in each province will be used for the delimitation exercise that will determine the number of constituencies.

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.

The region is the least represented in Parliament, with 38 parliamentary seats out of 210 constituencies. Bulawayo has 12 while Matabeleland South and Matabeleland North have 13 each.

In an interview after a Zanu-PF Provincial Co-ordinating Committee meeting in Gwanda on Sunday, Matabeleland South provincial chairman Cde Nqobizitha Mangaliso Ndlovu said Matabeleland South was a Zanu-PF stronghold and they should not allow themselves to lose constituencies.

“Although the voter registration blitz has ended, we want to continue to help people so that they go and register to vote because they’ll still vote next year. We are a Zanu-PF stronghold and have been getting everything on offer in previous elections and we must not allow ourselves to lose that position,” said Cde Ndlovu.

He said the PCC had also resolved to deploy teams to begin registration of war veterans as internal elections will be coming soon.

“This was a special PCC as we needed to highlight the guidelines for the Veterans of the Liberation Struggle structures. We assigned people to go back to the districts to notify our members and begin registration. It’s a process and we hope to be done with the registration process by the end of July,” said Cde Ndlovu.

He said once the registration process was complete, elections will start from district level.

“We’ll start with district elections, followed by provincial elections and that process will lead to the national elections,” said Cde Ndlovu. — @Yolisswa