Zanu-PF pushes grassroots membership drive in Mat North

Zanu-PF Matabeleland North provincial chairman Cde Richard Moyo has called for concerted efforts to increase cell and village-level membership, particularly in Hwange, Nkayi and Tsholotsho districts.

Cde Moyo said the membership drive was critical as a growing number of youths who were below the voting age during the 2023 harmonised elections had now attained 18 years and were eligible to register as voters.

He said the province had the potential to significantly increase its voter base by 2030 if party structures intensified mobilisation and membership recruitment at grassroots level.

Cde Moyo was addressing the Zanu-PF Matabeleland North Provincial Inter-District Conference in Lupane on Saturday.

He said the province had participated in the nationwide digital membership data capturing and cell verification exercise led by the National Political Commissariat to establish an accurate computerised party membership database and eliminate errors in the records.

“The party seeks to verify and streamline grassroots records that allows instant membership records. However, several errors were encountered in uploading membership into the system culminating to the process of data cleaning.

“The data cleaning exercise will fix the spelling errors, mismatched identity numbers and other missing particulars from manual submissions.

“Once the exercise is finalised, it will establish a reliable grassroots statistics from cell/village structures up to province and national.”

Cde Moyo said 196 specialised data capturers, commensurate with the number of wards in the province, together with coordinating teams, had been deployed across the administrative districts to undertake the exercise.

The data capturers used existing cell and village registers as source documents in compiling the membership database.

“Note that out of the 147 289 members uploaded into the data base system, 40 650 were rejected because of errors of original entry already alluded to above. I urge us all to assist on correction of these errors while we wait for the roll-out of the National Data Cleaning exercise,” Cde Moyo told delegates.

He said the figures showed the need for the party to strengthen its grassroots structures and expand its membership base across the province.

“The total number of members uploaded members into the database (147 289) is far below half the number of registered voters (371 872) in terms of the 2023 harmonised elections voters’ role.”

Cde Moyo said the gap between the party’s recorded membership and the provincial voter population presented an opportunity for the party to intensify mobilisation, particularly in districts where membership levels remained low.

“This calls for consented effort to increase the number of cell/village membership particularly in Hwange, Nkayi and Tsholotsho Districts as man more youths who were below 18 years in 2023 are now eligible voters with potential to double the number of registered voters in 2030.”

He urged party members and structures to assist in correcting errors in the membership database while strengthening the cell and village structures, which form the foundation of the party’s grassroots mobilisation network.

The exercise, he said, would ultimately provide the party with more reliable membership statistics and improve the coordination of its structures from the grassroots to provincial and national levels.