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Asked whether there were no such guidelines before, Cde Gumbo said: “We had some in the past but a lot of amendments are being done. This is being done by the legal affairs department and will also involve the elections directorate.”
Cde Gumbo said apart from the guidelines, a mobilisation team headed by Zanu-PF secretary for administration Cde Didymus Mutasa, was also expected to play an important role in uniting the party to ensure victory in the upcoming harmonised elections.
“The mobilisation team headed by Cde Mutasa will play an important role in addressing issues to do with factionalism,” he said.
Cde Gumbo said Zanu-PF had already started tackling issues that were causing divisions in the party.
“We disbanded the district co-ordinating committees (DCCs) because they were dividing the people. They were the ones that were fuelling divisions and factionalism in the party. We need to clean up the party to ensure that there are no divisions. We will try by all means to ensure that the guidelines for conducting primary elections provide mechanisms dealing with the imposition of candidates, which was being caused by factionalism,” he said.
Cde Gumbo said Zanu-PF would carry out a lot of educational programmes ahead of the elections.
“There will be a lot of political education before and after the primary elections so that people know what is at stake,” he said.
Addressing the 90th session of the Zanu-PF Central Committee last week in Harare, President Mugabe condemned factionalism and urged unity in the party to ensure that the costly failures of 2008 were not repeated.
“Let us now look forward in unity and have discipline of a level much higher than 2008. Be united. Be focused. Be selfless and the party as a whole is what we are working for even if you stand as an individual in your constituency.
“A winning party needs discipline, needs order, focus and direction. Factions never build a strong party. Factions arise from selfishness and egotism that has no room in a party which is a people’s party. Let us move as one solid body and that way we will win as one. We won Chimurenga because we were united,” said President Mugabe in the address.
Divisions characterised the run-up to the 2008 harmonised elections landing the party in an inclusive political arrangement with the MDC formations despite the huge differences in ideology and policies.
President Mugabe made it clear after the elections that some of the members not happy with the way primaries were conducted “vakakavira bhora mudondo,” leading to the party’s poor showing in the polls.
derick.khumalo
Online Reporter