daniel chigunwe
Zimpapers Political Hub Reporter Joseph Madzimure (JM) interviewed newly appointed Zanu PF National Political Commissar Cde Munyaradzi Machacha (MM) on the restructuring exercise within the party, which is currently underway across the country.
Zanu PF began its restructuring exercise last Saturday in all provinces, the first step towards building its lower structures, registering new and taking stock of its members.
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JM: Congratulations on your new portfolio as the ruling party’s National Political Commissar.
MM: Thank you so much.
JM: I understand there is a cell/village restructuring exercise underway. Can you shed more light on that?
MM: Well, the cell restructuring exercise got under way on Saturday with some provinces conducting their Provincial Coordinating Committee meetings on Sunday, with Politburo-led teams dispatched in all the 10 provinces.
Zanu PF has got structures that stretch right down to the cell, which is the village level.
We have started a new programme that is going to see the party, right across the country, restructuring its smallest organ, which is the cell.
The programme will move in two phases. The first phase is the awareness, where we started with the Provincial Coordinating Committees last weekend.
We were informing all leaders of the party in the provinces the procedures that are going to be followed in implementing the programme.
The second phase will involve the actual work of recording all our members in the provinces at the lowest level of the village and then gathering data on each of our cells in the rural and urban areas.
In the second phase, we will also witness the election of the executive leadership of the cell, so that at the end of the exercise by July 17, we would have covered the whole country.
After this exercise, we will know exactly the number of cells we have across the country and the exact number of the members we have. That is the exercise which is currently going on.
JM: June 11, 2022, was proclaimed as the National Cell Day. Is the new restructuring exercise building on the National Cell Day and what is the anticipated outcome?
MM: Yes, the revolutionary party, Zanu PF, will have a National Cell Day on June 11, to mark the beginning of a sustained vigorous membership recruitment exercise and taking stock of its members.
The day will be celebrated annually to strengthen its grassroots, organisational and mass mobilisation units.
The programme puts emphasis on the importance of the cell or village structure as the basic grassroots organisational and mobilisation unit of the party, that is why we say “Musangano kumaSero”.
We expect everyone to be in the cell structure to account for our members.
On National Cell Day, all party members including the Presidium, will attend meetings at their respective cells, which will be chaired by cell chairpersons.
The meetings will explain to party members the role of the cell structure as a key organ of the party.
We are expecting party members to turn out to their respective cells, as a demonstration that the cells do exist. This will also empower cell leadership; they will know the expectations of their positions. The cell leaders are expected to meet with their members on a regular basis, to have an agenda for discussions on those meetings and to try and influence the events around their own localities, such as improving their own welfare; for instance, improving the conditions of their clinics, their schools or even repairing roads in their areas of jurisdiction that leads to the main feeder roads that may lead to cities.
These are some of the projects that can be done at cell level. Cell leaders should be able to discuss and solve issues that affect them.
JM: In 2023, the party targeted to mobilise six million votes, but the results showed that the target was not met. What needs to be realigned at grassroots level to grow the party base?
MM: We are concerned that our target of 6 million votes was not achieved and we are in the process of doing a soul searching in that regard to find out what really went wrong and why was not the target achieved.
Some of the reasons which we are finding are that some of our cell structures were not authentic and, this time around, we want to make sure we build authentic cell structures.
The other reason is that the figure was arrived at without really working out our membership base, those that were active and those that are likely to come out and vote therefore it became an unrealistic target in our view.
This time we want to make sure that what we claim comes to reality and increase the membership base, come election period.
So we are working on authentic verifiable party structures.
JM: Thank you.
Online Reporter