Chronicle Editor
Sukulwenkosi Dube-Matutu, Matabeleland South Bureau Chief
THE Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (Zec) will next week roll out a voter education exercise on the delimitation exercise as part of the final preparatory stages as the country prepares to hold the 2023 harmonised elections.
The final stage of preparing for delimitation involves, among other things, formulating district and provincial delimitation committees, and recruiting and training voter educators and support staff.
Technical personnel that will be delimiting boundaries have been trained.
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 number of voters in each province will be used for the delimitation exercise that will determine the number of constituencies.
Zec conducted phases 1 and 2 of its mobile voter registration which it concluded in February and April this year respectively ahead of the delimitation exercise.
The number of eligible voters, who registered for the first time during the second phase of the Zec mobile biometric voter registration (BVR) blitz increased by 100 percent compared with those who registered in the first phase. The second phase of the voter registration blitz, which ran from April 11 to 30, saw a total 109 405 people registering to vote in next year’s harmonised elections.
Speaking during a meeting in Gwanda, Matabeleland South provincial elections officer Mr Rabson Nyoni urged provincial heads to submit names of personnel that will be recruited as voter educators.
“We are at the final stages of preparing for the delimitation exercise. The final stages include recruitment training of staff that will come from the departments to beef up Zec so that we are able to do voter education. As heads of Government departments may you provide the list of human resources,” he said.
“We have already trained the technical personnel at district and provincial levels. We intend to continue the training after constituting both the district and provincial delimitation committees.”
Mr Nyoni said the provincial committee will be made of selected provincial heads.
“We have departments and ministries that have something to do with the delimitation process and these are the personnel that we will be targeting. The engagement process will be spread out to cover all stakeholders,” he said.
He said they will also engage other stakeholders such as political parties, CSOs, and traditional leaders among others on the delimitation exercise.
Mr Nyoni said the voter education exercise on delimitation is important as it requires the buy-in of community members and other stakeholders for it to be successful.
“Voter education is likely to start around 9 or 10 October after we would have trained the educators then we will deploy them to the wards and constituencies. This will be done in a phased approach. We are targeting to conduct the voter education exercise for a period of 30 days,” he said.
Section 161 of the Constitution of Zimbabwe obliges Zec to conduct delimitation of the electoral boundaries once every 10 years soon after a population census. For purposes of the boundary delimitation, the voters’ roll was closed on May 30.
Voter registration shall, however, remain open for purposes of any by-election that may become necessary and the 2023 harmonised elections.
Mr Nyoni said there were some disputes over boundaries in the province and relevant stakeholders had to resolve them.
“At the time of delimitation, Zec will request boundaries for each local authority, boundaries of each district, and boundaries of each province. We need to have a clearly defined boundary for each local authority which will help us know where the jurisdiction of each local authority starts and ends,” he said.
Mr Nyoni said going into the delimitation exercise, it is important for every citizen to have full details of their address including the name of the street and suburb. He said some streets and suburbs remain unnamed.
In terms of Section 161 (7) of the Constitution, after delimitation, Zec shall produce and submit a preliminary report to the President.
The report shall contain a list of the wards and constituencies, with the names assigned to each and a description of their boundaries, a map showing the wards and constituencies, and any further information or particulars that the commission considers necessary. — @DubeMatutu
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