Zanu PF Harare Province Chairmanship will be among the hotly contested posts in soon-to-be-held party provincial elections with four party bigwigs throwing their names in the hat for the influential post.
Goodwills Masimirembwa, Harare Acting Provincial Chairman will battle it out with rival Goodwin Gomwe, Harare deputy chairperson.
Jaison Passade, former Mt Pleasant MP and Boniface Karoro, former Central Committee Member are also bidding for the post.
The battle has so far been between Masimirembwa and Gomwe, reaching fever pitch in September at the Zanu PF Harare provincial meeting at the party headquarters to discuss impending district elections.
Gomwe was alleged to have assaulted the province acting chairperson Goodwills Masimirembwa with a chair.
Gomwe accused Masimirembwa of creating fictitious party districts to facilitate the rigging of internal elections in favour of Harare’s Minister of State, Oliver Chidawu.
He was to later appear at Harare Magistrates Court facing assault charges.
The altercation came as the ruling Zanu PF bigwigs were throwing the kitchen sink at the party district elections with top officials lining their ducks in a roll in a desperate bid to plant their proxies into the lower structures of the party.
Establishing proxies at district level increases ones influence in the upper rungs of the ruling party.
Zanu PF districts are a key organ whose office bearers form the Electoral College for the party’s primary elections and provincial elections.
The internal elections which sparked violence across the country threatened to split the ruling party.
It was then that details of vote buying and factionalism, contained in a dossier, were handed to President Emmerson Mnangagwa prompting him to suspended provincial elections.
At one point, insiders say Mnangagwa weighed the option of co-opting individuals into Zanu PF chairmanship posts to avoid the fragmented party from further splitting ahead the 2023 election.
Speaking on the suspension of the provincial elections in September, then Zanu PF acting spokesperson Mike Bimha told journalists that the party had suspended provincial elections to allow the smooth running of the National Annual People’s Conference set for October 25 – 31.
“The politburo resolved to suspend provincial elections until further notice so as to allow the structures to concentrate on the conference preparations,” he said.
