The ruling Zanu PF bigwigs are throwing the kitchen sink at the party district elections that get underway across the country today 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.
In Mashonaland West, violence has been reported in patches between rival camps. In the province Provincial Minister Mary Mliswa is set to battle it out in the impeding provincial elections with the province’s youth chairperson Vengi Musengi and the Ziyambi Ziyambi backed Abia Mujere.
In Midlands a storm with Minister of State for National Security in the President’s Office Owen Ncube battling it out for the post of the province’s chairperson with Mayor Wadyajena.
In Masvingo business is no longer usual as those who are against the leadership of Ezra Chadzamira are already fighting for him to be caged.
“Those who are not in Chadzamira’s corner are already exposing his shenanigans so that voters can dump him for the preferred Engelbert Rugeje,” a Zanu Pf source in Masvingo told Zim Morning Post.
In Mashonaland Central, the ruling party’s chairman for the province Kazembe Kazembe whose back has been against the ropes in the province is facing accusations of plotting to manipulate the province’s political district elections to swing the outcome to his favour.
Kazembe will be challenged in impeding provincial elections by former Education minister Lazarus Dokora, businessman James Makamba and former MP Christopher Chitindi, among others.
However, the battle lines are already being drawn at the party district elections that get underway today running up to September 26.
“Mashonaland Central will today hold its Provincial Executive meeting to discuss modalities for the holding of the elections,” said a Zanu PF official who declined to be named as they do not have authority to speak to the media.
“Regrettably, a plot has been hatched by the Kazembe cabal to manipulate the political district elections so that the outcome will swing in his favour. For starters, they want to deploy DCC officials from one district to another remote district, in a fashion that the big districts that are Dokora strongholds are manned by his mercenaries who will rig elections in favour of some candidates who will vote.”
Dokora was last week targeted by internal party rivals who used claw hammers to smash the former minister’s vehicle.
The jostling for positions come as Kazembe has been trying, without luck, to line his ducks in a roll.
Recently he announced co-options that were later nullified by the party’s Commissariat. Zanu PF’s acting national political commissar Patrick Chinamasa responded by banning all co-options, arguing they were divisive.
The district elections are part of Zanu PF’s massive root-and-branch shake-up which will see its entire structures, right from the cell to the central committee, being reconfigured through elections.
However, the divisions caused by the restructuring process could split the party ahead of the 2023 elections.
