DCC chaos a threat to Zanu PF election drive

Comment & Analysis
BY NQABA MATSHAZI ZANU PF’s drive for an election this year seems to be faltering, as the party squabbles over District Coordinating Committee (DCC) elections.

President Robert Mugabe had declared that he would announce the way forward on elections at the end of May, but with 10 days to go before the end of the month, such an announcement is yet to come.

 

Instead of focusing on elections, the party is tearing its collective hairs apart trying to deal with the divisive DCC elections.

DCC elections were supposed to be the democratising factor within Zanu PF, but as Mugabe bemoaned, they have been characterised by vote buying, violence and the imposition of candidates.

Webster Shamu, the party’s commissar, has been given yet another chance to try and sort out the mess within the party, but there is pessimism that the results would be any different.

Disturbances have rocked Manicaland and Masvingo, while Bulawayo and Matabeleland North do not seem to find consensus on who should lead the party in those areas.

Midlands has also not been spared, while question marks still hang over a number of other districts and provinces.

A Zanu PF aligned political analyst, Gabriel Chaibva reckons the DCC problems are internal and would not affect the party’s plan to have elections this year.

“That is an internal democratic process of the party; it is different from the national processes,” he said. “The party can conduct elections in all the DCCs throughout the country in two days and we can still go ahead with elections.”

Chaibva said the DCC elections were a sign of the party’s democratic vibrancy and should not be misconstrued.

But Dumisani Nkomo, a political analyst, said it would be suicidal for Zanu PF to go ahead with elections when its house was not in order.

“If they insist on going for elections then we will witness apathy and in some cases the party may field multiple candidates and that will be suicidal for them,” he said.

In 2008, Zanu PF went for elections as a divided house and in some cases they fielded more than one candidate per constituency.

It is reported that in some cases the candidates would persuade the electorate to vote for Zanu PF legislators and councillors, but they could vote for whoever they wanted at presidential level.

This saw the party, for the first time since independence, losing its majority in parliament, while Mugabe lost a first round vote to MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai.

Nkomo said if Zanu PF insisted on going for elections, there was a risk that some scorned party members would undermine Mugabe and in so doing “torpedo has election drive”.