The ManicaPost
Abel Zhakata Senior Reporter—
ZANU-PF’s emphatic victory in the Chimanimani West by-election last Saturday re-affirmed the ruling party’s dominance in national politics as long as the revolutionary movement shuns factionalism.The party’s candidate, Cde Nokhutula Matsikenyere, walloped opposition and independent candidates amassing a total of 11 074 votes with her closest rival Mr Peter Mutetwa (Independent) getting 3 018 votes.
Renewal Democrats of Zimbabwe’s Peter Gudyanga had 183 votes, while Peter Musaruka of the National Constitutional Assembly got 171 votes.
Smarting from the Norton debacle where deep-rotted factionalism resulted in the party losing the seat to an independent candidate Mr Temba Mliswa, the Chimanimani West by-election campaign trail was punctuated by unity of purpose.
Soon after the announcement of the results last Sunday morning, Cde Matsikenyere, said the win was for the party as it mirrored the oneness that was shown by party members right from the cell, district, provincial, Central Committee and Politburo who campaigned in the constituency.
“We won with such a big margin because we respected the wishes of the people. We campaigned as a unit and the results were tremendous,” she said and added:
“It was not an easy task because we were working against a lot of adversaries. On one hand we had the private media which were spreading unfounded allegations of massive vote-buying and violence against our campaigns.
“On the other hand we also had to face head-on real socio-economic issues affecting villagers in this constituency. These hard to swallow issues revolved around issues like high levels of unemployment, hunger, Chiadzwa diamonds, collapsed irrigation schemes and an array of other problems.
“Yes, the country is facing a lot of problems on the economic front, but our campaigning teams did well in explaining to the electorate the various fundamentals at play that are causing these ills and the remedies Zanu-PF has to offer.
“All those issues were articulated well and, at the end of the day, the electorate bought our ideas and voted us into power. What is now left is for us to walk the talk.”
Cde Matsikenyere quickly rolled out her plans for the constituency which is lacking on many fronts in terms of development.
“I want all the schools to have electricity. This will enable us to move ahead with our computerization programme which is still in its infancy. At present we have distributed about 100 computers that we sourced from well wishers. More are on their way and we want every school to benefit. You cannot talk of meaningful education these days without computerisation.
“This is a semi-arid constituency which receives below normal rainfall yearly. It is my wish that every village should have a borehole and as I speak we have started drilling some at some centres. People should easily access water and we don’t want women to walk very long distances in search of water.
“Villagers are wasting precious time looking for water instead of engaging themselves in self help projects in the irrigation schemes”, she said.
