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Midlands Bureau
The battle for the control of Kwekwe City Council through the election of a ceremonial mayor is promising to be a tricky affair between Zanu-PF and the MDC-T as both parties have seven councillors each.
All elected councillors in the cities and towns are expected to elect  mayors or chairpersons at their first sitting.
An MDC-T official acknowledged the Kwekwe mayoral race was a tricky affair for both parties which might be decided by “slot method” or toss of a coin, if the councillors were to be tied in two consecutive sittings of voting.

Rusape has a similar challenge after Zanu-PF and MDC-T won five wards each.
In separate interviews, both Zanu-PF and MDC-T camps refused to reveal the identities of their preferred candidates, arguing that they were still in the process of intra party consultations.

Zanu-PF’s Midlands chief elections agent and provincial vice chairperson, Cde Larry Mavima, said as a party they wanted to come up with a candidate who had the people’s interests at heart.

He said the Kwekwe mayoral candidate should be a person who appealed to both sides of councillors to allow for quality service delivery.
“As Zanu-PF, we want to have a candidate of our own. Right now, we are in the process of consulting each other as a party so that we come up with a candidate who will address the problems of Kwekwe and end the chaos created by the previous MDC-T dominated council. We will sit down and hold a caucus for the positions of mayor and deputy mayor for Kwekwe. The candidates will come from the seven winning councillors naturally and we are confident of coming up with the right candidate,” said Cde Mavima.

MDC-T’s secretary for local government, Mr Blessing Chebundo, said his party would be guided by the voting patterns of the councillors.
He said although MDC-T had its preferred mayoral candidate, the party was prepared to accept whoever was elected mayor in a free and fair election.

“They will vote for a candidate of their choice. If there is a draw twice, the mayoral race will be decided by a toss of a coin or what they call slot. This is provided for in the Urban Councils Act. We are still to decide on our preferred candidate since we are in the process of engaging as a party,” said Mr Chebundo.