Zanu-PF Byo to audit structures Dr Ignatius Chombo
Cde Ignatius Chombo

Cde Ignatius Chombo

Nduduzo Tshuma Political Editor
ZANU-PF Bulawayo Province will embark on an audit of its district structures following concerns by the national leadership that they are cooking up numbers to create a false impression of the party’s membership.

Party national secretary for administration Cde Ignatius Chombo last Friday rapped the party’s provincial structures for providing fictitious and shambolic membership records, which affect strategy formulation and projection of election results.

Cde Chombo, addressing a workshop for secretaries of administration in the main, women and youth wings at a Bulawayo hotel, singled out Bulawayo as the major culprit in inflating the number of party structures, purporting to have 115 districts yet numbers in recent elections only tallied in five districts.

He said it had become a culture that provinces inflate the number of party districts to have superiority over others with regards to allocation of leadership positions and perceived party strength.

Zanu-PF Bulawayo provincial secretary for administration, Cde Nacisio Makhulumo yesterday said the party’s executive would meet soon to reorganise the provincial structures in accordance with the numbers they have.

“The issue here is a long story but we had 108 districts before the 2013 elections but the provincial executive then claimed they had discovered some more districts and seven were added. Initially, there were 54 political districts in the province until the late Vice President John Nkomo was appointed and advised us to expand the structures,” said Cde Makhulumo.

“The districts were then doubled but the problem is that it was done in a haphazard manner. We didn’t have properly qualified people to do the process and so it was carried out without following procedures. The whole process fell in the hands of power hungry people driven by aggrandisement and chaos started.”

Cde Makhulumo said going forward, the province would need to revisit the districts and make sure that they tally with existing numbers.

“We’ll use the constituencies and wards to build the structures. If we build from constituency to ward, we’ll have many people in the structures. We can’t continue giving fictitious numbers, if it means we reduce to a few districts so be it as long as they’re a true reflection of the party’s structures,” he said.

Cde Makhulumo said the party was viewed with a lot of suspicion because some former office holders who came from opposition parties, occupied positions for selfish gains and not for the benefit of the party.

“We want a situation where the party will register more than 10,000 votes in the 2018 elections so real work has to begin and we need to be honest with ourselves,” he said.

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