Harare (New Ziana) -Fledgling opposition party The African Democrats (TAD) plans to field candidates for Parliamentary and local government seats in up to 20 constituencies during the forthcoming polls to be held between July and August this year, an official has said.
TAD leader Marco Machona, who holds a PHD in food security from Wits University, South Africa, told New Ziana that they intended to field candidates in all the five Gokwe constituencies and two others in the Midlands, namely Chirumanzu and Gweru Urban.
During the 2018 harmonised elections, TAD contested in only one constituency, Gokwe-Sesame, with Machona as the Parliamentary candidate and four others standing in local council wards.
Created by South African-based Zimbabweans keen to carve a niche on the local political scene, TAD has also identified three constituencies that at it plans to contest in Masvingo, namely Bikita West, Masvingo Urban and Masvingo West.
It also plans to contest in Domboshava, Goromonzi district in Mashonaland East province, with the number of constituencies that it is eyeing expected to reach 20 in the next 30 days.
Candidates chosen for each constituency would nominate those that would stand for the party in all the local government seats available in the constituency.
“What led us to form this political organisation was that we could not find ourselves, the majority of us who had been out of the country for a long time, we could not find space, an area to navigate, to express ourselves,” said Machona.
“We felt at times that our ideas were too alien, sometimes too strange, then we decided to form a political party.”
Machona said his party decided to do a trial run in Gokwe-Sesame in 2018 and the encouraging results (it came third behind the ruling ZANU PF and second placed MDC-A) spurred it to go for the 2023 elections at a bigger scale.
He attributed the achievement to its strategy of focusing on development, assisting with health care, sinking two boreholes and rehabilitating three dip tanks in the constituency.
The party also launched a value addition project of processing maize meal and cooking oil as a way of creating jobs for the youth.
Machona said his party was convinced that the same strategy would stand it in good stead in the forthcoming elections.
“The idea is maybe if we can expand to about 30 councillors, 15 or 20 MPs, 2 or 3 Senators in those selected constituencies,” he said.
“It is work in progress and also we are very optimistic with the space that we are exploring because our politics is not confrontational but developmental. It is gaining a lot of traction because as we discuss politics we also talk about job creation and contributing to the transformation of communities.”
New Ziana
