Industrialization will swing urban vote back to Zanu PF – Chinamasa

Harare (New Ziana) –The industrialization program which the government of President Emmerson Mnangagwa initiated will swing the urban vote back to the revolutionary party in future elections, a senior official has said.

Zanu PF treasurer-general, Patrick Chinamasa said this on Thursday while briefing the media as senior party leaders from different provinces emerged out of State House where they had gone to congratulate President Mnangagwa on his victory and inauguration,

In the just ended harmonised elections, Zanu PF won 136 seats mostly from rural constituencies while the opposition Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) managed 73, dominating all major urban areas where it also swept most of the available local authority seats.

Chinamasa, who was speaking on behalf of the Zanu PF Manicaland provincial leadership, said the urban vote swung to the opposition around 2000 following the collapse of industry in the country.

“As you are aware, we had support in urban areas right up to 2000 when industries were collapsed. There were no jobs for urban areas and I believe that much of their feeling against the party (Zanu PF) is arising from the lack of jobs in the cities. As you know our economy is highly informalised, we should now transform from an informal economy to an industrialized economy and I believe when we do that it will win back the urban areas,” he said.

He said President Mnangagwa had now adopted the industrialization strategy and recently banned the export of some minerals to promote value addition and help create urban jobs.

The Manicaland ruling party leadership had taken the opportunity to discuss the achievements of the province, which include winning 21 out of the 27 available Parliamentary seats in the general elections, he explained.

It also discussed the developmental challenges facing the province after Cyclone Idai struck the country causing devastation in the Eastern Highlands, which compelled the government to divert resources towards big road construction from dam and irrigation developments that were supposed to have been completed during the first term of the Second Republic.

Speaking at the same occasion, Zanu PF Harare Metropolitan province chairperson Godwills Masimirembwa said they also faced challenges with the urban vote winning only four out of the thirty available Parliamentary seats and five local government seats.

Masimirembwa however felt that the party’s performance had improved in the province.

“We got four seats, What is critical for us is we got three from the opposition. We had only one in 2018, now we have four, so we are continuing to take from them. We had only one councillor, now we have five councillors in Harare municipality.”

Mashonaland East province, which garnered the second highest tally of votes for President Mnangagwa after Mashonaland Central, was upbeat and believed the President had played a key role in the province’s performance, citing completed projects in the nine administrative districts.

These include the Rwenya River Bridge and gold processing plant in Mudzi, Mutoko Secondary boarding school and the tomato processing plant in Mutoko, the Murehwa Registry and five blocks of flats in Uzumba-Maramba-Pfungwe among other projects.

“He is so happy that we voted tremendously well as a province,” said party provincial chairperson, Daniel Garwe.

Other delegations which paid courtesy calls to congratulate President Mnangagwa came from Mashonaland West, which had the third highest number of votes for the President, the Bulawayo Metropolitan province and the Zanu PF Youth League.

New Ziana