Zanu PF to go all out to win back urban vote –Mutsvangwa

Harare (New Ziana) – The ruling Zanu PF party plans to go all out in a bid to win the urban vote which has been going to the opposition over the past two decades, a senior official said on Friday.

Zanu PF national spokesperson Christopher Mutsvangwa said this while briefing the media after the first meeting of the party’s highest decision making body outside congress, the politburo, following the recent harmonised elections.

He said with the opposition Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) having accepted defeat at the polls, Zanu PF was now working on winning back the urban vote.

“We are confident that Zanu PF will continue to recover and strengthen its rural vote but at the same time continuing with the urban renewal program, which will see Zanu PF increasingly win back the urban vote,”
he said.

“We lost a lot of seats in urban areas and the main reason is there is a time lag between the rural and mining areas as the primary sources of resources which are then processed or manufactured in towns. It takes
time for the results of the rural revival to cotton on with the urban areas but we think with the open for business mantra, very soon there will be rapid industrialization and modernization in urban areas. Once that gets into gear, we are very confident that the urban voter will see the merit of what Zanu PF and President (Emmerson) Mnangagwa have been doing with their open for business mantra.”

He said the politburo had noted during a postmortem of the recent elections that the CCC had, despite some gripes at Presidential level, accepted its defeat at National Assembly and local government levels while it did not have any evidence of being cheated during the elections.

Mutsvangwa said despite the ruling party’s poor performance in urban areas, there was “a silver lining on the horizon, an aspect which became evident in the increasing indifference of the urban voter to CCC which suffered a 20 percent to 30 percent voter reduction in the just ended elections.”

The reduced margins were as a result of indifference, apathy and disgruntlement which Mutsvangwa attributed to the one-man band CCC’s disorganization and lack of democratic principles as evidenced by the imposition of candidates in the run up to the elections.

“Decisions are made by an individual; they don’t have democratic elections when they are choosing their candidates so this eventually will catch up with the CCC, so we think we are on the right road as a party. We were very happy with the performance of our President he increased his percentage vote from about 50 percent to 52.6 percent. At the same time there was a reduction in the percentage vote of Chamisa who is the main protagonist,” said Mutsvangwa.

Zanu PF was particularly happy with the country’s oldest African township, Mbare which voted for it.

“It is sending a signal to other townships that Zanu PF is the way to go, is the future. Once that message of hope gets into the urban areas, we will be on a roll, because the rural areas we have held on to our vote, yes there have been some areas where triple c made inroads, its fair, it’s a democracy, it only shows that we live to our precepts as a democratic party but their gains are not that alarming to us,” said Mutsvangwa.

He said while the President thanked his party for the election victory, the politburo lauded him for the energy and zest he displayed as he undertook a countrywide campaign tour.

Mashonaland Central was hailed for giving the ruling party its most emphatic victory and the largest presidential votes and would be rewarded by hosting one of the party’s victory celebrations while the other goes to Matabeleland North, where Zanu PF was making major inroads.

With the ongoing industrialization through the revival of the energy sector, projects like the Gwayi-Shangani Dam and the Victoria Falls special economic zone, the ruling party expected to make a comeback in the province.

“We are also happy with Manicaland because the President made a lot of gains, he actually won Manicaland and it is one of the most populous provinces in terms of voters. When we saw him beat Chamisa in Manicaland we knew for sure that Zanu PF was going to romp home to victory,” Mutsvangwa said.

New Ziana