Call for women participation in politics

TENDAI BHEBE  IN BULAWAYO 

A non-governmental organisation, the Women’s Institute  for Leadership Development (WILD),  has urged women to participate in politics as candidates and voters, as part of efforts to promote gender equality.

Permanent Ngoma, the programmes manager for WILD said: “With the upcoming elections, as an organisation we would like to encourage women to rise up and participate in numbers both as candidates and as voters so that we ensure that there is equal representation of both women and men.”

Statistics show that from a total of 61 candidates who filed their papers for the forthcoming by-elections, only 13 are women in Bulawayo and Matabeleland North provinces.

Of the 13 women, only one registered to contest in the National Assembly in Bulawayo’s Pumula constituency and the rest for local authority vacant seats.

Bulawayo has two constituencies, Pumula and Nkulumane and nine council seats that are vacant.

Ngoma said political parties should implement policies that ensure equal representation of women and men.

As the 2019 Global Gender Gap report notes, the largest disparity is in women’s political participation.

In Sub-Saharan Africa it will take at least 135 years to close the gender gap based on current trends.

“What we saw with the previous elections is that some political parties  had more than one candidate per ward or constituency that caused a lot of confusion and in-house political parties.

“Hence, this year we request that we be different, we request that political parties are more organised in the upcoming elections,” Ngoma said.

Zimbabwe has a total of 133 elective vacancies, which comprise 28 parliamentary seats and 105 council seats emanating from recalls, deaths or dismissals.

Subsequent nomination courts for these vacancies sat on January 26, and  January 28, 2022 across the country.