Disquiet over failure to get national IDs

 

TENDAI BHEBE IN BULAWAYO 

 

A coalition of civil society organisations (CSOs), EkhayaVote2023,  has raised concern over  failure  by the majority of people in Matabeleland region to obtain national identity cards (IDs) documents resulting in the low number of registered voters in the Matabeleland region.

The low number of registered voters will result in some of the constituencies lost during the forthcoming delimitation process.

The coalition has over 25 CSOs operating in Bulawayo, Matabeleland North and Matabeleland South provinces. 

The consortium seeks to embark on massive voter education campaigns, increase election awareness, grassroots mobilisation, enhance civic participation and the creation of a favourable environment prior to, during and post 2023 elections

EkhayaVote2023 spokesperson, Nkosikhona Dibiti said the issue of identity documents has become a problem. 

“As EkhayaVote2023, we came together to try to encourage people to register to vote.

Unfortunately the statistics that we are seeing from Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) are very worrying because they show that the least numbers of registered voters are found in Bulawayo, Matabeleland North and South Provinces where we currently work. 

“And the bigger challenge that we faced as we were doing the mobile registration blitz was the issue of IDs. These IDs have become a problem as many people did not have them,” he said.

According to official data published by ZEC, Bulawayo had the lowest number of registered people at 270 914,  from a national total of 5 804 975 people that had registered.

Dibiti said people should be educated on the importance of participating in elections.

“So our hope is whilst delimitation is coming it would not result in us losing constituencies and reduction of representation in parliament and also reduction in terms of constituency development funds and any other development funds because they will use these demographics.

 “But our idea was to make sure that we explain to citizens the nexus between elections and service delivery because elections are an event. Service delivery is our day to day experience so we need to think around those things and we hope going forward as we continuously mobilise resources,” he said. 

He said the delimitation process is around the corner. 

“Because at this juncture as people registered to vote we need to commit them to the district offices, to the Provincial offices which are really far away from the people and this is the only opportunity that is there for anyone who is not registered to vote to do so. 

“We encourage actually every Zimbabwean across the country to register to vote. Unfortunately, the voter roll for delimitation might be close but this is the opportunity for everyone to actually make a decision to choose their own leaders,” he said. 

ZEC conducted phase 1 and 2 of its mobile voter registration which it concluded in the months of February and April 2022 ahead of the delimitation exercise. 

Delimitation, which is carried out after a population census and is provided for in Sections 160 and 161 of the Constitution, refers to the dividing of the country into constituencies and wards for the purposes of elections and involves coming up with a minimum threshold of registered voters in each of the country’s 210 National Assembly constituencies. 

Section 161 of the Constitution of Zimbabwe obliges ZEC to conduct delimitation of the electoral boundaries once every 10 years soon after the conduct of a population census.

 

 

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