Moses Matenga
Zanu PF women are crying foul over the political environment in the country that does not seem to be friendly to them, a situation that led to less than 10% making it through to represent the party ahead of the July 30 harmonised elections.
It emerged out of 210 people who will represent the party in the harmonised elections, a handful of women made it, a situation that has angered their leadership.
Manicaland Minister of State Monica Mutsvangwa said she had a discussion on the matter with Zanu PF Women’s league boss Mabel Chinomona who also registered her displeasure.
“Out of 210, we don’t have even 10%. We are yet to achieve 30%, let alone 50%. We want to see more women. We are not happy. Let us however remain focused and vote for our party Zanu PF and President ED Mnangagwa,” she said.
She said the party should come up with a way to accommodate women if the 50-50 representation policy is to be achieved.
Women constitute a larger percentage in the country’s population and also registered voters with 55%.
Recently, President Emerson Mnangagwa said he was not impressed with the number of women who won in the Zanu PF primary elections.
He said Zanu PF should find a better model in order to increase women’s representation in Parliament.
“In Zanu PF it was quite disappointing that the process was opened fully for a democratic contest where the winner is elected but as has been stated the result was that only 10% of women came through,” he said.
“As a political party we have discussed this and agreed that we need a reasonable formula that allows for more women to come through. The current democratic process did not yield the desired results.”
Observers say some of the reasons women were shunning away from political participation was the violence usually associated with the political terrain, regarded by many as a hard hat area.
