Zanu-PF plans to reclaim urban wards

Zanu-PF has come up with strategies to reclaim urban wards that it lost in Matabeleland South Province during harmonised elections held in July, an official has said.

Speaking during the party's victory celebrations held in Ward 4, Matshiloni in Beitbridge West Constituency, provincial chairman Rabelani Choeni said the party has had a post-mortem of the last elections and was ready to address some of the issues which affected them in urban settlements. He said though they had done well in National Assembly and Presidential elections, it was high time they regained ground in urban areas.

"We have taken stock of the last harmonised elections where we had landslide victory in National Assembly and Presidential Elections.

However, we need to address issues in urban settlements where we lost a few wards.

"In essence we have the medicine to cure that aliment. We know the issues and are going to address them and for us to succeed we need to work together from grassroots up to the national level," said Choeni.

He said Zanu-PF was still strong in the province considering that they won 12 constituencies out of 13 in parliamentary elections. He said in 2013 they had a clean sweep of everything that was on offer.

Choeni added that said they will soon start working on a massive party restructuring and moblisation programme.

"In the next coming few weeks, we will be on the ground working on our cells, branches, districts and provinces. This is to ensure that we consolidate what we have on the ground and build more support base.

"It is important that we register all our members and match the opposition parties man to man. However, this is a process which will be guided by the party's ethos. We are also happy that some fence sitters have started joining the party, they have realised that we are here to stay and the only institution with people at heart," said Choeni.

Addressing the same crowd, Beitbridge West parliamentarian Ruth Maboyi said it was important for communities, traditional leaders, and development agencies to work together in rolling out socio-economic development projects. She said leaders must always consult with communities so that they pool resources together with one shared vision.

"For us to move forward as a community, as a people, we must have mutual understanding built on respect and consultation. Let's have a shared vision of where we want to be in the next few years and we roll out projects in order of priority. "There are a lot of issues we need to collaborate efforts on, especially on socio-economic empowerment, water and sanitation and infrastructure development," she said.