Zanu-PF 'flooded' with CVs

Zanu-PF has been overwhelmed by aspiring candidates who intend to contest in the May 5 primary elections, the party's provincial leaders have said.

All provinces are expected to meet this weekend to go through all the CVs submitted by deadline day on Thursday.

Zanu-PF's provincial chairpersons say the response was a manifestation that the new team led by the party's First Secretary, Emmerson Mnangagwa, has managed to energise the party's base.

Mashonaland Central provincial chairperson Kazembe Kazembe said the province will meet tomorrow to go through the CVs.

"The response has been overwhelming," he said. "We will meet as a province on Sunday to go through the CVs. We have received about 800 CVs in respect of local authorities and more than 400 CVs in respect of Members of Parliament.

"The challenge we have now as a province is whether or not we will be able to go through all of them within the timeframe, given their huge number. Our aim is to ensure that we submit them to party headquarters by Monday."

Mashonaland Central province has 18 parliamentary constituencies.

According to Kazembe, the response is an indication of the party's internal democracy.

"We have asked our staff to first categorise the CVs for ease of reference once our process begins," he said. "What excites us about the huge response is that it is an indictment that there is democracy in Zanu-PF.

"It also shows that the party is popular and many people would want to be associated with it."

Matabeleland North provincial chairperson Richard Moyo said they had received more than 400 CVs and would be submitting them to the party's headquarters on Monday.

"We are already in the process of going through the CVs and on Monday, we will be heading to Harare to submit them," he said. "We have received more than 400 CVs and everything went well. We are now waiting to have primary elections."

Mashonaland East provincial chairperson Biggie Matiza said the provincial executive would go through the CVs today.

"Everything went on well," he said. "We have managed to resolve all challenges that we encountered during the process and everyone is happy about the process.

"We are meeting tomorrow as a province to go through the CVs. We hope to be through this weekend and submit them to head office on or by Monday."

Harare province was by yesterday counting the CVs that had been submitted.

The province's chairperson, Godwills Masimirembwa, said they hopefully expected to start the verification process today.

"We are here at the party's provincial offices," he said. "Basically, we are counting the CVs to establish how many we got in respect of local authority, National Assembly and senatorial elections.

"We have not yet started verifying them, we hope to do that tomorrow (today) once we are through with the process that we are undertaking."

Masvingo provincial chairperson Ezra Chadzamira said they were through with both counting and verifying the submitted CVs.

"The response has been huge," he said. "We have received about 195 CVs in respect of National Assembly election and more than 1 000 CVs for local authority elections. We did not encounter any challenge, everyone is happy with the process."

Masvingo province has 26 constituencies.

In Midlands province, the revolutionary party's executive has resolved to decide the fate of suspended party members who had submitted their CVs at the weekend.

Zanu-PF's national disciplinary committee is still to make a determination on their cases.

Members caught up in the predicament include Cdes Chiratidzo Mabuwa, Francis Nhema, Tafanana Zhou and Masango Matambanadzo.

Provincial chairperson Daniel Mckenzie Ncube said the provincial executive and elections directorate will discuss the contentious issue today.

Although provincial chairpersons for other provinces could not be reached, their executives said all had gone well ahead of the submission of the CVs at party headquarters next week.