ZDVI to engage legislators as WhatsApp ground is created for diaspora and MPs interaction before 31 March 2025

Zimbabwe Diaspora Vote Initiative To Engage All Stakeholder - Starts with Legislators as WhatsApp Ground is Created for Diaspora and MPs Interaction as Musicians are Called to Amplify the Call for Diaspora Vote

The Zimbabwe Diaspora Vote Initiative (ZDVI) has crafted a plan to engage all stakeholders to lobby for the implementation of the Diaspora Vote as announced by President Emmerson Mnangagwa in 2018. A crucial stakeholder group are the legislators, and a WhatsApp Group has been created to allow interaction between representatives of the Zimbabwe Diaspora Vote Initiative and legislators.

Regional and international legislators bodies such as the SADC Parliamentarians Forum, the Pan African Parliament and the International Parliamentarians Union will also be approached. These bodies will be asked to encourage Zimbabwean legislators to pro-actively introduce appropriate steps to reform legislation to ensure Diaspora Voting for all Zimbabweans living abroad, not just those working at Zimbabwean embassies as is the case at the moment.

Other groups to be approached after the legislators are the church, labour, commerce and industry bodies and civic society organisation. Efforts to meet President Mnangagwa to drive home the importance of implementing his 2018 promise will be made, while musicians will be encouraged to popularise the need for diaspora vote through song.

"We will be adding legislators to the group before 31 March 2025 so that they can hear our views and initiate the process to amend legislation to include Diaspora voting" explained the group's Chairperson Rosewitter Mangiroza. "We assume that every legislator has read Zimbabwe's 2025 National Budget presented in Parliament towards the end of 2024 knows that according to that Budget, diaspora remittances are projected to reach approximately US$2.51 billion in 2025, playing a key role in sustaining the country's current account surplus and significantly contributing to the national economy", added Mangiroza.

A random survey carried out in the diaspora recently showed that every constituency in Zimbabwe has people who have left for the Diaspora. If legislators are pro-people, every legislator should take an interest in extending the right to vote to people from their constituency who have left for the Diaspora, who are supporting their families in those constituencies in times of need where Government services are inadequate.

In 2018, during his maiden visit to the United Nations General Conference, President Mnangagwa told Zimbabweans living in the United States of America that he intended to have diaspora-based Zimbabweans voting in the 2023 elections. President Mnangagwa's target was missed, hence robust and tremendous measures have to be put in place to ensure the Diaspora Vote is implemented before President Mnangagwa's term of office ends in 2028 so that he leaves behind a legacy of accountability and truthfulness.

President Mnangagwa has previously described Zimbabweans in the Diaspora as "equal to, and just as important and as deserving" as the Zimbabweans living in Zimbabwe. In his opening address at the first meeting of the 2025 Cabinet Year at State House on 17 February, President Mnangagwa said "all Zimbabweans, including those in the Diaspora, should be well catered for". Catering for the Zimbabweans in the Diaspora should include offering them their democratic right to vote as the President explained to Zimbabweans living in the United States of America in 2018.

For further details, please contact Padmore Kufa, Spokesperson for the Zimbabwe Diaspora Vote Initiative on +61 414 477 659 or email us on zimdiasporavoteaussienz@gmail.com.