Wave after Wave
JUNE 2021
2.0 Our Campaign
We cannot just sit and watch while they assault our rights!
It is in light of this that ZPP launched a Resist, Reject and Report Violence Campaign,
#RRRV2023, to document and expose perpetrators of politically motivated violence as
well as to create an active citizenry that resists, rejects and reports violence.
As part of its mandate of monitoring and documenting violations and peacebuilding,
ZPP aims to contribute to a peaceful electoral process where citizens are empowered to
reject candidates who incite them to use hate language and to engage in politically
motivated violence.
2.1 Overall National Outlook
In the month of June, there was a general escalation in political activities countrywide, and in
some areas where there had been generally acceptable tolerance of opposition activities, the
space is narrowing on the back of Zanu PF’s reactivation of its electoral activities.
The ruling party, which has always used all methods, hook or crook, to gain political mileage,
is running a campaign where it is targeting to have five million votes in the 2023 elections.
The campaign was launched in 2019, but its implementation accelerated this year.
During the launch of the campaign, the then Zanu PF Secretary of the Commissariat said the
strategy was not only having five million as potential voters, but people who are loyal to
Zanu-PF.
“We have set ourselves a task of having a five million membership strategy that is capable of
winning the Presidential election by at least 65 percent in the 2023 election,” he said then.
On the other hand, the main opposition, the MDC Alliance has said it is targeting six million
voters and it launched its mass rural mobilization strategy in May 2021.
The opposition party’s secretary for rural mobilisation and strategy, Happymore Chidziva said
from rural areas they were not targeting a specific age group.
“We just want at least three million rural voices. We are meeting opinion leaders,
interfacing with them discussing change. Every society has its influential people and
opinion setters hence we are meeting them before going to grassroots.”
In the previous elections, both Zanu PF and the MDC Alliance attained less than three million
votes each, so by targeting to have five million votes, this is a huge feat, and what is being
witnessed in the communities shows the extent to which the parties are prepared to go to
achieve this. In the history of Zimbabwean elections, the highest number of people who
voted was in 2018 when a total 4.8 million people cast their ballots.
So, the five million Zanu PF target and and the MDC Alliance six million target add up to 11
million people, and Zimbabwe’s population is 14 million people, about seven million of which
are adults. The ambition by the two main political parties can only point to an explosive
electoral campaign period.
On the side of Zanu PF, there has been widespread use of food and other aid as weapons of
coercing people to join and be active members of the party.This is happening mainly in all
the Mashonaland and Matebeleland provinces as well as the Midlands and Masvingo.
In some areas like Matebeleland North, Zanu PF has used the influence that traditional
leaders have to forcibly recruit members. Countrywide, Zanu PF officials are forcing people to
join cell and branch structures of the party and this is part of the process of building up a list
of the expected five million voters.
Zanu PF activists and in some cases, the police have crushed the opposition MDC Alliance’s
attempts to campaign. In Bulawayo, the party has been attempting to do door-to-door
campaigns, but the police have continued to either disrupt them, or ban them.
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