CHIEF’S Council president Fortune Charumbira has challenged traditional leaders from Binga, Matabeleland South province, to dissuade their subjects from supporting opposition parties and deliver a landslide electoral victory to Zanu PF in the upcoming harmonised elections.
BY SHARON SIBINDI
Charumbira made the challenge at the just-ended chiefs annual indaba held in Bulawayo, where he declared that all traditional leaders countrywide should rally behind the Zanu PF leader.
“Binga has been a problem, but now that you have been given cars, you should go out there and ensure Zanu PF’s electoral victory in that area in the forthcoming elections,” he said in his address to chiefs on Saturday.
Charumbira also directed chiefs from other provinces to campaign vigorously for Zanu PF to ensure the party’s victory in the 2018 elections.
“We will support the candidates that Zanu PF will present to us. We will all stand up with our wives and vote for Mugabe. In 2013, we indicated that we wanted cars, they did not come, but we campaigned and won while we were using bicycles. Now that we have been given cars, winning is guaranteed. We will use cars for campaigns and we shall work hard.”
Zanu PF has been struggling to win elections in Binga since 2002, with Morgan Tsvangirai’s MDC-T controlling the majority of parliamentary seats.
People in Binga were bitter over marginalisation of their area by the Zanu PF regime since independence in 1980, with most roads impassable during the rainy season, while residents have no access to clean water despite lying on the shores of the mighty Zambezi River.
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MDC-T spokesperson Obert Gutu, however, said chiefs should not become political commissars of Zanu PF, saying it was unconstitutional.
“At a time when the public health delivery system has virtually collapsed and when most of the country’s district hospitals do not even have an ambulance, one can easily conclude that the decision to buy these motor vehicles for the chiefs is nothing, but a blatant vote-buying exercise by the desperate, crumbling and bankrupt Zanu PF regime,” he said.
“Chiefs shouldn’t be reduced to become Zanu PF political commissars, whose loyalty and support is bought by the purchase of cars and other perks.”
