Civil Society activists say the 10-day nationwide voter registration campaign set to begin on 12 March is too short to allow unregistered citizens to register as voters.
The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) will run a 10-day voter registration campaign, which ends on March 21, before undertaking various other activities, including opening the voter’s roll for public inspection, in the lead-up to the 2023 general elections.
Eligible voters will, however, still be able to register until two days after the proclamation of the election date by President Mnangagwa.
Speaking during ‘This morning on Asakhe’ on the final mobile voter registration blitz exercise, the Director for Matobo Youth Development Initiative, Descent Dube said 10 days is not enough as people would have not received enough information during the first week.
“Ten days is not enough; we had hoped that maybe already this thing is supposed to be happening because as it stands if you look at the previous one it was a bit longer but people managed to get what was happening when blitz was already ongoing. You will realize that the first five days nothing is happening in terms of response from the people,” he said.
Dube said they will try to mobilize the youths to register to vote before the blitz begins.
“So ten days we don’t think its enough but since this is what we have we have to work with what is there, as it stands we will definitely try to push this before it even start, to try and concertize those who have not yet registered both the old and the youths and try to talk to even councillors, traditional leaders for them to understand what is at stake and also the need for those who have not yet registered to do register,” he said.
Dube added that another concern was that ZEC has not released enough information concerning the registration centres.
“We don’t know where they are going to be conducting in terms of venues and places and within the 10 days, I don’t see them covering much of the ground so we will try to work with what we have been given,” he said.
Ekhaya Vote 2023 spokesperson, Nkosikhona Dibiti said “so we really need to move fast and try to raise awareness while we are waiting for Sunday to start.”
“I would have hoped that they release dates from the district offices so that we know where they are going and when they are going to be conducting that so that we can actually conscientize people before they even reach out to those places. This is one of the strategies that we have as CSOs,” he said.
In addition, a disability rights defender, Tsepang Nare said as long as the voter registration blitz does not reach people with disabilities, especially the deaf community, they will often be left behind.
“Slowly but surely, I think the message is getting to the people but I think we still need to push harder and utilize the voter registration blitz which is going to take place because most probably it is going to be the last one. Once the President does his proclamation, two days after it closes, meaning whoever is going to register two days later after the proclamation won’t be in the voter’s roll, thus why I am saying we really need to push, utilize the opportunity,” said Nare.
Meanwhile, the Freedom of Rights Under Sovereign (FORUS) party national spokesperson, Thandazani Moyo also lamented the short registration period.
“Right now, we have more than 2 million Zimbabweans who were eligible to vote but they have not registered to vote, therefore giving us 10 days to mobilize those people and basically push a narrative that they should register to vote is not enough,” said Moyo.
He said the registration blitz should be at least a month-long as some people do not have national documents.
“ZEC should have at least given us the entire month to register people to vote at least we could have garnered one million because we have over 2 million people who are not even interested in registering to vote, some of them because of the conditions that are beyond their control for example the national identity registration and birth certificates,” said Moyo
