Back to Index

Nomination of candidates and the 2005 Zimbabwe parliamentary elections
Claude Kabemba
Extracted from the EISA Election newsletter No. 19
March 08, 2005

The new Electoral Act in Part XII provides detailed information pertaining to the nomination of candidates for election as Members of Parliament. Any person who wishes to stand as a candidate for election has to lodge his or her nomination papers signed by no fewer than ten persons who are registered on the voter’s roll for the constituency for which the candidate seeks election and countersigned with the acceptance of the candidate or his or her chief election agent. Candidates are requested to lodge their application with the constituency Elections Officer. The Elections Officer verifies all documentation. When necessary he/she gives an opportunity to candidates to rectify any defect. The rectification takes place within the nomination time limits.

The nomination process
The nominations of candidates for the 2005 parliamentary elections were the first to be conducted under the new Independent Electoral Commission. The nomination was a one day process and it took place on 18 February 2005. The Electoral Commission set up Nomination Courts in the different constituencies. The nomination of candidates went more smoothly than expected and there were no serious complaints from either the ruling party or the opposition. All opposition political parties - the Movement for Democratic Change, Zanu, Zimbabwe Youth Alliance and independent candidates expressed satisfaction with the process. The MDC Secretary-general, Professor Welshman Ncube said: "on the balance, the fact that all candidates who wanted to participate in the elections managed to secure their candidature shows that the process was conducted well".

The politics of nomination
The issue of birth certificates was potentially problematic and confusing. The Minister of Land, Justice and Legal Affairs called for candidates to submit their applications together with their "long" birth certificates. Zimbabwe has two kinds of certificates – "short" birth certificates issued before independence and "long: ones issued after independence. This was seen by some as a way of unlawfully disqualifying certain candidates who were born before independence in 1980. Fortunately, this decision was reversed by the Independent Electoral Commission. Both certificates were used by candidates to register.

The major concern during these nominations was the high cost of standing as a candidate. In February the registration fee for a candidate rose by 2000 percent from Zim $ 100, 000 (about US $17) to Zim $ 2 million ($US 330). This simply means that a party which might have paid only Zim $ 12 million ($ US 1,983) to fill candidates in all the 120 constituencies was asked to pay Zim $ 240 million ($ US 39,675). There is no doubt that this might have disqualified badly funded parties such as ZANU (Ndonga) and the Zimbabwe Youth Alliance (ZIYA). Opposition claims that this approach was designed deliberately to limit their ability to have candidates in all constituencies.

Concerns were expressed, however, by certain individuals whose applications were rejected. For example all suspended Zanu-PF provincial chairmen who took part in Jonathan Moyo’s Tsholotsho meeting, had their applications rejected. The Tsholotsho meeting was an unsanctioned secret succession meeting which Jonathan Moyo orchestrated as a plot against the Zanu-PF's top leadership. The meeting aimed at promoting a rival candidate to President Robert Mugabe's choice (Joice Mujuru) for the post of vice-president. Moyo was sidelined and had no option but to stand as an independent candidate.

Another candidate-Joshua Mhambi was disqualified when he failed to produce an original copy of his national identity document. It is alleged that he was born in Zambia and had never renounced his Zambian citizenship. David Coltart’s application was successful after it was initially rejected on the grounds that his mother was a South African. Another member of the MDC, Roy Bennet, who is currently under arrest, was disqualified. His wife filed for the same constituency. While Zanu-PF lost one of its sitting MP’s - Jonathan Moyo, the MDC lost four sitting MPs who filed as independents. The two main political parties Zanu-PF and MDC will contest in all 120 constituencies. The rest of the opposition parties - Zanu-Ndonga and the Zimbabwe Youth Alliance - have restricted their participation to a few constituencies. It is also understood that the MDC has filed a significant number of white candidates in various constituencies. It is important to mention this as it begins to bring out the ideological characteristics of the main political parties. This to Zanu-PF could suggest that the MDC is the stooge of whites; for MDC, the approach could be an attempt to show that it is prepared for reconciliation and that it adopts the politics of accommodation.

It is important to note that in most of these cases the Independent Electoral Commission demonstrated some level of impartiality and autonomy in taking decisions. Each Electoral Court announced the approved list of candidates and the Electoral Commission’s job was simply to publish a consolidated list of the constituencies. The table below gives the number of political parties’ candidates and independents and indicates the gender representation.

Table: Number of candidates per party and the gender balance

Only the MDC and Zanu-PF have candidates in all 120 of the constituencies. The dominance of male candidates in the Zimbabwe election is strong. All groups perform badly in terms of gender and have failed to achieve the SADC gender representation requirement of 30% and if one considers that the deadline to achieve this is 2005, Zimbabwe with 37 women candidates out of a total of 270 candidates who will compete in the election, is indeed lagging far behind.

Conclusion
Contrary to previous nomination processes, the nomination for 2005 parliamentary elections went smoothly without any major disruption. In the past, problems during nomination occurred for two reasons: confusion about the location for nomination and inadequate briefing on the procedures which contributed to candidates failing to apply in an even-handed manner. The Zimbabwe Election Support Network reported that in the most recent elections, the Nomination Courts were key problem areas for opposition and independent candidates. For example, it says, in the 2002 Rural District Council Elections, the MDC claimed that hundreds of its prospective candidates were physically prevented from reaching the Nomination Courts by ruling party supporters. Similar allegations were made for several councils in the 2003 Urban Council elections where the ruling party won all the council seats in three councils amid allegations of serious violence and intimidation of the opposition. This time, it seems, election officials at the Nomination Courts were well briefed. No obstructions or violence were reported during the nomination process.

References
Electoral Act, No 25/2004
SundayTimes.co.za, 19 February, 2005

Please credit www.kubatana.net if you make use of material from this website. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License unless stated otherwise.

TOP