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Analysis of Senatorial Constituencies
Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN)
November 17, 2005

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Introduction
This Report is an analysis of the Senatorial constituencies focusing on the following main issues:

1. Basis on which senate constituencies were done in the absence of a delimitation commission;
2. Different sizes of population sizes in each constituency and how the number per province was established;
3. Aspects of communal interest e.g. urban mixed with rural constituencies;
4. Voting trends and patterns in past elections; and
5. Effects of Operation Murambatsvina on the Senate election.

......

Conclusion
In 'delimiting' the constituencies for the forthcoming senatorial elections, the Government appears to have taken either a casual or arbitrary (or both) approach such that it becomes very difficult to decipher the basis on which the exercised was done. Whatever criteria it used, gerrymandering should have loomed large. Allegations of gerrymandering as a technique to advantage the ruling party and disadvantage the opposition party were levelled at the 2004 Delimitation Commission. If these allegations are valid, then the 'delimitation' of senatorial constituencies would represent a second wave of gerrymandering. As a consequence, the outcome of the senatorial elections would have been less than credible even if the MDC had not partially boycotted them.

The lessons leant are that Zimbabwe is still crying out for an open, fair and non-partisan electoral management process, starting with the delimitation process itself. Until then, gerrymandering and the attendant contamination of elections as national institutions will continue to tarnish Zimbabwe's image as a democratic country.

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