What Parliament Ad Hoc Committee said about delimitation report- full report

4.1.3      DRAWING OF BOUNDARIES (a)   Old, Existing Boundaries versus Proposed Boundaries

Section 161 (6) (e) mandated ZEC to give due consideration to the existing electoral boundaries. The maps or descriptions provided by ZEC did not give illustrations or descriptions of how old or existing boundaries were moved to the newly proposed boundaries. The Committee, in its analysis, found it difficult to relate to a new boundary description, or a new boundary on the map, without connecting them with the old or existing boundaries. For anyone to make sufficient comparisons between a new and an old boundary, they ought to understand the old and existing boundary.

The Committee noted that maps for previous delimitation exercises contained detailed information compared to the ones being proposed by ZEC. Some of these features included topographical features such as dams, rivers, mountains and geographic distribution of population. These features could have assisted in confirming the use of other factors espoused in Section 161 (6) of the Constitution. ZEC pointed out the need to avoid cluttering the maps and indicated that the old boundaries could be obtained in the 2007 and 2008 Delimitation Report. The Committee underscored the need to have superimposed the old and current boundaries over the proposed boundaries to provide justification for the new boundaries. In the current form, it is difficult to confirm whether Section 161 (6) was fully complied with.

(b) Justification of Proposed Boundaries

The descriptions provided by ZEC appeared to the Committee as mere definitions of how the boundaries were drawn, but the descriptions do not justify why specific boundary changes were made, and other than just the statistical balance of figures, why such boundaries would make a better contribution to the country’s developmental agenda or that of local administration of societies. For example, a boundary drawn to protect a community of interest such as the communities and activities around ZCC Mbungo in Masvingo, platinum or lithium mining activity would provide such reasons as justifications in their descriptions. It was not helpful to the Committee’s analysis, and will not be helpful to citizens, to read a description that merely defines the location of a boundary in text, and does not explain why such boundary was adjusted from its original path.

ZEC pointed out that whilst the justification for new boundaries was not reflected on the maps, they however considered the old boundaries in determining new boundaries. They also pointed out that the justification of the proposed boundaries was included in the descriptions, but the Committee did not find the evidence of the justifications of why specific boundary changes were made.

ZEC also provided merely the description of wards, and not the description of ward boundaries as provided by the Constitution in Section 161 (7) (a) that says, ‘After delimiting wards and constituencies, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission must submit to the President a preliminary report containing – (a) a list of the wards and constituencies, with the names assigned to each and a description of their boundaries.

This section clearly provides for the provision of the description of boundaries and just the list of wards, not the description of wards. Instead of providing the descriptions of boundaries for which changes were made, ZEC provided descriptions of all wards including those wards that were not affected by boundary changes. One such example is Chitungwiza municipality ward 17 that reads:

“It is an area of land bounded by a line drawn starting from where Hadzinanhanga Road crosses an unnamed stream which separates Units J and K (296939, 8006442), then generally south-eastwards along Hadzinanhanga Road to its intersection with Mharapara Road, then generally south-westwards along Mharapara Road to its junction with new Chitungwiza Road, then north-westwards along New Chitungwiza Road to where it crosses an unnamed stream which separates Units J and K, then north-eastwards along the unnamed street to where Hadzinanhanga Road crosses it, the starting point. The area is bounded by the following Universal Mercator (UTM) zone 36 South (36S), based on the modified Clarke 1880 Spheroid (SA) coordinates:

296937.79, 8006447.13; 297473.62, 8006026.01; 296785.28, 8005545.76; 295290.66, 8005033.38; 294935.64, 8005549.40; 296532.36, 8006214.02.”

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