ZANU-PF explains how it wrestled seats in Harare from MDC

The Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front wrestled seats from the Movement for Democratic Change by targeting constituencies held by senior MDC officials and only failed to unseat secretary-general Tendai Biti, according to the Mail and Guardian

The story seems to confirm what was said by MDC’s policy advisor Eddie Cross who attributed the ZANU-PF victory to sheer organisation through dishing out land to peri-urban dwellers and using chiefs and headmen.

The party won six seats in Harare including those held by Theresa Makone and Jameson Timba, both from MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai’s inner circle- often dubbed the kitchen cabinet.

“We identified a need that we could realistically deliver on, and we ran with it,” a member of ZANU-PF’s elections directorate told the Mail and Guardian. “There were particular seats we targeted four years ago for strategic reasons, which we set out to win. We got most of them.”

According to the weekly paper: “ZANU-PF won just one seat in Harare in 2008, Harare South, after gaining support by handing out parcels of land to poor squatters on the edge of the city. Encouraged by that success, it reprised the strategy in several more constituencies on the city fringes, winning an extra five seats last week.”

ZANU-PF won 159 seats in the just ended elections with Robert Mugabe polling 61 percent of the vote. The MDC is challenging the result and has until tomorrow to lodge its complaint with the courts.

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