ZBC Reporters, Sunday Mail Editor Submit Applications To Run As Zanu-PF Candidates




James Makamba
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HARARE – Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC) reporters Tendai Munengwa and Andrew Neshamba have submitted their curriculum vitaes to run as Zanu-PF candidates in the forthcoming 2018 election.

Neshamba and Munengwa will tussle with youth league executive member Godfrey Tsenengamu, and businessman James Makamba for the right to represent Zanu-PF in Mt Darwin South which was last represented in Parliament by former Zanu-PF political commissar and Cabinet minister Saviour Kasukuwere

Sunday Mail Features and Opinions Editor Garikai Mazara also submitted an application to run as Zanu-PF legislator in Guruve South. It is his second attempt after he was barred in 2013. All the journalists are still employed. Neshamba and Munengwa are on paid leave to allow them to campaign for the seat.

ZBC and Sunday Mail have been criticised for partisan reporting in favour of Zanu PF. The public broadcaster has an arrangement with Munengwa and Neshamba that allows them to return to work in the event that they lose the election.

Zanu-PF will hold primary elections on May 5 to elect council and National Assembly candidates, who will represent the party in the forthcoming harmonised polls. Zanu-PF Secretary for Legal Affairs Paul Mangwana said only members, who have been in the party’s district structures for five years and above, will be eligible to contest for a House of Assembly seat.

For one to contest primaries for council seats, they should have been a member of any Zanu-PF party structure from the cell going upwards. Candidates eyeing the Senate should have been members of the Zanu-PF Central Committee and above. He said those in the civil service, unformed forces and other security services should first resign for them to be allowed to contest in the forthcoming party primary elections. – ZBC