The Bulawayo City Council (BCC) was pushing for an
additional six wards to be incorporated into the city during the delimitation
exercise, which would have seen a number of areas that fall under Umguza
constituency being incorporated into the city.
However, according to a preliminary provincial report
compiled by Bulawayo District Elections Officer, Mr Ntando Gumede, the province
is not going to have any additional seats or wards. Bulawayo has 12 seats in
the National Assembly and 29 wards.
The report shows that the current figures will be
maintained but the boundaries will be reconfigured with each constituency having
an average of 22 000 registered voters. In the present set up the
constituencies are Bulawayo Central, Bulawayo East, Bulawayo South,
Emakhandeni-Entumbane, Lobengula, Luveve, Magwegwe, Makokoba, Nketa, Nkulumane,
Pelandaba-Mpopoma and Pumula.
In the proposed new set up there will now be Bulawayo North
comprising wards two and three, Bulawayo Central (wards one and four),
Mpopoma-Mzilikazi (wards eight and nine), Bulawayo South (wards five and
seven), Entumbane-Njube (ward 10 and 12), Emakhandeni-Luveve (wards 11 and 16),
Nkulumane (wards 22 and 23), Cowdray Park (wards 6, 15 and 28), Nketa (wards
24, 25 and 26), Lobengula-Magwegwe (wards 14, 18 and 29), Pumula (wards 17, 19
and 27) and Pelandaba-Tshabalala (wards 13, 20 and 21).
Zec chief elections officer Mr Utoile Silaigwana said in
preparation for mapping afresh electoral boundaries, the Commission was
bringing together provincial and district maps with topographical features such
as mountains, rivers, roads, communication lines, settlements and different
types of land use. He said their expectation was that the process will be
completed by December to ensure that the results were usable for the next
harmonised elections set for next year.
“The Commission expects to conclude the exercise by December
this year. In terms of Section 161(2) delimitation must be completed six months
before the conduct of any general election for it to be applicable to that
election. Failure to adhere to this provision means the results of the
delimitation exercise will not apply for the next general election, as the
Commission will be compelled by the law to revert to boundaries of the
2007/2008 delimitation.
“The Commission would like to assure the electorate that no
one will be prejudiced by the delimitation outcome. The delimitation results
will be an outcome based on the Commission’s adherence to the country’s legal
provisions and fair practice. At all stages of the process, voter education and
stakeholder engagements will be conducted to bring all interested parties on
board,” said Mr Silaigwana in a statement.
He said Zec’s provincial and district offices are
conducting the geo-referencing exercise, which is expected to be completed
within the next few days.
“After geo-referencing, physical features that guide
delimitation are extracted from the maps using computer-based software through
a process called digitising. Digitising is followed by combining the extracted
information with voter registration statistics of polling stations and physical
addresses of voters to assist in drawing the polling areas so that each one of
them remains within a stipulated voter population threshold,” he said.
Zec is in the process of delimiting the 210 constituency
National Assembly seats for the 2023 polls in a manner that reflects the
population distribution premised on latest census data. Due to different rates
of population growth, migration and to land use changes, the boundaries of
constituencies and wards need to be redrawn on a regular basis. Sunday News
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