The ruling ZANU PF party is targeting to recruit 5 million members by 2023 so that it’s presidential candidate attains at least 65 per cent of the vote.
This was said by Zanu-PF national political commissar Victor Matemadanda while addressing party members in Bulawayo during the announcement of District Co-ordinating Committee (DCC) election results at Davies Hall on Sunday. He said:
We have a target as the commissariat and Zanu-PF that by 2023 we want to have built or developed our membership to not less than 5 million registered voters.
We are saying the vote of the President that we expect will not be less than 65 per cent.
Right now, we are having this noise due to the number of votes that were received by the President. We no longer want the President’s vote to be almost similar to any other candidate.
In the 2018 elections, the ZANU PF candidate Emmerson Mnangagwa polled 50,8 per cent of the vote while his closest challenger Nelson Chamisa of the MDC Alliance won 44 per cent.
The fact that Mnangagwa avoided a run-off by the skin of his teeth has prompted the commissariat to boost the party’s numbers to avoid such a scenario from happening again.