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Farirai Machivenyika Senior Reporter

Parliamentarians will have to cut short their festive season recess to debate the preliminary delimitation report which was submitted to President Mnangagwa by the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) on Monday. 

Clerk of Parliament Mr Kennedy Chokuda yesterday confirmed that legislators will be called back to discuss the delimitation report.

“We will be guided by the Constitution which outlines the steps we have to take; so parliamentarians will be summoned from their holidays to debate the report as required by the Constitution,” said Mr Chokuda.

According to the Constitution, once the report has been presented to the President, it has to be tabled before Parliament within seven working days. 

Parliament then has 14 sitting days in which to debate the report once it has been tabled in the National Assembly.

The National Assembly had adjourned last week to January 24 while the Senate was expected to resume sitting on January 31 after the passing of the 2023 National Budget. 

The delimitation period commenced on June 1, 2022 and will officially end on December 31.

When Parliament sits, it has to raise concerns if there are any, which they will forward to the President.

The President will then inform ZEC of the concerns that have merit and the elections management body will then effect the necessary corrections to the report.

Thereafter, ZEC will have to present the final delimitation report to the President.

Under the Constitution, the Commission must divide Zimbabwe into 210 constituencies and into the number of wards making up each local authority. 

As far as possible, each constituency should have an equal number of registered voters and each ward within a local authority should have an equal number of voters. 

No ward can straddle a constituency boundary.

ZEC has to also look at geographic features, community interests and communications when drawing up boundaries, so it is allowed to vary the size of a ward or constituency by up to 20 percent from the average to meet this extra requirement.

The preliminary report contains, among others, a presentation page outlining the provisions of the law in terms of which the report is presented to the President. 

The introduction outlines factors influencing delimitation, the delimitation formula and the rules used to guide the delimitation process, administration processes, publicity and stakeholder engagements, among other issues.

Then comes the result. 

Preliminary wards and constituencies are presented by province with each chapter highlighting the number of constituencies that have been delimited for the province and their names, the number of wards that have been delimited for each local authority in the province, and the summary boundary descriptions for these constituencies and wards.

The report details the full ward and constituency boundary descriptions as annexures to each provincial chapter; this includes provincial maps depicting constituency and ward boundaries, which form part of the preliminary report.

Zimbabwe conducts harmonised elections next year.