STAFF WRITER
THE Nelson Chamisa led Citizen Coalition for Change (CCC) has accused Zanu PF of trying to use vendors operating in the city’s central business district (CBD) for political mileage.
This comes after three people were recently injured after Bulawayo City Council (BCC) police fired rubber bullets to disperse illegal vendors.
The incident took place a day after Women Affair minister Sithembiso Nyoni had ordered the local authority to be tough on illegal vendors.
BCC has also lately been at loggerheads with the ruling party with the latter being accused of causing chaos in the streets by hiring space barons who are now controlling some vending bays in the CBD.
In a latest development, the CCC says the ruling party has been using dirty tricks to smear campaigns of the opposition ahead of the elections.
Speaking to the Zambezi Times, CCC Bulawayo spokesperson Swithern Chirowodza had no kind words for the ruling party which he accused of buying votes using vending bays.
“Zanu PF is rigging the 2023 elections by forcing vendors to buy Zanu PF membership cards and to register to vote in Bulawayo’s Ward 1 or else lose a Zanu-PF given “right” to sell on the roads in the CBD.
“Certain roads in Bulawayo’s CBD have been seized by Zanu PF activists without the authority of the city council. The seizure of roads by Zanu PF in order to mark out small portions to vendors, in exchange for a fee paid daily and collected by Zanu PF activists, and a precondition levied on vendors to purchase a Zanu PF membership card, constitutes a coup on the local authority,” fumed Chirowodza.
He however claimed that the ruling party was forcibly turning vendors into political foot soldiers by demanding party cards for one to be awarded a vending bay.
“The Constitution of Zimbabwe is very clear on the fact that “no person may be compelled to belong to an association or to attend a meeting or gathering”.
Chirowodza also claimed that Zanu PF was actively trying to incite citizens against the opposition party by misrepresenting facts around who was behind the removal of vendors from their selling points.
“The Zanu PF activists and their leaders want to tarnish our name, they want the general populace to believe that we are against vendors selling their wares, yet that’s not the case, this is just mere politicking. Out of 29 councilors CCC has only eight in the council chambers, so honestly we don’t have control over BCC, yet Zanu PF is trying very hard to falsely portray council police as acting on the instructions of CCC,” he said.
However, Zanu PF provincial youth chair, Freedom Murechu dismissed the allegations.
“These things are not only frivolous, they are fallacious and they don’t have an iota of evidence and should be discarded in the dustbins of political history,” Murechu told the Daily News yesterday.
“If indeed Zanu PF is forcing people to vote, why has in many years Zanu PF not won in Bulawayo ward one, which is the city centre where vendors are operating from. It’s not us who sent hundreds of thugs to shoot at vendors, we saw those people under the tutelage of the deputy mayor Mlandu Ncube. We are not going to give credence to these allegations. Remember this is an election period, these kinds of lies will be heard and heard at any given time,” Murechu said.
