Paul Nyathi
The drama in the Gwanda Mayoral elections continues with the ruling ZANU PF now also being drawn into it.
Highly placed sources within the party have told ZimEye.com that the ZANU PF councillor for ward 9 in the town, Tulani Moyo, is set to be recalled and effectively dismissed from the party.
The overly ambitious Moyo last week defied a directive by the party National Political Commissar Victor Matemadanda and the party caucus when he nominated himself as candidate for the mayoral election in the process leading to the defeat of the ZANU PF official candidate by one vote in the tightly contested election.
According to the sources, the party dismissed Moyo’s desire to stand as its candidate in a caucus meeting which was presided over by Matemadanda a day before the elections. Councillor Albert Ndlovu was approved as the candidate for the party.
Moyo shocked all and sundry on election day when he nominated himself as a candidate. His fellow ZANU PF councillors did not second his nomination and was seconded by an MDC Alliance Councillor seeing the chance to have ZANU PF divide its votes.
Cllr Njabulo Siziba of the MDC Alliance emerged winner after polling five votes beating councillor Ndlovu of Zanu-PF who garnered four votes following a rerun.
In the first round of voting, Cllr Moyo garnered one vote while his rivals garnered four votes each leading to a re-run.
According to the sources, the party’s Gwanda district structures have called on President Emmerson to immediately recall the councillor and dismiss him from the party altogether.
“The party leadership in Gwanda has unanimously agreed that Moyo is a deviant and the party can not accommodate such behaviour,” said the source to ZimEye.com.
The source shockingly revealed that the ruling party had successfully lobbied one of the opposition MDC Alliance Councillors to vote for them only for Moyo to “sellout.”
ZANU PF has four councillors in the town with the MDC Alliance holding on to five after the recall of the MDC Alliance Mayor Jastone Mazhale.
“Our local commissar had managed to bag the one vote we needed from the MDC to win the mayor but Moyo decided to sellout on the party and this can not be forgiven in ZANU PF,” said the source.
Efforts to get a comment from councillor Moyo had not been successful at the time of writing this news article.