Civil society groups, the Zimbabwe Human Rights Association (ZimRights) and the Elections Resource Centre (ERC), will officially launch a mobile national voter registration mobilisation and education campaign in Chitungwiza on Saturday, October 14, 2017.
The launch at Chigovanyika Shopping Centre will be graced by popular Zimdancehall artiste, Soul Jah Love, and other supporting acts.
The campaign will start on Monday, October 16, 2017, with the deployment of 10 huge branded trucks and mobile roadshow teams to the different provinces.
The trucks branded with the message, “We register, We vote, We influence Tese/Sonke” will be used in public education activities that will cover many parts of the country.
The mobile roadshows form part of the broader joint ERC and ZimRights initiative to raise interest in the current Biometric Voter Registration (BVR) process by the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) and encourage citizens to vote in the 2018 harmonised elections.
Informational material such as T-shirts, caps, berrets, bandanas and fliers will be distributed.
The first part of the roadshows will happen during the first phase of the BVR blitz launched on October 10, 2017, and cover areas being visited by the ZEC teams where the electoral body has put voter registration centres.
The initiative will also educate potential eligible registrants on key elements of voter registration as the civic groups compliment work already being done by ZEC’s voter education teams.
Since the roadshow teams will include accredited observers, the mobilisation and public education campaign will also serve as a mobile BVR observation process countrywide.
In a related development, ZimRights in collaborations with Berina Arts and Youth Alliance for Democracy (YAD) conducted a training of 49 BVR monitors and voter registration mobilisers of which 26 women in Kadoma on Tuesday, October 10, 2017.
The majority of the trainees, 45 participants were youth, who were encouraged to be drivers of voter registration mobilisation under the #10×10 campaign where they reside.
The training brought close to five hundred the monitors and voter registration mobilisers ZimRights and ERC have trained across the country.
The training taught issues to do with human rights and outlined the voter registration process, what citizens need to register, where and when the process will take place and what should transpire
Source: ZimRights