By The constitutional court has dismissed an application by MDC Alliance member Gift Konjana who was challenging the declaration by the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) of the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF’s) Dexter Nduna as the winner of the Chegutu West constituency. In a recent exclusive interview with Technomag, ZEC Spokesperson, Commissioner Qubani Moyo revealed to this publication’s editorial in a one-on-one on the sidelines of a ZEC workshop held at Chinhoyi University of Technology (CUT) that indeed ZEC had erred in announcing Nduna as the winner.
Konjana had filed an application in the Constitutional Court seeking an order granting him leave to appeal against the decision of the Supreme Court which on 23 March 2021 upheld the Electoral Court’s decision saying it has no jurisdiction to hear an election petition appeal once the prescribed period of three months has expired and moved on to remove the matter from the Supreme Court roll.
The matter had arisen from the contentious parliamentary elections held in 2018 in which Konjana had won the Chegutu West parliamentary seat but the seat was given to the ZANU PF representative.
ZEC officials had made a mistake by swapping his 121 votes in one of the wards in Chegutu West constituency with those of another candidate Simon Kache, who had gotten just one vote.
The ZEC officials confirmed that if the mistakes were corrected, Konjana should have been declared the duly elected legislator as he had, in fact, garnered 10 949 votes compared to Nduna’s 10 932 adding that the Electoral Court had the power to overturn the anomaly.
Konjana appealed the decision but the Electoral Court Judge Justice Mary Zimba-Dube rejected his election petition on the grounds that it was fatally defective.
In the Electoral Court, Konjana had argued that ZEC officials had made a mistake by swapping his 121 votes in one of the wards in Chegutu West constituency with those of another candidate Simon Kache, who had gotten just one vote.
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