of the membership of all commissions and all elective and appointed governmental bodies
established by or under this Constitution or any Act of Parliament.”
To fast-track the increase in the number of women representation in the National Assembly,
S124b provides as follows;
For the life of the first two Parliaments after the effective date, an additional
sixty women members, six from each of the provinces into which Zimbabwe is
divided, elected through a system of proportional representation based on the
votes cast for candidates representing political parties in a general election
for constituency members in the provinces.
Whilst this might be the case, the real consequences have far-reaching impact. In the last
(Seventh) Parliament, representation by women was 16% in the National Assembly and 25% in
the Senate. The percentage of women in the Eighth Parliament increased to 35% in the National
Assembly and 48% of the Senate, but this masks an actual decline in the number of women
directly elected, as the increase only occurs courtesy of the quota system. The number of directly
elected women representing constituencies decreased from 34 in 2008 to 26 in 2013.2
Key Findings
The new study by RAU identified a number of issues of concern as regards the
proportional representation of women:
2
•
Whilst MPs have three basic functions -law making, representation and
oversight of the executive arm - the representation function appears not to have
been well considered by the political parties. This is because Members of
Parliament under PR find it difficult to organize meetings in the constituencies
that are supposed to be under their supervision as they clash with elected
MPs.The lack of understanding of what proportional representation (PR) MPs
are there for also cascades down to the elected MPs, and, as a result, the latter
tend to give them less respect. It was stated that they do not represent the people
but rather the party, and are called derogatory names such as Bacossi or
Kadoma. This clear distinction is also made in the house when the issue of
Constituency Development Funds (CDF) was discussed: the PR MPs were not
entitled to the funding as they were deemed to not have any constituency to
represent.
•
Capacity issues have been raised that the new members to the National
Assembly continuously need to work on to effectively discharge their
Parliamentary roles. This is not new and should not be considered as a problem
in the short term. The challenge is to get women on board first and continuously
build their capacity. To suggest that women need to have their capacity
developed outside and then come on board is an attempt to derail the increase in
the number of women. The reserved quota is supposed to help changing attitudes
RAU (2015, Occasional Visitors Re-Visited: Attendance in the First Session of the 8th Parliament of Zimbabwe.
April 2015. Harare: Research & Advocacy Unit.