1. BACKGROUND AND INTRODUCTION The Zimbabwe Human Rights Commission (ZHRC) monitored the human rights situation during the Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) primary elections conducted on 29 April 2018. The aim of these elections were to select candidates to represent the party in national elections in the categories of Council, National Assembly, Senate and Provincial Council. The ZANU PF party held its primary elections in the 10 Provinces of Zimbabwe. As part of its constitutional mandate, ZHRC deployed teams nationwide in order to fulfill the obligation to monitor and observe the general human rights situation in the country with particular focus on political rights and any other human rights which could occur before, during and after the party primaries. The intraparty elections are central to the process of institutionalization and democratization of a political party, and ultimately the country. Political parties are considered as the major actors to inculcate democratic values in politics by engaging citizens in the political processes and thus serve as prerequisite for political institutionalization in a society1. Intraparty elections can also be viewed as an indicator of the democratic degree of the wider organisational dynamic of a party, the manner in which political parties select their leaders may be used as an acid test to determine how democratic they conduct their internal affairs. Given the importance of parties to the realisation of democracy at the system level it is also important to understand their internal workings.2 Therefore, it is against this background that ZHRC found it imperative to monitor the internal processes of the ZANU PF party during its primary elections. 2. LEGISLATIVE FRAMEWORK 1 Democratizing Political Parties- A case study of Intra-Party Elections and Factional Politics From Pakistan- By Jawad Tariq and Ahmed Usman (2016). 2 Intra-Party Democracy and Leadership Election Methods, A Comparative Analysis of Political Parties in European Democracies – By A. Cappellini, Kings College, London (2016). Page 3 of 22