Monday, 2 July 2018


Chipinge South Candidate Profile Series #2


Name: Clifford Hlatywayo

Party: MDC Alliance

Chipinge South Constituency has the highest rate of child abuse, gender-based violence and extreme levels of poverty in the district. The constituency has had this social crisis for a long time in view of the politician’s complete abdication of their responsibility. It is with this view that politicians should demonstrate how this unacknowledged social crisis can be addressed at the local and national level. The Chipinge District Candidate Series wants to get people talking about ideas like these during the election campaign.

Clifford Hlatywayo is a product of student activism and has been consistent in the fight for democratic change in Zimbabwe. After his graduation from the University of Zimbabwe, he was roped into the MDC T Election Directorate based at Harvest House in Harare. In 2008, whilst working in the Election Directorate, he was instrumental in the disbursement of party regalia and materials to the Constituency and Chipinge District in general. In 2011 at the MDC T Annual Congress in Bulawayo he was elected as the Youth Assembly Secretary for Information and Publicity, a position that propelled him into the echelons of power within MDC T. Since then he has enjoyed the challenges and rewards of serving in the MDC T Youth Assembly. Clifford Hlatywayo is highly rated within the MDC T Youth assembly as one of the strong youthful leaders. In 2008, he was a key member of Meki Makuyana’s campaign team together with Claris Madhuku, Takawira Mupakati and Vrante Mahlupeko Jambaya with Bothwell Zito and Jerry Moyana providing the necessary political cover within the team. Together they managed and shaped the politics of Chipinge South Constituency culminating in Meki Makuyana garnering a staggering 16 139 votes. Clifford Hlatywayo is among the first team of Board members who facilitated the formal registration of the Platform for Youth Development as a Trust in October 2008,a community based organization that has become a voice and conscience of the community.

Despite this highly effective team of 2008, Clifford Hlatywayo appear to be running a lone campaign as his trusted lieutenants have abandoned him and is yet to come up with a team of the same calibre and focus. This is attributed to the events leading to the 2013 harmonised elections. In the run up to the 2013 harmonised elections, Clifford Hlatywayo contested in the primaries seeking the party’s mandate to represent MDC T in Chipinge South, an episode that turned out badly for him and his political career. However, the contest and subsequent failure made him to conclude that Makuyana had the ingenuity to be supported as the means to deny him the sole ticket to the National Assembly. Through his political astuteness and shrewdness, he has now outmanoeuvred his critics and opponents by maximising on the MDC T’s resolution to grant the seat under the youth quota system. A move that culminated in a serious outcry from some sections of the party’s structures in Chipinge South. Disgruntled MDC Alliance members launched a formal complaint to the party election directorate to challenge what they deem as an imposition under the guise of a youth quota system. The major setback is that Hlatywayo must overcome the challenge from Jerry Moyana and Kuda Chiororo who initially were supposed to contest him in the MDC Alliance primary election. The duo of Chiororo and Moyana have already been nominated as candidates for Chipinge South seeking to garner votes from the same support base with Hlatywayo.

With a SMART agenda anchoring his campaign strategies, Chipinge South constituency is grappled with a social crisis in the form of loss of opportunities, crippling levels of poverty and harmful cultural practices targeting girls and women. It is important that electoral agenda be based on justice, equality and solidarity as an empowerment tool for the community.
Clifford Hlatywayo will be facing his close friend Takawira Mupakati and five others in this mouth-watering election. It is interesting to note that Clifford Hlatywayo and Takawira Mupakati share the same birthday and political history in the constituency.

#MugangaWedu2018

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