ZICOSU launches sabotage vibes strategy?

So, election time is coming up and various strategies were unveiled by the hopefuls. ZINASU showed off its Money-Heist memory invoking regalia and their lecture room voter enablement while on the other hand ZICOSU stayed mute. Questions from the student electorate began popping up. Bringing the entire election period into doubt, are the most popular parties as effective as independent candidates and smaller parties?

While looking for that answer, in came ZICOSU with a right hook surprise, a mock election! So, this is how it went, various ZICOSU supporters posted the message shown below on their WhatsApp statuses and groups.


Its simple. Just get on to the google form online and watch the drama as you realise that there’s something off about them. Well in the batches as shown later on there are pixelated cropped pictures, next to high-definition pictures. All pixelated images are ZINASU member pictures while all other nominated candidates get on well. You begin to think there’s two scenarios playing out. Either ZINASU did not want to play ball with Naison Ndhlovu’s mock election or they were left out of the process all together due to dimmer intentions.

Looking at the former scenario, Wardle Gombingo, the ZINASU information minister candidate, corroborated Joseph Manyaro’s message urging students to desist from participating in the rather biased mock election.

Behold The Political Brain

The latter scenario raises the stakes a little higher. Here is what a Dr Heinz Doofenshmirtz analysis would look like. A mock election would effectively put the electorate in practise. Increasing the chances that a mock test voter would pick the same person they picked in the actual election. This is where the subtle trick comes into play, political science here we come. Swaying the vote during the mock election could be a positive for mock election winner’s publicity wise. Since this year’s NUST is dominated by two parties ZINASU and ZICOSU, creating a leakage in one dominant union would directly benefit the other. Simple right? ZINASU get handed a loss while independent candidates get a boost but not significant enough to offset ZICOSU.

How do we offset the balancing scales? No problemo, the google forms are not NUST email restricted. Meaning its actually easy to bus in plenty non-NUST students to vote. Say, why don’t we just get more members of our union which happens to be national to vote? They first of all know us. Secondly, the general public would not vote for pixelated candidates if we are basing on presentation. Landslide win loading for ZICOSU, as far as mocks go.

The Disclaimer

Now besides the Naison Ndhlovu link and the ZICOSU affiliate link we don’t have sugar in mouth evidence to who is the mastermind behind the mock election is. It will most likely be chalked up to “no idea”.  Ernest Maranyane ZICOSU treasurer general did confirm the mock election in contrast to the “we don’t participate in flakes” front given off by team ZINASU. In fact, below is a thread shared by ZINASU president Joseph Nyamaro.

The Conclusion

Is team ZICOSU’s sole campaign strategy one of political sabotage because surely, we can’t vote a union into student protection on the mandate of “we don’t speak we act”. We do not have a record of said actions from the incoming team. Unless of course we start counting taste-ful rebrands. We need your manifesto or at least a three-point power point on pro-active action. On that note it does seem that NUST politics has defaulted to reactionary policy to defend students instead of merging this with actions that better the student experience. Both ZICOSU and ZINASU should take the lead and bring student politics onto a new level.

Some Additions

A small chat with Naison Ndhlovu gave up this lovely tit-bit, “I am an independent student, no political affiliation. The mock election served to educate those who will be voting however we couldn’t get some good pictures for aspiring candidates, we had to use what we got in the groups. It wasn’t meant for fun not for candidates and their supporters to hate each each, at the end of the day, we want a united NUST. the students that SRC is comprised of all students regardless of their union and they should unite to serve students efficiently👏🏾👏🏾.”

The mock may vert well had honest intentions then. well its now up to you to decide.

Given I’m still new to NUST please go on ahead and send in your comments below or simply WhatsApp me here. You can also check out my first week experience at NUST by clicking here.

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