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HARARE - With five days to go before Zimbabwe holds historic presidential elections, polling authorities were yesterday helping party officials finalise a code of conduct aimed at preventing more violence in a campaign that has already claimed 31 lives.

"We are trying to create a mature way of dealing with ... political differences," Sobuza Gula-Ndebele, chairman of the Electoral Supervisory Commission (ESC), told AFP.

He said six representatives of three political parties were finalising a code of conduct that will be applied before, during and after the polling on Saturday and Sunday.

Asked whether it was too late to try to get parties to adopt a code of conduct after at least 31 people have been killed since the start of the year, according to human rights groups, Gula-Ndebele said: "We don't think it's a bit late. Yes, it would have been better to have it earlier, but it is better late than never."

Gula-Ndebele was speaking on the sidelines of a one-day seminar on conflict management being run in conjunction with the Electoral Institute of Southern Africa, a regional non-governmental organisation (NGO).

ESC spokesman Thomas Bvuma said the major component of the code of conduct was "the prohibition of violence".

"Even when there are no elections, parties should be able to solve their conflicts peacefully rather than solve them violently," Bvuma said.

"Really, it's a question of trying to avoid violence," he said.

A special conflict management lawyer, Charles Nupen from the International Labour Organisation (ILO) office in South Africa, is advising the parties on details of the code of conduct.

Meanwhile, about 50 polling agent supervisors were also undergoing training by the ESC in the capital yesterday.

They will then be expected to train their own party polling agents in the coming days. Each party is to have a polling agent for each of the 5 400 polling stations across the country.

"Yes, this may be coming a bit late, but we hope it will be useful," Bvuma said. - Nampa-AFP

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