Zaka

Zaka may refer to:

Places

See also

Zaka District

Zaka is a district in Masvingo Province, Zimbabwe and is located 86 km southeast from Masvingo in the Ndanga communal land. The village was established in 1923 and lies in a very low-lying area hence the Shona derived name kwo-ka-zaka which means to where it is going down.

Background

Zaka district is a typical Karanga smallholder farming area, which is a semi-arid, mountainous area with erratic rainfall averaging 6–800 mm/yr. The soils are generally poor. Subsistence farming is the main economic activity and the main crops grown are maize, groundnuts, cotton, sorghum finger millet, sunflower and pumpkins. The population density is more than 65 persons/km2, which is quite high for a mountainous area where subsistence farming is the main economic activity. It is the most densely populated rural district in the province and probably in the whole country. Big rivers that flow through include Chivaka, Shange, Chiredzi,Mushavhukwi, etc.Smaller rivers include Mungwezi, Nyamidzi, Rupiri, Mananga and Nyatare. There are many small dams in the district including Bangala and Mabvute dams. The area has many mountains some of them being Biri, Dambara, Gwangwangwa, Zingomayi, Majuru, Hopa, Gondora, Chimbire, Maparanganda, Gadzi, Mware, Uroyi and Gato, etc.

Zaka (Senatorial constituency)

Zaka is a Senatorial constituency in the Senate of Zimbabwe. It covers most of the Zaka district in Masvingo Province, and is one of six senatorial constituencies in the province.

The equivalent seats in the House of Assembly are:

In the 2008 election, the constituency elected MDC member Misheck Marava as senator. He won with 24,202 votes while Zanu PF’s Amoth Chingombe polled 18,578 and an independent Moffat Mufuka got 1,296. The campaign also brought electoral violence to the district, when two MDC activists were killed by ZANU PF members at the MDC's campaign office in Zaka.

References