(2017) 1 African Human Rights Yearbook 73 way of ensuring a substantial number of women members of parliament during the 1994 and 1999 elections.69 One challenge of party quotas remain the fact that they are voluntary. Yet, the success of discretional quotas depends on the strong will and commitment of the party leadership to promote women participation in politics. In most cases, voluntary party quotas that are not accompanied by compulsory constituency quotas are ineffective in increasing women representation. For instance, a certain party may reserve a constituency for a female candidate, while the opposition party may take advantage of this development by fielding a strong male candidate to compete the seat. This scenario forces political parties to overlook voluntary reservation of seats in face of stiff competition from the opposition. Furthermore, women themselves are demotivated to take the reserved seats as a result of societal shame and ridicule associated with such. Besides, female politicians in Zimbabwe complain that political parties identify and shunt women candidates in constituencies that are not the party’s strongholds, or where they often lose. When ZANU PF adopted and implemented the 25 per cent quotas in the National Assembly in 2005; the party was accused of nominating women candidates in opposition strongholds where they had little chances of success. Resultantly, only 17.7 per cent of elected ZANU-PF members were women.70 Women party members continue to accuse political parties of viewing them as losing candidates. These double standards by political parties render the whole essence of quotas ineffective. The implementation of special measures (both constitutional and discretional) has also been heavily opposed and criticised in political parties, and some circles of the society. Critics view quotas as a mere tokenism for sacrificing ‘quality over quantity’.71 Ahikire noted that ‘there is concern about ghettoisation of women in public politics by quotas’. 72 Some women view quotas as mere perpetuation of gender inequalities by categorising women as a low class or ‘others’. As Dene Smuts commented: ‘When you send a person into public life under a quota system, you automatically send her with a question hanging over her head about her competence’.73 Quotas imply that politicians are elected because of their gender, not because of qualifications and that more qualified candidates are pushed aside.74 In addition, society views quotas as a negation to democracy in that women are given preference at the expense of men.75 Quotas limit the 69 S Hassim ‘Representation, participation and democratic effectiveness: feminist challenges to representative democracy in South Africa’ in AM Goetz & S Hassim (eds) No shortcuts to power (2003) 86. 70 B Chiroro ‘Persistent inequalities: women and electoral politics in Zimbabwe elections in 2005’ (2005) 4 Journal of African Elections 4. 71 Gender Links (n 14 above) 21. 72 J Ahikire ‘Vulnerabilities of feminist engagement and the challenge of developmentalism in the South: what alternatives?’ (2008) 39 Institute of Development Bulletin 28. 73 Ahikire (n 72 above). 74 Dahlerup (n 27 above) 94. 75 Dahlerup (as above).