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Archived News
5th April 2005
Zimbabwe opposition says ruling party youths kill supporter
SA's Harare mission imploding
More polling officers expelled for not supporting Zanu PF
Zimbabwe excludes 100 000 from voting
Over 1000 Zim expats cast mock vote
Court gives Cosatu green light for demonstrations
In Zimbabwe, withholding of food magnifies the hunger for change
Election frequencies
Blog
Rallying cry belies Mugabe's fear of voter revolt
Zimbabwe opposition's 'tell a friend' plan to foil vote riggers
Zimbabwe opposition lodges election complaint
Hate speech, intimidation and threats have marked campaigns, says pressure group
SA's Zim observers 'hang around in hotel
Broadcasting boss demoted over Tsvangirai footage
From Harare to Bulawayo, voters open their hands and their hearts
Do shiny boxes make for a fair vote in Zimbabwe?
My dead mother is on the voters' roll
Zimbabwe deports UK journalists
Women arrested in election vigil
No crowds, no queues, just the high-speed chase of a white voter
Mugabe snatches victory again
SADC: Voters turned away
Despair rocks MDC amid charges of Zanu PF electoral fraud
Zimbabwe’s opposition rejects results
Fury grows at Mugabe’s rigged poll
Mugabe vows to eradicate opposition after observers endorse election victory
SADC team probes 'major vote-rigging'
Labour minister unfazed by ‘ghosts’
Statement by Dianne Kohler-Barnard MP, DA Member of SADC Observer Mission
Zimbabwe holding Telegraph reporters
Rigging exposed
Opposition demands new poll
SA mission split over poll finding
Zimbabwe voters 'were gripped by terror'
Zimbabwe’s muted opposition
MDC youths demand action
ANC accused of 'bully-boy' tactics on Zim elections
Glimmers of defiance in a wary Zimbabwe
Eight pressure group members still hospitalised after assault
Journalists go back to jail despite bail order
Police officers detained for refusing to cast votes in the presence of bosses
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From Reuters, 29 March
Zimbabwe opposition says ruling party youths kill supporter
Harare - Zimbabwe's opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) said on Tuesday that one of its supporters had been killed in a politically-motivated incident ahead of Thursday's election, but police denied the allegation. The MDC's first charge of political murder in this campaign followed greatly reduced political violence this year compared to bloodshed during polls in 2000 and 2002. The MDC said Gift Sunday was attacked in the MDC stronghold of Epworth east of Harare by young suspected supporters from President Robert Mugabe's ruling Zanu PF party. "He was from the shops on his way home when he came across a group of about eight Zanu PF youths who assaulted him for wearing an MDC shirt," said Tapiwa Mashakada, the party's member of parliament for Epworth. "We know the people who committed the crime. They are known and identified Zanu PF activists," he told Reuters. Assistant Police Commissioner Wayne Bvudzijena confirmed Sunday's murder but denied it was politically motivated, saying it appeared to have been the result of a bar brawl. A poll free of violence and intimidation is crucial for Mugabe, who has been fighting international isolation for five years after charges he rigged the last major parliamentary vote and his own re-election as president in 2002, partly through violent intimidation of opposition supporters.
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From The Cape Times (SA), 30 March
SA's Harare mission imploding
By Moshoeshoe Monare
Harare - An opposition party member of the SA parliamentary observer team says he has has been threatened with being abandoned to face the music from Zimbabwe's notorious police if he continued to speak his mind. ANC chief whip Mbulelo Goniwe, Labour Minister Membathisi Mdladlana and Deputy Safety Minister Suzan Shabangu have allegedly threatened to revoke Democratic Alliance MP Roy Jankielsohn's observer status. The three were part of an 11-member ANC delegation, including SA ambassador to Zimbabwe, Jerry Ndou, who interrogated Jankielsohn on Monday after he released a statement about reports of intimidation during electioneering. Jankielsohn said they told him they would not protect him against the Zimbabweans if he continued with his statements. "They interrogated and reprimanded me. What frustrates us as the opposition members in this mission is that we don't get any proper briefs from our leader (Mbulelo Goniwe). We have been trying to meet him so that we can know what is the protocol but in vain. Since we arrived we have been faced with silent behaviour from Goniwe. They have been telling us that 'you behave yourself or we can't protect you from the Zimbabweans'," he said. The DA said it would send a letter to the Speaker of the National Assembly, Baleka Kgositsile, "objecting to the behaviour of certain members of the ANC delegation". Jankielsohn said he would continue speaking his mind on the situation in Zimbabwe. "I am not going to be intimidated by Goniwe. I didn't take the whole process (of interrogation and reprimanding) seriously. They might be 11 people, but I am not scared of them. I report to my leader (Joe Seremane). We will release our own minority report if the situation is contrary to what the ANC says," he said.
A two-day attempt to get comment from Luphumzo Kebeni, spokesperson of the SA Parliamentary Observer mission, failed despite repeated promises to return calls. Seremane condemned what he described as the ANC leadership's attempt to gag Jankielsohn: "This attempt to bully is unacceptable. There are no rules governing the accessibility of observers to the media other than those made up by the ANC alone." "We believe Goniwe's actions amount to a threat to incite action against an elected representative of the SA people by the Zimbabwe security apparatus, notorious for its human rights abuses," said Seremane. "We believe the behaviour of the Mugabe government is deeply embarrassing to the ANC. We believe the ANC would like the story of the Zimbabwe elections toned down as much as possible. They have an interest in these elections being valid and anything that threatens the validity of the elections also threatens the credibility of ANC policy. That is why they want to shut us up." He added that the DA would not be silenced. "We have been mandated by the South African parliament to observe the elections on behalf of the South African people. We are in Zimbabwe to bear witness. We will do our job," Seremane said.
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From Zim Online (SA), 31 March
More polling officers expelled for not supporting Zanu PF
Gwanda - Five more polling officers have been barred from tomorrow's election after being accused of being sympathetic to the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party. The five, who are teachers in Matabeleland South province, bring to 1005 the number of people who were being trained or had already been trained as polling officers who have been dropped from the election at the last minute because they are suspected of not supporting the government. David Magagula, Dumezweni Nkala, Nkululeko Khoza, Stalin Dube and Reuben Tshuma had to drop out of final training as polling and presiding officers after anonymous callers told them by phone that they were no longer needed because they were "enemies of the state." "The caller never identified himself. He just told me that I am an enemy of the state, that I should pass the same message on to Nkala," said Magagula explaining how he found out he had been dropped from tomorrow's election. President Robert Mugabe and his ruling Zanu PF party routinely accuse MDC supporters of being enemies of the state. At a rally last Sunday Mugabe repeated the accusation calling people who vote for the MDC tomorrow traitors.
Magagula told ZimOnline that when he checked with a Mr. Chigare, who is an official with the Registrar General's office that is training polling officers, he was told that orders to drop him had come from "higher offices." The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) which is overall in charge of the election could not be reached for comment on the matter last night. But Registrar General Tobaiwa Mudede, himself a well known Zanu PF supporter, said people being barred from working as polling officers might be known members of the MDC and could therefore not be trusted to carry out their duties fairly. "There are many opposition members within the civil service. It is up to the electoral officials to decide who is suitable for polling duties and who is not," said Mudede. Earlier in the week on Sunday Zanu PF chairman for Mashonaland East province Ray Kaukonde barred 1 000 teachers who had been deployed as polling officers in Mudzi district in the same province. Kaukonde, who himself is Zanu PF candidate for Mudzi, allegedly told the polling officers they could not conduct voting in the area because they were MDC supporters. While the ZEC is work charged with running the election Mudede supported by former and serving army and police officers is effectively running the show.
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From VOA News, 29 March
Zimbabwe excludes 100 000 from voting
Harare - With time running out before Zimbabwe's parliamentary election on Thursday, there have been many last minute problems. One of the biggest so far is the exclusion of up to 100 000 government workers from voting. Close to 100 000 government workers have recently been commissioned by the Zimbabwe government to work at the country's 8,000 polling stations on election day, making it impossible for many of them to cast ballots in their own election districts. The one option they did have to vote was by absentee ballot, but the deadline for casting ballots by mail was March 21 and many of the government workers did not learn of their poll monitoring duties until after the deadline had passed. Though their political allegiances are seldom talked about, the opposition Movement for Democratic Change says many of those working for the government in urban areas do not support the ruling Zanu PF. Another issue of concern is the government's move to increase the number of polling stations in rural areas. Bryant Elliott, an expert on Zimbabwe's elections, says the new measures to increase the number of voting stations means that a maximum of 600 votes will be cast in each ballot box. This, he said, would undermine the secrecy of the ballot because it makes it easier to identify how people voted village by village.
Bishop Sebastian Bakare, head of the Anglican church in Zimbabwe's eastern Manicaland province, says rural people are worried that if they are suspected of voting for the opposition, they will be denied food. Only the government is allowed to hold any stocks of the staple food, maize. The opposition also has concerns about what happens after the voting. The results at the polling stations may only be announced by a central electoral authority, the National Logistics Committee. The committee is staffed by the Commissioner of Police Augustine Chihuri and other leading government officials. No independent observers or opposition members are allowed to monitor the committee. The opposition went to court two weeks ago asking that the committee not be allowed to be the sole announcers of the votes. So far, the court has not heard the case. In addition, an opposition group, Justice for Agriculture, claims Zanu PF has warned several of the few remaining white farmers that if people vote for the opposition at polling stations on their farms, they will be evicted. Zanu PF held a major rally in a rural area 50 kilometers north of Harare Tuesday. The main speaker, Elliott Manyika, called for a free and fair poll without violence.
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From Sapa, 29 March
Over 1000 Zim expats cast mock vote
More than 1000 Zimbabweans turned out to vote in a mock election held on Tuesday to protest Zimbabwe's upcoming elections, event organisers said. The mock election was held outside Zimbabwe's embassy in Pretoria. "The mock election is a protest vote against the disenfranchisement of Zimbabweans in South Africa and abroad who have had to flee their country as a result of the socio-economic crisis there," said Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition's South African branch co-ordinator Elinor Sisulu. Ballot boxes were hired for the event and the Independent Electoral Commissions' (IEC) voting regulations were adhered to during the mock election, Sisulu said. She said the event was organised after Zimbabweans living in South Africa told the organisation of their frustration at being unable to choose whom they wanted to be represented by. The Coalition said the mock election was intended to send signals to Harare that Zimbabweans in the diaspora also needed to contribute in the political decision-making process of their country. It would also send signals to the Southern African Development Community and the rest of the world as to the need and possibility for Zimbabweans all over the world to participate in all national elections from their present countries of residence, the Coalition said. This would also set a foundation for Zimbabweans abroad to intensify the campaign for a postal ballot vote.
From ZWNEWS: The results of the South African ballot released last night show that 93.6 per cent of votes were cast for the MDC.
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From SABC News, 29 March
Court gives Cosatu green light for demonstrations
The Pretoria High Court has allowed Cosatu to go ahead with a planned march and demonstration at the Zimbabwean border at Beitbridge tomorrow. The court however ordered the trade union federation to observe certain conditions. Cosatu is holding the demonstration to show solidarity with Zimbabwean workers ahead of the country's elections on Thursday. The Union will be allowed to hold their protest action, as long as they stay off the road or the shoulder of the road. The court also stipulated that the protestors remain approximately 200 meters behind the border post. The Union will also have to limit their supporters to 10 000, with at least 500 marshals who will be responsible for the movement of the supporters. Cosatu says the conditions are virtually impossible to comply with and could set a bad precedent. Zwelinzima Vavi, the secretary general of Cosatu, says they want to check with their lawyers and see if this could set a precedent for demonstrations against Zimbabwe and Swaziland and other rogue states, and they will take it on review in another court. Cosatu's planned night vigil at the border post was not changed.
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From Washington Post, 30 March
In Zimbabwe, withholding of food magnifies the hunger for change
By Craig Timberg
Zhulube - Hundreds of bags of cornmeal were stacked in front of a bar near here this month, rising as high as its roof. The only problem for the hungry people of this drought-stricken area was that the food, like the bar, was controlled by officials from the ruling party. With a crucial election nearing, they weren't about to give it to just anyone. The officials first held a rally by their impressive mound of food, witnesses here said. The next day, as hundreds of people from surrounding villages gathered to collect the 110-pound bags they had ordered and paid for months before, ruling party officials announced that only their supporters were eligible. When the names of opposition voters were called, they were simply handed back their money, according to several people who were turned away. The leftover bags went on sale hours later for twice the price. Human rights reports say withholding food from opponents is nothing new for the Zanu PF, the party of President Robert Mugabe. But this year, the threat of starvation is creating a potentially potent backlash against Zanu PF.
Many people in this tiny, impoverished village in southern Zimbabwe say that their votes in Thursday's national parliamentary elections will be based less on their immediate food needs than on which party offers the best chance to reverse Zimbabwe's five-year-old economic decline and end recurrent food shortages. Opposition party leaders say the issue might represent their best chance to make inroads into Mugabe's traditionally strong rural support. Among those who went home empty-handed here on March 19 was Thenji Matema, 48, a lean and soft-spoken widow supporting a daughter and four grandchildren on the roughly $25 she earns each month selling mats that she weaves by hand. Matema said she walked away furious and doubly determined to vote for the opposition -- even if she has to drink tea to curb her hunger before her one daily meal, and serve meat to her family only once a week. "It's better I suffer than vote for Zanu PF," Matema said. She later elaborated on her distaste for the ruling party. It is not only its role in mismanaging the food situation, she said, but "that they are forcing people to do what they want. People don't like that."
Mugabe's party has manipulated voter rolls and is likely to send the politically loyal military to oversee polling stations and ballot counting, human rights groups say. Even the most enthusiastic opposition activists say this rigging makes outright victory for the opposition unlikely. Mugabe, in power since this nation's independence in 1980, can neutralize all but a landslide win for the opposition because he directly appoints 30 of the 150 members in parliament. His current six-year term lasts through 2008. But if a single issue dominates political discussions this election season in Zimbabwe, it is the growing problem of hunger, as evidenced by the thousands of acres of wilted corn plants that can be seen, brown and dying, across a country once regarded as southern Africa's breadbasket. International groups that monitor famine say nearly half of Zimbabwe's 13 million people might need food aid in the coming months. Less than a year ago, Mugabe boasted of a bumper harvest to come and ordered international food donors to cease general feeding programs in what many political analysts in Zimbabwe regarded as an attempt to gain control of all food stocks before the election. In a rare interview with an international news organization in May, he told Britain's Sky News: "We are not hungry. . . . Why foist this food upon us? We don't want to be choked. We have enough."
But Zimbabwe, which was already suffering food production declines after the violent seizures of white-owned commercial farms beginning in 2000, was soon hit by a drought, one that has also hobbled food production in neighboring Zambia and Botswana. Farmers who grow their own food on small patches of land suddenly faced a near-total loss of their staple crop, corn, which is milled into a fine grist, then boiled into a stiff mush that is central to Zimbabweans' daily diets. Mugabe has belatedly acknowledged the drought and food shortage, telling supporters at campaign rallies that he will prevent mass starvation by importing food from neighboring South Africa, where modern irrigation systems make farms resistant to drought. In state-owned newspapers, top ruling party officials in Zimbabwe have called reports that they are using food as an election tool "completely unsubstantiated and untrue." Such reports have been widespread for many years, detailed in accounts by independent journalists and such groups as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. Catholic Archbishop Pius A. Ncube, a leading critic of Mugabe in nearby Bulawayo, said the use of food as a weapon was common throughout the country this election year, as it was in 2000 and 2002. "They are totally corrupt, and they will use anything to protect their power," he said. Here in Zhulube, 82-year-old Asa Sibanda said her refusal to support Zanu PF had cut her off for years from food reserves controlled by the government and the party. Instead, she supports herself, five orphaned grandchildren and one great-grandchild by selling chickens and getting occasional gifts of cornmeal from her son, who lives nearby. Her total income, she said, is a few dollars each month.
Though she did not get government food, she used to get regular deliveries of cornmeal, beans and other food from international aid groups. But in the middle of last year, Mugabe ordered an end to such efforts. As for the chickens, only eight are left. Sibanda said some people in her village would vote for the ruling party out of fear that government food aid will otherwise be withheld. "Most people, they are not voting for Zanu PF, but they are voting for food," she said. Yet she and many other opposition supporters will not be doing the same, she said. "I choose to die rather than be arm-twisted to go back to Zanu PF." Hunger has become a central rallying point for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, which features images of green, fertile fields and well-stocked grocery shelves in its television ads. A victory for the opposition, party members say, would allow Zimbabwe to rapidly repair the international relations of a country that U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in January called one of the world's "outposts of tyranny." Major food aid, plus a resumption of foreign investment, say opposition leaders, would quickly follow. Matema, the widow, is ready for some good news. In October and November, three of her four head of cattle died as a result of the drought. The following month -- two days before Christmas -- her husband died. Later, when the rains failed in January and February, her fields of corn turned brown, leaving only a handful of plants with enough water to grow ears with edible kernels. An adjacent field of peanuts was also a nearly total loss. "We are hoping for a change," she said.
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From SW Radio Africa, 30 March
Election frequencies
Work is continuing to counter the Zimbabwe government's jamming of the short-wave frequencies. Please try the following frequencies: 3300 kHz in the 90m band from 6pm to 9pm Zimbabwe time; 15145 kHz in the 19m band from 6pm to 8 pm; 11770 kHz in the 25 m band from 8pm to 9pm. Please also see www.swradioafrica.com for up to date information. The medium-wave broadcast between 5am and 7am each morning, at 1197 kHz, is not being jammed. Outside the broadcast area, listen over the internet at www.swradioafrica.com .
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From Sokwanele, 30 March
Blog
The Sokwanele blog, or online diary, is now available at www.sokwanele.com .
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From The Times (UK), 31 March
Rallying cry belies Mugabe's fear of voter revolt
By Xan Rice and Jan Raath
The opposition is exuberant as the polls open today but with 30 seats in President Mugabe's hands, its optimism may prove misplaced With a vigour that belied his 81 years, a fist-pumping President Mugabe ended his party's election campaign yesterday with a vow that it will win today's general election with a "huge, mountainous victory". At a rally on the outskirts of Harare, the veteran Zimbabwean leader shook hands with old women, closed his eyes as he sang along with the choir and smiled as a midget danced for the crowd. He insisted that the election would be free and fair. And for one last time, in this campaign at least, he denounced his personal "axis of evil": Tony Blair, George Bush and Morgan Tsvangirai, the opposition leader. "We have never been losers, because we have always been a party of the people," he told the crowd of 8,000 on a dusty football pitch. After the wave of "people-power" uprisings in Eastern Europe, many were looking to Zimbabwe to continue the trend by ousting Mr Mugabe's regime through the ballot box. But they are likely to be disappointed. The President's decision to tone down the violence against opposition supporters to give the election a veneer of legitimacy, and to permit opposition rallies, has unleashed a tide of exuberance and optimism throughout the country. Even though the ruling Zanu PF party may be less popular than the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), it is expected to win. In its favour is a near-total blackout of independent media coverage, a blatantly partial electoral authority, a highly dubious electoral roll containing hundreds of thousands of "ghost voters", and a skewed judiciary.
Archbishop Pius Ncube, the head of the Roman Catholic Church in western Zimbabwe, accused Mr Mugabe yesterday of the "systematic and evil" use of food as a weapon to reward supporters and punish opponents in a country where millions are close to starvation. Yet the race is far closer than many imagined a few weeks ago. And with the MDC drawing huge crowds to its rallies, the President has shown signs of panic. Two nights ago, MDC activists discovered a printing works in central Harare churning out what party officials said were "millions" of leaflets under the MDC's emblem stating that it was withdrawing from the race. The five men arrested told MDC lawyers that they had been hired by a senior official in the Zanu PF youth league. State radio repeatedly broadcasts a speech by Mr Mugabe in which he said that people who voted for the opposition were "traitors". And in a clear attempt to buy votes, the Government yesterday announced that the minimum wage for domestic servants would increase tenfold. The reasons for the President's fears were evident at yesterday's rally. Many in the crowd were bussed in. They cheered and shouted "Long live Mugabe", but the chants seemed less than spontaneous. Police stood in front of the crowd, and Mr Mugabe's notorious youth service searched all those attending before they entered the football stadium.
The mood is very different at opposition rallies. On Sunday, just up the road, Mr Tsvangirai attracted 25,000 people. There, people danced freely, laughed, sang and chanted slogans as if they meant it. The MDC's strength worries the previously cocksure Zanu PF supporters. Coleman Naka, 44, who owns a transport company, said yesterday: "A short time ago we thought it was obvious we would win. But we relaxed and now the MDC is challenging us." Mr Tsvangirai is exultant, and he and his party's candidates are now talking of victory in an election the MDC very nearly refused to contest because it was so rigged. But independent observers are far more cautious. "The change is incredible, but I think the outcome should be seen more in terms of the MDC stopping Zanu PF from getting a two-thirds majority (which would allow it to change the Constitution)," said Brian Kagoro, chairman of Zimbabwe in Crisis Coalition, an umbrella group of prodemocracy organisations. For the MDC to achieve a majority in the 150-seat parliament, it will have to win 76 of the 120 contested constituencies. Five years ago it won 57. The ruling party starts with a massive advantage, as Mr Mugabe can personally appoint 30 unelected MPs. Whatever the outcome today, it could signal the end of Mr Mugabe's 25-year rule.
Brian Raftopoulos, Associate Professor of Development Studies at the University of Zimbabwe, said it would be very difficult for him to keep a lid on dissent. With voters having their first real sniff of freedom in years, Mr Mugabe may have inadvertently sown the seeds of his own demise. "A small opening-up in the system unleashes a huge groundswell of hope and possibility," Mr Raftopoulos said. "There has been a real revival of support. It will be very difficult to keep control of the consequences." Whether Zimbabwe's cowed, oppressed and impoverished people will actually take to the streets if the election is perceived to have been rigged is another question. Archbishop Ncube of Bulawayo has called for a peaceful uprising, similar to the one which swept Viktor Yushchenko into power in Ukraine. But to date Zimbabweans have proved reluctant to take to the streets. Perhaps one reason is the threat of the police and military. After the last two election campaigns, a number of opposition supporters were beaten, raped and killed. A few weeks of freedom have not erased those memories.
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From The Daily Telegraph (UK), 30 March
Zimbabwe opposition's 'tell a friend' plan to foil vote riggers
Harare - "Write down the result, tell a friend, then run like hell!" This was the order to polling agents for Zimbabwe's opposition, the Movement for Democratic Change, before they began moving off to monitor more than 8,000 polling stations ahead of tomorrow's general election. It is designed to spread a word-of-mouth picture of the results at each polling station before they are fed into a central election office in Harare controlled by some of President Robert Mugabe's most loyal aides. The octogenarian president is said to have everything in place to ensure victory. Critics say polling stations will be run by cowed officials, with voter rolls bloated with phantom voters. In isolated rural areas and farms, villagers have been threatened with being denied food or being sacked if they are found voting for the opposition. The media dare not stray from supporting him. Officially, four large groups of foreign observers will monitor the election but they are all linked to supporters of Mr Mugabe, while any organisations critical of the regime have been banned. Three are dominated by members of South Africa's ruling African National Congress, whose leader, President Thabo Mbeki, supports Mr Mugabe. The fourth, from the Southern African Development Community, is led by a South African cabinet minister, Phumzile Mlambo-Nguka, who has spoken encouragingly on Zimbabwe's state-controlled media about the electoral climate. Sources inside the observer groups say they believe the words "sufficiently free and fair" will emerge in their reports.
The EU is highly critical of the arrangements. Speaking on behalf of the EU presidency, Luxemburg's junior foreign minister, Nicolas Schmit, said yesterday that the conditions were deeply worrying because Mr Mugabe "would tolerate no observation of this sham election". "We're worried and shocked, not only by this pseudo-election campaign but by what's been going on there for years," Schmit said, promising it would be debated by EU foreign ministers. Justice for Agriculture, a pressure group, says Zanu PF has warned some remaining white farmers that if people vote for the opposition at polling stations on their farm they will be evicted. John Worsley-Worswick, the chief executive, said: "Farmers in two provinces have contacted us as they are under extreme pressure to ensure that no votes are cast for the opposition on their farms. They were told that they survive only because Zanu PF allows it." This time, the authorities in rural areas will find it easier than ever to identify who voted for the opposition. There are twice as many polling stations in rural areas as in the last election in 2002. "Zanu PF will be able to identify, village by village, if people voted for the opposition. There were too many polling stations in rural areas for the last election. Now there are even more," said a senior Zimbabwe election lawyer who asked not to be named for professional reasons.
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From VOA News, 30 March
Zimbabwe opposition lodges election complaint
Zimbabwe's opposition Movement for Democratic Change has filed a protest with electoral authorities claiming local officials are denying accreditation to the opposition party's poll monitors. The MDC says this is illegal and will hamper the party's ability to assure the proper course of Thursday's parliamentary elections. MDC legal spokesman David Coltart says he is outraged by reports coming from around the country that the party monitors are being denied accreditation by local polling officials even though MDC has complied with the law requiring the party to publish the names of the monitors in newspapers. He says the monitors are being asked to bring proof that their names are on the published list even though no such requirement was written into the election law. The MDC had published a list of 24,000 monitors to observe polling inside and outside the polling places. Each party is by law allowed one monitor inside and one outside each polling station. In a lawsuit challenging the legality of the 2002 presidential elections, the MDC alleges four out of 10 of its monitors were either beaten or chased away and some said they were too scared to show up for duty. President Robert Mugabe's ruling Zanu PF party won the election by 15 percent, and a court case challenging the result is yet to be heard by the High Court.
MDC's Mr. Coltart says the party has filed a complaint with the Zimbabwe Election Commission protesting not only the polling authorities' refusal to accredit its monitors, but also the failure of the ruling Zanu PF party to publish the list of its own monitors within the legal time limit. Chief election officer Lovemore Sekeramayi who was asked to comment told VOA Wednesday he does not answer questions from the media over the telephone and said he was too busy to answer questions faxed to him. South African observers who were contacted for comment said they were under instructions not to talk to the media. Party monitors at polling stations help identify each voter, assure the legality of the voting process and monitor the counting of ballots. MDC officials say the monitors' presence is critical in assuring the elections are not being rigged. Independent candidate and former information minister Jonathan Moyo has said he is filing a lawsuit to seek permission to increase the number of party monitors inside the polling stations. Voting at Zimbabwe's 8,000 polling stations ends Thursday at seven o'clock in the evening.
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From The Cape Times (SA), 31 March
Hate speech, intimidation and threats have marked campaigns, says pressure group
By Moshoeshoe Monare
Harare - No Zimbabwean province has shown a satisfactory election climate and hate speech, intimidation and threats have characterised the campaigns for today's elections. These are the findings given by the National Constitutional Assembly in its second report, released yesterday. "According to the data received for March, 96% of constituencies reported forms of political violence and 63% of the reports alleged that torture took place," the report said. "Most of the victims are MDC supporters (41%), with Zanu-PF supporters (14%), ordinary citizens (11%), and civics (3%). The perpetrators are alleged to be Zanu-PF supporters (52%), the militia (17%) and the police (17%), the Central Intelligence Office (12%), and the army (8%). The MDC and war veterans were also mentioned, but their figures were negligible." The report comes amid threats by the police to arrest National Constitutional Assembly chairman Lovemore Madhuku over the first report.
The National Constitutional Assembly said it had sampled eight of Zimbabwe's 10 provinces between March 1 and 24. "No data had been submitted from Manicaland or Masvingo by the time of writing, but it is submitted that the data nonetheless do give a good overview of the national picture in March. A total of 209 reports were submitted, with an average of three to a constituency," the report said. The incidence of political violence was worst in the Harare province and seemed least in the Midlands. "It is evident that the trend... accords with the observations of previous elections. Harare and the Mashonaland provinces have shown more frequent instances of election irregularities than other provinces. "Harare was particularly bad ... this shows that the battle is really in the urban areas where the MDC has been the stronger of the two main parties since 2000. Zanu-PF is confident that it has the rural votes in the bag."
Although the police and President Robert Mugabe had called for a violence-free election, the psychological damage caused by the intimidation and threats following several years of physical violence and torture could not guarantee a climate conducive to free and fair elections, the National Constitutional Assembly said. Bases for trained Zanu-PF militiamen remained in some constituencies. "In the urban areas, the bases are reported to be at public halls, beer halls, schools, shopping centres, and government institutions. This is something of a change from previous elections when militia bases were more likely to be found in rural areas. The presence of militia bases (has been) extremely important in recent elections as there (has been) a decided correlation between their presence and political violence and other irregularities in a constituency." Reports about food being used for political leverage were also cause for concern. "Of the constituencies sampled, 75% reported the political use of food." Most of these reports said that presenting a Zanu PF party card "guarantees food supplies". "In the run-up to a highly contentious election, and in the context of a manifestly serious humanitarian crisis, reports that food is being used as a threat must be immediately investigated. It is the view of the National Constitutional Assembly that this election is now so seriously flawed that there can be absolutely no confidence in the outcome."
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From The Mail & Guardian (SA), 30 March
SA's Zim observers 'hang around in hotel
Cape Town - Zimbabwe's opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has accused South Africa's government-aligned observers to Zimbabwe's March 31 elections of wanting to "rubber-stamp" the outcome. "The MDC no longer has any faith whatsoever in the capacity of Minister [of Minerals and Energy] Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, the head of the SADC [Southern African Development Community] observer mission, to act impartially," MDC secretary general Welshman Ncube said on Wednesday. "This follows her unqualified comments on Zimbabwe's electoral process and environment over the past few days," he said in a statement. "The comments made by the minister, and other comments attributed to the head of the ANC [African National Congress] observer mission, have revived our suspicions that South African observers allied to the government and ruling party are not interested in the facts on the ground. They are only interested in manipulating events so that they can rubber-stamp another fraudulent Zanu PF victory," Ncube said. "On [the] SABC [South African Broadcasting Corporation] this morning [Wednesday], the minister contemptuously dismissed MDC allegations of the use of food aid as a political weapon, the role of chiefs in coercing the electorate, and our deep concerns around the state of the voters' roll. "We have supplied the observer missions with substantial evidence to corroborate our allegations, yet they have failed to investigate them."
Ncube said the MDC invited the South African and SADC observer missions to numerous rallies in rural areas, but they "didn't bother to turn up, preferring to hang around in the lobbies of five-star hotels in Harare and Bulawayo". At these rallies, countless people approached officials from the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission to complain about the role of chiefs and the fact that they were being denied food aid. "We have given observers the names of constituencies and the names of those known to be in involved in incidents of electoral malpractice, yet they have not visited these areas." The MDC suspects the remarks by the minister and the head of the ANC observer mission are part of a calculated move by South Africa to prepare the ground in the hope that Zanu PF will win, and they can then legitimise the "victory". "Given the evidence of widespread electoral malpractice, this would be pure folly. No one is going to take such claims seriously. The world is not blind to such shenanigans." However, despite the partisan manner in which the election has been managed, and the absence of democratic conditions on the ground precluding a free and fair election, the MDC is confident of victory. "Our rallies around the country have attracted thousands of people. Thirty-five thousand attended the rally in Bulawayo last Saturday and 40 000 attended the one in Harare the next day. "The people are behind us. If the MDC does win the election, it will be because the will of the people will have prevailed over attempts by [President Robert] Mugabe and Zanu PF to rig the ballot. It is deeply regrettable that certain South African observers don't appear to have much of a problem with overt attempts to subvert the principle of 'one person, one vote'," Ncube said.
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From Zim Online (SA), 31 March
Broadcasting boss demoted over Tsvangirai footage
Harare - The state-owned Zimbabwe Broadcasting Holdings (ZBH) has demoted the editor-in-chief of its Newsnet division, Tazzen Mandizvidza, for showing opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai on television accusing President Robert Mugabe of running down the country. Mandizvidza is now an executive producer after his editor's post was given over to Chris Chivinge, a former editor-in-chief of Newsnet, who had left the corporation to join a joint broadcasting venture between Namibia and Zimbabwe that has collapsed due to lack of funds. A ZBH official confirmed Mandizvidza's demotion but said it was normal movement of staff within the company, the sole television and radio broadcaster in the country. "The issue you are referring to is not peculiar. It is part of staff movement and we can't talk about our staff movements to the press," the official said. Newsnet has in the last two weeks ran several reports on opposition rallies with Tsvangirai telling supporters of his Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party that Zimbabwe's unprecedented economic and food crisis had nothing to do with sabotage by Britain as alleged by Mugabe but was all because of the President's mismanagement and wrong policies. The state broadcasting firm had until a few weeks ago blacked out Tsvangirai and his MDC party only lifting the ban on the opposition because of Southern African Development Community election guidelines requiring equal access to public media by all political parties. It was not possible to get a comment from Mandizvidza yesterday.
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From The Times (UK), 1 April
From Harare to Bulawayo, voters open their hands and their hearts
From Xan Rice in Bulawayo
Dawn had barely broken when I saw my first open-handed salute of the day. On a road outside Harare a man stood like a statue on the back of a pickup truck, his left arm raised and fingers splayed in the salute of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). On the roadside a woman waved back. Then another. And another. I left Zimbabwe's capital at 5.30am yesterday to drive the 300 miles to Bulawayo, the second city. By stopping at urban and rural polling stations along the way, I hoped to gauge the mood of the people as they voted in the crucial parliamentary elections. This was no scientific exercise, but what I saw and heard convinced me that if this is a free and fair election, only one party can possibly win. In interviews with dozens of voters at eight polling stations, rural and urban, in three provinces, I found not a single supporter of President Mugabe's regime. Shortly after 7am, when polling stations opened, a few dozen voters queued silently outside Hatley One Primary School in Chegutu, a small town 60 miles from Harare that fell to the ruling Zanu PF in the 2000 elections. Rebecca Dhliwayo, 53, emerged from the school hall with the little finger on her left hand stained purple to prevent duplicate voting. "I did not sleep last night," she said with a smile. "We were praying through the night for change." Ms Dhliwayo, a single mother of four children, used to work in tourism, but today there are few tourists and fewer jobs. "Our kids don't have work," she said. "People are desperate for food. We are in a desert country, even though we don't have a desert."
Thirty miles down the road I stopped at Oddbit Farm, in the Ngezi constituency. A handful of election officials sat in a small tent waiting for people to arrive. In two hours only 50 had turned up. A dozen of those had been turned away because they were not on the electoral roll. There was a similar situation at a polling station in Zhombe, five miles further on. Clothes hung on a line next to the tent and a pot of tea boiled on a fire. However, at Kwe Kwe, a town of 75,000 people in the middle of the country, there were long queues. This year, for the first time, voters are being asked to separate into three lines - A to L, M (many names in Zimbabwe begin with M), and N to Z - which has speeded up the process dramatically. Near the front of the M line, a man in a black suit and a trilby, who had been queueing since the polling station opened, said: "Down with that man (Mugabe)." His neighbours joined in, denouncing the President and his party. The destination of their crosses was in no doubt. At Gweru I left the main road for Somabhula, a tiny rural village in a constituency that fell to the MDC in 2000. A woman carrying a pile of firewood on her head walked along dirt road. She spoke little English but showed with her finger that she had voted. "MDC," she said. Lovemore Ndlovu, 47, a railway worker, was riding his bicycle away from the primary school after casting his vote. "We are suffering in this country," he said. "Fuel and food are scarce." But yesterday his spirits were high. "I'm so happy. The MDC is going to win."
Cutting back across the main road I made for Insiza, a Zanu PF seat in the southwest of the country. As the rain poured down the dirt road became nearly impassable. But George Sibanda, wearing a leather hat and blue overall, seemed unaffected, riding his old black bicycle slowly along the track. He had just voted at the Ensango Resettlement School. "Zanu PF?" I asked, hoping for my first hit. "Ah, no," said Mr Sibanda, 69, firmly. "MDC." I reached Bulawayo at 4pm. There were no queues at the City Hall. David and Mary, a black couple in their thirties, walked towards their car after casting their ballots. "If there is no cheating, the MDC will win," they said. From Harare to Bulawayo the polling stations seemed organised and well-staffed. Election monitors with luminous yellow or orange bibs were in attendance. I did not meet anyone who complained about intimidation, or who appeared scared to talk about their vote. But neither did I meet a single voter, even in constituencies held by Zanu PF, who admitted casting their ballot for the President's ruling party. As I checked into the hotel, the porter dropped off my bags before hurrying away. "I am going to vote," he said, holding up an outstretched hand. "We are sick and tired of this government."
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From The Globe and Mail (Canada), 1 April
Do shiny boxes make for a fair vote in Zimbabwe?
By Stephanie Nolen
Glendale - Not 10 minutes earlier, I had said, a bit amazed and, truth be told, a little bored, "It looks like Canada in here." My colleague John Donnelly of The Boston Globe and I were visiting polling stations on election day in this hotly contested rural riding, 90 kilometres outside Harare. The past two elections in Zimbabwe were characterized by scenes of brutal violence, carried out by supporters of the ruling party, Zanu PF, and by the police. This time, though, we found only orderly lines, tidy ballot boxes, private voting stations. The sole thing that made it different from Canada was the three lines: one for surnames A to L, one for N to Z, and one for M, since so many Zimbabwean names begin with the letter. Then, as we were talking to voters outside the polling station in Glendale, we were approached by a miserable-looking young man, clutching his right arm in his left hand. "The police have my keys," he blurted. His name was Blessing Nhimba, he is 25, and he is the president of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change Youth League in the riding.
In anxious bursts, his story came out: He had driven into town to pick up food to take to the party's polling agents. Getting out of his truck, he was set upon by a gang of Zanu PF supporters, he said. "They said, 'What do you want here? We don't want you here, you are giving this spirit of the MDC to people.'." He said they whacked his arm with an iron bar; his right forearm was swollen and badly misshapen, and he was clearly badly shaken. There was a group of police officers watching while he was beaten - police and soldiers were heavily deployed across the country to keep the peace for voting day - and Mr. Nhimba said he appealed to them. "Is this what you call peace, when people are beaten in front of you?" At this, the police inspector stepped forward, grabbed the keys to his red pickup truck, and strode off, leaving him in the centre of a hostile Zanu PF neighbourhood with his damaged arm. And that's when Mr. Nhimba saw us. While he was telling us this story, the same police inspector strode toward us, stopped a few feet away and said he wanted to speak to us. He said we would have to leave. We showed him our government-issued accreditation (which cost $700 U.S.) that allowed us to visit polling stations. He announced a rule we had never heard, that we could not talk to people within 200 metres of the station, and therefore could not talk to Mr. Nhimba. We said we would be glad to move a few metres farther away, but first we wanted to know what he had to say about Mr. Nhimba's story, his battered arm and whether he had the truck keys. The police inspector refused to answer the questions, saying he didn't have to talk to us, and walked away.
So I went back to the station to find the presiding officer, Wilbert Mutune, who a half-hour before had affably answered all our questions about voting day. A high-school headmaster, he showed off his orderly station with an air of authority. But moments after I approached him again, the police officer appeared right at my side, saying I had been breaking the law. Suddenly it didn't feel like Canada any more. I tried to ask Mr. Mutune if he knew about the incident, and whom the police report to, since the inspector wouldn't answer my questions. But Mr. Mutune's helpfulness was gone. He said he knew nothing of any attack, that he was sure the police officer didn't either, and that if I wanted to pursue it further, I would have to go to the district commander of the police, about 30 kilometres away. Outside my colleague John was being harassed by a burly Central Intelligence officer who seemed to know a fair bit about who we were and where we'd been. He was menacing, and John and I decided it was time to get out of Glendale. We took Mr. Nhimba with us. He clearly was not safe.
It was a sudden glimpse behind the veil of this election, which observers were cautiously declaring peaceful last night. It wasn't brutal electoral violence as in recent years. But it made me think about all the other apparently peaceful polling stations I'd seen, and what voters there knew about the police officers who were apparently dozing out front. Is a police state still a police state when people can cast their ballots in shiny new boxes? The independent Zimbabwe Election Support Network, which had observers at 87 per cent of the 8,265 polling stations, said just before polls closed that voting had been "progressing smoothly and speedily amid general peace and tranquillity." That doesn't change the inequities in the campaign, such as the voters roll, believed to be packed with the names of dead Zanu PF supporters, or the lack of independent media. In the evening there were mounting reports that the supposedly indelible violet ink that marked a person who had voted was in fact easily removed with lemon juice, rubbing alcohol or, in some cases, just plain soap and water. This is a potentially massive source of fraud, because the voters' rolls were identical in every polling station across each constituency, and the ink was the only thing stopping a person from voting at station after station all day long.
A Western diplomat told me he suspected "some monkey business," that it appeared that in some ridings as many as 20 per cent of voters had been turned away - a total of perhaps 120,000 people from an estimated 1.5 million voters - ostensibly because they were not on the rolls. Then there was still the count to be watched. Late last night, kerosene lanterns and candles flickered in polling stations on farms and in villages across Zimbabwe as the votes were tallied. The government is insisting that all results have to go through its central offices before they are released (which raises additional questions about accuracy) and so no results are expected before midday today. Voter turnout appears to have been as low as 25 per cent, although this is hard to quantify with as many as a million "ghosts" on the 5.8-million-name voter roll. Mr. Nhimba had an explanation, though: "People are afraid. They are turning away because of fear." We helped him call an MDC lawyer, and left him with a little money at a bus stop outside town. As we drove away, I thought about how - despite the fact that I drove hundreds of kilometres across this country in the past month, and talked to hundreds of Zimbabweans - how little I can tell you about what really goes on behind the veil.
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From The Guardian (UK), 1 April
My dead mother is on the voters' roll
Polling day brings hope and fear to Zimbabwe
Precious Mashumba, from Mabvuku township, tells of her election day. I got to the polling station at 7am. There was a queue of more than 100 people but it was moving along, not like the last time [2002 elections] when the officials went so slowly to prevent everyone from voting. There were polling agents from Zanu PF and the MDC. There was also an observer from a local organisation but not an international observer. There were only a few policemen. I was in and out, quick, quick. I marked my ballot and dropped it in the ballot box. Now it is transparent and I could see where my ballot was going. They dipped my little finger in bright pink ink. People congratulated me on voting. We all know that there is a great deal of rigging. My mother is on the voters' roll and she has been dead for two-and-a-half years. Mugabe said on television last night that all people who vote for the opposition are traitors. Mugabe wants us to believe we live in a one-party state. In the combis [the commuter taxi vans] people don't say anything about politics. They are afraid. But if you make eye contact and think they support change, then you show an open palm (the symbol of the MDC) and make the sign of an X, the way you mark your ballot. That's all. They know. Precious Mashumba is a pseudonym for a woman who works as a stores manager at a Harare factory. She spoke to Andrew Meldrum on condition that her name be changed to prevent retaliation from the government.
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From Reuters, 1 April
Zimbabwe deports UK journalists
Zimbabwe will deport two British journalists detained on charges of covering the country's elections without accreditation, an offence punishable by up to two years in jail, a government official said. Zimbabwe's Secretary for Information George Charamba told Friday's official Herald newspaper that Toby Harnden and Julian Simmonds had acted in defiance of local laws. "All that goes to show that the British media borrow its attitude and politics from the British government," he said. "It is clear that they have breached the law and they will be deported," he said, adding that they needed to be reminded that Zimbabwe was no longer a British colony. A spokesman for the Sunday Telegraph told Reuters in London on Thursday that its chief foreign correspondent Harnden and photographer Simmonds had been arrested at a polling station near Harare on Thursday. The spokesman declined to comment on the Zimbabwean charges that they had been working without appropriate accreditation, but said the newspaper group had had no communication with the two men for several hours and was trying to secure their freedom. On Thursday, Zimbabwe's Assistant Police Commissioner Wayne Bvudzijena said the pair had been arrested while travelling with an opposition candidate in the parliamentary elections. Mugabe's government has tough media laws barring foreign journalists from working in Zimbabwe on long contracts. All journalists and media organisations must be accredited by a state-appointed commission. Bvudzijena said Harnden and Simmonds had come into Zimbabwe through Zambia, and were being charged under the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act for practising as journalists without accreditation. Zimbabwe has arrested or deported dozens of journalists and denied others entry under the media laws, adopted by President Robert Mugabe's government three years ago in the face of a political and economic crisis and international criticism. Government officials say more than 200 journalists have been accredited to cover the elections, but dozens of others have had their applications rejected.
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From The Courier Mail (Australia), 1 April
Women arrested in election vigil
From correspondents in Harare
Zimbabwean police today rounded up and detained 200 women preparing for an all-night prayer vigil in Harare's main square for "divine intervention" as the country awaited results from key elections. The women, some with babies strapped on their backs, converged on the centre of Africa Unity Square in central Harare before the police broke up their gathering and took them in trucks to the capital's main police station. The police said the women had breached Zimbabwe's tough security laws which ban political gatherings without police clearance. "The prayer is for sanity and divine intervention as we wait for the results of the election," Jenni Williams, from the Women of Zimbabwe Arise group, just before the arrests. "We will continue praying and listening to the news until the results are announced." Zimbabweans cast ballots overnight in elections that pitted President Robert Mugabe's Zanu PF against the main opposition MDC. Ms Williams said the women chose the venue which is adjacent Zimbabwe's Parliament "hoping the new parliament will repeal repressive laws like the Public Order and Security Act (POSA)" that prohibits gatherings without police permission. We also hope politicians stop politicking and address the real crisis which Zimbabweans are facing. These women have children and grandchildren who need good education, health and food." Zimbabwe's economy has been on a downturn in the past five years with a triple-digit inflation, unemployment pegged at 70 per cent and high poverty levels worsened by the country's international isolation. Last month police arrested 50 women in Zimbabwe's second largest city of Bulawayo while they were marching for peace. Police also picked up and briefly detained two AFP journalists who were covering the prayer vigil overnight.
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From The Daily Telegraph (UK), 1 April
No crowds, no queues, just the high-speed chase of a white voter
Raffingora - Where have all the people gone? In a rural constituency in President Robert Mugabe's home district voting ended at many polling stations within three hours. Ruling Zanu PF militants, more firmly under control than at previous elections, still could not resist the temptation of a high-speed chase on perilous dirt roads in pursuit of a white woman farmer after she showed up to vote in her old home area, Raffingora, about 55 miles north of Harare. Jean Simon, 45, one of Zimbabwe's few women tobacco farmers, who has been jailed, whipped and beaten by Mr Mugabe's supporters before she was finally forced out of her home and off her farm two years ago, went to vote at Katawa Primary School. "This is my home, and I will vote here, and I will return to the farm one day when there is law and order in Zimbabwe," she said. At about 10am yesterday there were about 12 people in her polling station. Inside the election area was a Zanu PF official, recognised by Mrs Simon, who was writing down names of those who were voting. After leaving the polling station, Mrs Simon drove to her home farm, Erewhon, and struggled with her emotions as she saw the state of both her locked home and fields, choked with weeds. Valuable equipment she was never allowed to take was rusting or had disappeared. A huge shed had collapsed. "It will cost a fortune to get this going again," she said.
Minutes after driving away through an avenue of spectacular cassia trees in full yellow bloom, a blue pick-up with a driver and five men, shouting abuse, began a wild chase after Mrs Simon along the Hunyani River Road, a neglected dirt track that crosses one of Zimbabwe's great rivers. After about 15 miles at speed, Mrs Simon slowed up and stopped. The six jumped out and shouted at her, wanting to know who we were. "I am the owner of that farm over there," Mrs Simon said. "We know that," said the older of the six. "What are you doing here?" She told them angrily that she had been to vote, and that they should let her leave as they were policemen. They eventually retreated and drove off. This was clear proof that Mr Mugabe has reined in his supporters, even in the strongest Zanu PF constituency in the country. At two more polling stations in an area where people are better fed than in most other former commercial farming areas, Zanu PF agents were taking down names of those who turned up to vote. At one, the Zanu PF agent, who did not realise that he was speaking to journalists, said it seemed as if the opposition Movement for Democratic Change had more supporters this election, although that was not in evidence.
After a journey of more than 200 miles, and past about a dozen polling stations out of 83 in Zvimba North, more than double the number at the last election, it seemed that there was only one serious queue of about 100 people in a small village, Mutorashanga. This is not a constituency in which to take out a camera, or identify oneself as a journalist. It is less hostile now than at any time since Mr Mugabe began to drive the white farmers from the countryside in 2000, but it is still under the control of a quasi-military ruling party. The Zanu PF candidate in the Zvimba North constituency, where Mrs Simon voted, is Ignatius Chombo, the local government minister in Mr Mugabe's last cabinet. He now owns some of the richest land in Africa, which he took from white farmers. He has pursued all of Zimbabwe's elected MDC mayors and councils and is, one by one, sacking them and handing the towns back to the government.
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From The Times (UK), 2 April
Mugabe snatches victory again
From Jan Raath and Xan Rice in Harare
Robert Mugabe’s ruling Zanu PF party was declared the winner of Zimbabwe’s parliamentary elections last night, amid claims by the main opposition party of massive fraud. Even before the victory was announced, Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, said that he was considering a mass action campaign. "We don’t accept that this represents the national sentiment," he said. "The Government has once again betrayed the people." From the very first seat to be decided it seemed that the MDC was destined to lose. Manyame, an opposition stronghold just west of Harare, was awarded to Patrick Zhuwao of Zanu PF. He is President Mugabe’s nephew. On Thursday night, election officials announced that 14,812 people voted in Manyame. But by Friday morning, they changed the total to 24,000, of which more than 15,000 went to Mr Zhawao.
The international community was quick to denounce the electoral process. Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, said it was fundamentally flawed. "Mugabe has yet again denied ordinary Zimbabweans a free and fair opportunity to vote, further prolonging the political and economic crisis he has inflicted on their country," he said. Richard Boucher, a spokesman for the US State Department, said: "This whole process has been seriously tainted." Kerstin Müller, Germany’s junior foreign minister, said: "President Mugabe’s Government has again abused fundamental principles for holding free and fair elections." Observers from the South African Development Community (SADC) have yet to make an official statement. By last night, Zanu PF had taken 69 of the 120 constituencies being contested. With 30 seats appointed by the President, it had a majority in the 150-member parliament. The MDC had won 35 seats, dashing its hopes of gaining 50 seats to block the two-thirds majority that would give the ruling party the power to amend the constitution. Jonathan Moyo, who stood as an independent after being dismissed as Information Minister, also won a seat.
While the MDC won most seats in Harare and Bulawayo, it was dominance of rural constituencies that guaranteed a Zanu PF triumph. The opposition had feared that manipulation of votes - including stuffing ballot boxes with fake votes - in rural areas, where there were few independent observers, would allow the President to walk away with the popular vote. And when only 20 seats had been decided, Mr Tsvangirai said he detected a pattern of fraudulent activity. "President Mugabe is going to do what he wants. This is his private property and for people even to claim that this is a democratic process, when it is so fraudulent, is totally not acceptable," he said. The MDC leader said he would not go to the courts for redress, as the party did in 2000 and 2002, when nearly all its petitions were filed away or rejected out of hand by President Mugabe’s judiciary. "We are not going to pursue that," Mr Tsvangirai said. "The people of Zimbabwe must defend their vote and their right to a free and fair election." He said he was considering a "peaceful mass uprising", but would not elaborate.
Defeats in some of the safest MDC seats were greeted with disbelief. Brian Kagoro, chairman of Zimbabwe in Crisis Coalition, an alliance of prodemocracy organisations, said of the election: "It really looks like it was pre-ordained. We thought they would do it, but we thought it would be within margins that are believable. We didn’t expect it to be so glaring." Astonishment greeted the 4,000-vote Zanu PF majority in Chimanimani, eastern Zimbabwe, over Heather Bennett of the MDC. She had stepped in for her popular white farmer husband Roy, who is serving a one-year jail sentence for shoving a cabinet minister to the ground last October. "It stinks," Mrs Bennett said. "Our support on the ground was massive. We addressed over 10,000 people at a time at our rallies." After he cast his ballot on Thursday, President Mugabe, dismissed charges of fraud as nonsense. He said he was absolutely confident of winning a two-thirds majority for his party: "Everybody is seeing that these are free and fair elections." He is now likely to take a dim view of any protests. Now that voting is over, he could easily withdraw his orders for the police, army and youth militia to tread softly. Indeed, in the past two days, the police have returned to type. Yesterday, 200 women who had been arrested in a central Harare park for holding a prayer vigil were released from prison. Many were said to have been treated in hospital for severe bruising from beatings inflicted in Harare police stations. Frederick Sperling, a Swedish television journalist, was arrested yesterday. He was stripped of his accreditation after he was found filming on a former white-owned farm. He said he expected he would be deported.
From ZWNEWS: If you would like a schedule of the available results, please let us know. It will be sent as an Excel spreadsheet, approximately three times the size of the average ZWNEWS.
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From News24 (SA), 1 April
SADC: Voters turned away
Harare - An elections observer mission from the 14-nation Southern African Development Community (SADC) raised concerns on Friday over the number of people who were turned away from polling stations during voting in Zimbabwe. The observers also said in a statement that the elections on Thursday "were conducted in an open, transparent and professional manner." "The SADC elections observer mission is however concerned with the number of people who were turned away from polling stations," said a statement from South African minister Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka. "It is still not clear to us exactly how many people were affected in this way as well as the reason for them not being able to cast their vote," she said. Zimbaweans went to the polls on Thursday to cast ballots in elections that pit the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) against President Robert Mugabe's ruling Zanu PF party, which has been in power in the southern African country since independence 25 years ago. The Zimbabwe Election Support Network, an elections monitoring group, said it estimated that 25% of voters had been turned away from the polls nationwide, with the highest number of Zimbabweans prevented from voting in the Midlands area and Harare. "Of those turned away, a significant number were either not aware of the constituency boundaries or were turned away for failing to produce proper identification," said Reginald Matchaba-Hove of the monitoring group. Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai complained that his MDC party was denied access to the voters register before Thursday's voting. The SADC observers also noted problems with equal access to public media and said opposition concerns over the use of indelible ink to mark ballots "should be examined by relevant electoral authorities." "It is also the mission's view that, although there were efforts to ensure the equitable access to the public media, there is still considerable room to improve in this area to allow the access to the state media by the opposition," said Mlambo-Ngcuka in the statement. But the 55-member team said it was unable to confirm allegations that food aid was used to buy votes in the campaign.
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From Zim Online (SA), 2 March
Despair rocks MDC amid charges of Zanu PF electoral fraud
Harare - Some supporters of the main opposition MDC party in the capital's working class suburb of Warren Park woke up on Friday morning to turn the volume of their radios to a blare to taunt Zanu PF neighbours as initial poll results gave the opposition an emphatic lead. News seemed to have filtered around the city that the MDC had retained its firm grip on the capital in a clear rebuff by residents of pleas by President Robert to switch political allegiance from the opposition to his party. Some workers even carried themselves to work with a rare spring in their stride apparently sensing a poll upset. "If the voting trend continues like this, the Old Man is going this time," one commuter remarked in reference to President Mugabe now 81. But as the day wore on, the political pendulum began swinging the other way as Zanu PF rapidly eroded away the MDC's early lead, sweeping most of the rural constituencies whose results began steadily flowing in only after lunch time. With the MDC fast losing ground and an absolute two-thirds majority for Zanu PF all more than certain, the mood changed dramatically to despondency and despair among opposition supporters. It was Zanu PF supporters' turn now to throw back the taunts at the opposition. Two jubilant Zanu PF supporters could be heard shouting to each other across a street: "How many seats did you say we need now to shame Blair and his puppets?"
Throughout the election campaign, President Mugabe had anchored his party's election campaign on embarrassing the British Prime Minister Tony Blair who he has routinely blamed for all Zimbabwe's deep-seated economic ills since the disputed 2000 general elections and the 2002 presidential polls. The Zimbabwean leader, who castigated Blair as much as hid did his actual opponent Tsvangirai during campaigning, claimed a victory by Zanu PF in the poll would be a defeat against the British Premier who he accuses without giving any evidence of sponsoring the MDC. But it was not the ordinary Zanu PF supporter only enjoying the swing in polls. Mugabe's handpicked election officials appeared to have been having a nice time too, just showing how they have become past masters at dramatising Zanu PF's election successes. The script appears cloned from a prototype. As in previous polls, election officials invariably give the opposition a transient sense of victory by announcing results in known opposition strongholds, only to gradually whittle down that temporary victory with dramatic effect. For the whole morning, results announced by Zimbabwe Electoral Commission officials showed Zanu PF trailing the MDC by wide margins. At one time, the MDC was leading with 19 seats to Zanu PF's two. The opposition party's lead literally collapsed with the stroke of a pen when the election officials began rolling out results from Zanu PF strongholds.
Such was the despondency among people who had hoped for a different election outcome that a petrol attendant, Mafios Mukudzei, could not contain his frustration shouting back at a group of Zanu PF supporters passing by: "We should have boycotted the elections. If we had maintained the boycott, Zanu PF would have had no one to steal the election from." MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai picked up the frustration when he echoed Mukudzei's sentiments: "We are deeply alarmed by the fraudulent activities we have unearthed," he told the media as results showing Zanu PF massively gaining on his party began pouring in. His party has always maintained that the decision to participate in the election with the odds heavily tilted in Zanu PF's favour, had been taken "with a heavy heart." But Mugabe has also maintained this is not so. "There can never be anywhere else where elections can be as free as they have been this time. We are going to win, by how much is what we are going to see," he said soon after casting his vote.
The President indicated that his party was eyeing a two-thirds majority that would empower it to amend Zimbabwe's Constitution at will. By 9pm, Zanu PF had garnered 69 seats which plus 30 other seats filled with Mugabe appointees ensured it was left with one seat short of securing two thirds of the 150-seat chamber. Tsvangirai said the MDC was not going to appeal to the courts against the result as it did after the 2000 parliamentary poll saying his party was still awaiting the outcome of those election petitions filed five years ago. "But we have other means," the opposition leader warned ominously, immediately raising speculation he might be planning to call mass protests by his party's supporters to force a re-run of the poll. In addition to possible loss of life and property, mass protests would deal the killer punch to Zimbabwe's already sinking economy. Ironically the Thursday poll was supposed to be the decider but it appears Zimbabweans might have to wait a few more weeks to see which way their crisis-ridden country drifts.
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From The Globe and Mail (Canada), 2 April
Zimbabwe’s opposition rejects results
By Stephanie Nolen
Harare - Zimbabwe's opposition has categorically rejected election results that gave the ruling Zanu PF another majority in parliament, but hesitated yesterday to say what it plans to do about it, leaving many supporters frustrated. The government's early results, released late yesterday, gave Zanu PF 69 seats, with the opposition at 35 and one independent in the 120-seat parliament, with all but 15 seats decided. The President appoints a further 30 seats, so the government was one seat short of the crucial two-thirds majority that would allow it to rewrite the constitution. Both local and international observers have said that Thursday's vote, while largely free of violence, was unfair. They cite in particular carefully planned gerrymandering that cost the opposition many seats, and the fact that at least 10 per cent of voters, mostly young people (who are generally pro-opposition), were turned away from the polls for being improperly registered. Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, said the party would not pursue legal challenges for the seats it believes were stolen. Instead, he said, "the people of Zimbabwe must defend their vote," stronger language than he used after 2000 and 2002 elections, which were characterized by massive fraud. But he denied he was calling for people to take to the streets, and would not say how the party plans to challenge the results. "We do not accept that this represents the national sentiment," he said. "This government has fraudulently once again betrayed people, led them through a garden path believing that they were going through a process which is democratically transparent, and that at the end of the day will the true will of the people."
In the streets, his supporters were listening to results trickle in and waiting for a sign. Shepherd Matetsi, a 26-year-old mechanic, could not believe that Zanu PF won his riding, and he was asking in the streets all day yesterday for news. "We're waiting for word from Tsvangirai. If he gives the word, we will go to the streets," he said in the early evening. "But up to now he hasn't said anything. If he calls us, we will go - although there is some risk [to] life. But he hasn't called." The inaction was particularly frustrating for a group of 257 women, many of them elderly, others with young babies on their backs, who were arrested Thursday night at a prayer vigil for change in central Harare. Many, who belong to Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA, which means "come forward" in Shona), were badly beaten by police before being hauled off to jail. As they came out of the station, many bound for hospital, at noon yesterday, they were skeptical of Mr. Tsvangirai's oblique demand that they defend their vote. "If Morgan really means it, can he please do something, set a good example and we'll follow it," said national co-ordinator Jenni Williams. "I'm sorry to criticize him now, but I just spent my birthday morning in custody doing what I think he should be doing. We in WOZA campaigned for women to go and vote, and then to defend their vote, and to do that you have to do something."
Mr. Tsvangirai said the opposition had a plan, although he refused to say what it was. But by fumbling through the day, they appeared to be squandering a prime moment to move, with a rare group of international observers and journalists ready to record their moves. The MDC leader is in a difficult position. He has already once been charged with treason, and faced the death penalty had he been convicted; the government would be delighted with another such opportunity to try him, should he speak urgently of revolution. It was clear yesterday that the MDC is still finding its feet as a national movement; it looked badly organized. And Mr. Tsvangirai has always committed himself to peaceful, democratic change, even as he draws a constituency of frustrated and angry young people. He could call for peaceful civil disobedience, but that would be difficult to control, particularly if the government responded with brute force, as it almost certainly would. The United States, British and local observers have already said the election was not fair, but the opposition will get no succour from neighbouring countries. Observers from the Southern African Development Community, the association of the 14 neighbouring nations, said the voting had been conducted in an "open, transparent and professional manner" and endorsed the result. Meanwhile, South Africa, the regional heavyweight, said it was sure the election would be fair before it even happened.
Some international observers tried to paint the election results as a victory for the MDC, in the sense that they had more or less maintained their seats, despite a five-year campaign by the government to discredit or outright destroy the party. "They fought their corner and they fought it well," said a senior Western diplomat, predicting that president Robert Mugabe would now face increasing pressure to normalize relations with the opposition and cease his characterization of the MDC as "traitors." But others suggested that President Robert Mugabe carried out the "perfect" election fraud: There was none of the violence that would force regional observers to question his legitimacy, but rather a quiet process redistributing opposition-held ridings to include large populations known to be loyal to the government. The MDC neither lost a number of seats, which might have sparked widespread demonstrations, nor won a majority. With a final count that is not so far off their previous one, their allegations of theft look less credible - but Zanu PF will likely win its two-thirds majority, leaving the opposition totally powerless.
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From The Sunday Times (UK), 3 April
Fury grows at Mugabe’s rigged poll
Christina Lamb, Harare
Pressure was mounting on the leadership of the Zimbabwean opposition yesterday to call on supporters to take to the streets to remove President Robert Mugabe after a third rigged election in succession. Final results from Thursday’s parliamentary election gave the ruling Zanu PF a sweeping two-thirds majority, despite huge outdoor rallies for the opposition and what had seemed like a new mood of defiance across the country. After the announcement, Mugabe, 81, joked that he would quit only "when I am a century old". Losing candidates from the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) arrived from all corners of the country at Harvest House, the party headquarters in Harare, clutching dossiers with details of electoral fraud in their constituencies. Looking stunned, they hugged each other. Some wept as they recounted tales of the military being bussed in to their constituencies, their voters being turned away from polling stations and attempts to bribe their election agents as the party was almost wiped out in rural areas. "We can’t believe this," said Prosper Muchyami, the MDC chairman in Manicaland province, where the party won only two out of 15 seats in spite of an apparent upsurge in public support. "This is the work of a sophisticated dictator. We will never beat Zanu PF while it is in power. We need other means."
One of the most surprising defeats for the MDC came at Chimanimani, in southeastern Zimbabwe, where Roy Bennett, a white farmer, won the second-largest majority in the 2000 election. Heather, his wife, stood in his place after he was sentenced to a year’s imprisonment for pushing the justice minister in parliament. "We clearly had huge support," she said yesterday. "But many of my people went to vote and found they were not on the list. It was just so blatant." "It’s a total disappointment," said Ian Kay, a white farmer who was badly beaten when his farm was taken and who contested the seat of Marondera. "The critical thing is for the leadership now to provide direction." After collating the reports from its candidates, the MDC held an emergency meeting of its national executive committee to decide how to respond. The idea of mounting legal challenges, as was done after the 2000 parliamentary and 2002 presidential elections, was discarded. So were suggestions of an armed struggle. "We have to re-strategise from the grassroots," said Morgan Tsvangirai, the MDC president. "Given our experience of the past five years, with 39 cases against the last elections still pending, we have no confidence in the judicial process. We were in parliament the past five years and the legislative process hasn’t helped us either. The only way forward now is political."
He did not rule out mass action, though aides said he was thinking in terms of a one-day strike rather than a movement to bring down the government. MDC candidates were instructed to go back to their constituencies and consult supporters before returning for a final decision tomorrow. Many of them left disappointed. "We discovered the leadership has no plan B," said one from Manicaland who, like many MDC activists, has suffered imprisonment, torture and has lost his job because of his political affiliation. "We are going away empty handed. All this sitting around at tables achieves nothing. We should be talking regime change". Welshman Ncube, the party’s secretary-general, admitted the results had come as a huge shock. "We knew they were going to do it, but we still hoped," he said. "We had such amazing attendance at rallies with thousands of people that we started to think we could win." Journalists and diplomats who travelled across the country last week found people openly criticising the government, emboldened by a lack of food. The destruction of commercial farming - combined with Mugabe’s decision to outlaw international food aid so all distribution remained under party control - has left about half of the country on the verge of starvation and created a new mood of anger. Yet the MDC won just 41 out of the 120 seats, 16 fewer than in the last election. "Obviously we now need to go back to the drawing board," said Ncube. "The majority of Zimbabweans are beaten, desperate and think it’s beyond their capacity to defeat this dictatorship. We have to decide how to react." He ruled out mass action, pointing out that the party is committed to peaceful means.
"This is a completely different situation to Ukraine," said David Coltart, the party’s legal affairs spokesman, referring to the "orange revolution" in which rigged election results were overturned by mass protests in Kiev. "We don’t have independent radio stations that can call people out. We don’t have sympathetic neighbouring states to provide bases. The design of our major cities, with most of the population living in satellites outside, makes it easy to block arterial roads in and stop any massing of people." The party’s main fear is that supporters who take to the streets will be fired on by a military still loyal to Mugabe, who has given senior officers farms and diamond mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo. "This stolen victory won’t buy him a single grain of maize. What we need to do is maintain the morale of our supporters and wait for this edifice to crumble," said Coltart. Such a restrained attitude was attacked by Pius Ncube, the Catholic Archbishop of Bulawayo, who has been one of the bravest critics of Mugabe. "The MDC should have had a plan B," he said. "Instead of going on being oppressed by the same dictator, why can’t the MDC think of a plan to get him out, to tell him, ‘We won’t let you bully us any more, shoot us if you want’. The MDC must act. They can’t expect people to act by themselves." However, the archbishop said he believed nothing would happen. "Here in Zimbabwe people are so pushed around by Mugabe they usually just take the results and say, ‘Ah, ah, what a pity’. "They want to leave it up to God. What I say is God helps those who help themselves."
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From The Sunday Telegraph (UK), 3 April
Mugabe vows to eradicate opposition after observers endorse election victory
Harare - South African government observers yesterday gave President Robert Mugabe's victory in Zimbabwe's election a clean bill of health, endorsing his Zanu PF party's grip on power which will enable him radically to alter the country's constitution. The decision of Mr Mugabe's most important regional ally to endorse the results of Thursday's parliamentary election - in which Zanu PF won an overwhelming majority of seats - came despite widespread complaints of electoral fraud and the opposition's total rejection of the outcome. The group's leader, labour minister Membathisi Mdladlana, who weeks earlier predicted that it would be free and fair, declared that the landslide win by the Zanu PF "reflected the will of the people". Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the defeated Movement for Democratic Change, disputed the outcome. "We have rejected the results because we don't believe they reflect the will of the people," he said. "I don't think any sane person would endorse these elections. Today the world has seen the extent to which Mugabe is determined to hold on to power without due regard to the people." According to final results released yesterday, the ruling party won 78 seats compared with 41 for the opposition MDC. One seat went to an independent candidate. Mr Mugabe has the power to appoint another 30 MPs to the 150-seat chamber.
With a two-thirds majority, Mr Mugabe is set to change the constitution to ensure that the MDC never again fights a presidential election. At the age of 81 and with his term in office due to expire in 2008, Mr Mugabe and his lieutenants want the constitution altered so that should he step down, or die, one of his Zanu PF deputies would take the post of president, instead of an election being required. Before the poll, a senior Zanu PF leader told The Telegraph on condition of anonymity: "We don't want to have to fight Morgan Tsvangirai in 2008." However, this newspaper has learnt that the MDC leader has decided against mounting a legal challenge to the result, since the High Court refused even to consider clear evidence of vote-rigging and electoral fraud in the equally disputed 2002 presidential poll. With the higher courts overwhelmingly staffed by judges bribed by gifts of the most fertile white-owned farms, Mr Tsvangirai did not expect justice then or now, allies said. The near-demolition of the MDC will make it possible for the Zanu PF regime to keep its machine of repression in place, continuing to deploy tens of thousands of intelligence operatives, policemen and Zanu PF militants within party security structures to prevent spontaneous or planned opposition protests.
In spite of this, MDC polling agents have begun providing details of breaches of the election laws after a peaceful polling day and only limited violence before the poll. A repeated complaint is that local officials were not allowed to release results from polling stations as the Electoral Act requires. Instead, policemen used radios to pass results to the secretive National Logistics Committee in Harare, a body staffed by Mr Mugabe's cronies, where they were supposedly being collated. This led to delays of up to 12 hours before results were released and it is here that Mr Tsvangirai believes most of the manipulation took place. "We had no access to that committee, nor did the observers," he said. South African observers admitted at their media briefing that they did not visit the committee - and that they did not know it existed. The extent of Mr Mugabe's victory has left the MDC with few practical options and there was increasing despair among the party's senior leaders. Mr Tsvangirai is in an unenviable position. He knows the evidence of his victory in 2002 is in box files gathering dust on shelves in his lawyer's library and that he will not be given a chance to fight again in 2008.
For five years he has struggled to keep a lid on groups of youths, mostly in urban areas, who believe that the ballot box has failed them and see violence as their only option. He also knows that the MDC is heavily in debt. Some hard-core veterans of five years of detentions and torture are discussing, among themselves, whether to break ranks with MDC policy and go for targeted acts of violence. Some are unwilling to wait for Mr Mugabe either to die or step aside for his chosen and obedient successor - the vice president, Joyce Mujuru - and see what happens. "The MDC failed us although we know it was impossible to defeat Zanu PF as they control everything," said a man in his early 20s who has seen the inside of more police cells than any of the party's leadership. "We know we cannot even discuss this with the leaders because they are determined to keep to non-violence, but we have nothing to lose." Such opposition activists have no faith that the MDC could or would organise the peaceful "uprising" that was suggested by Zimbabwe's outspoken Catholic Bishop Pius Ncube, if Mr Mugabe won last week.
Topper Whitehead, an activist and veteran of the two previous violent elections said yesterday: "If I had access to the ballot boxes it would take me five days to find out how Zanu PF manipulated the numbers. If they allowed the MDC the electronic version of the voters' roll I would uncover it in 24 hours." Statisticians at the University of Zimbabwe say the voters' roll of 5.8 million, or almost half the population, may be overstated by more than a million. Police set up checkpoints on the roads leading to Harare to contain possible trouble, but in the capital there were no signs of demonstrations - or celebrations - over the outcome. Streets bustled with people shopping and going to work, reflecting a mood of widespread weariness with politics in a nation that is beset by crippling unemployment and inflation.
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From The Sunday Independent (SA), 3 April
SADC team probes 'major vote-rigging'
By Beauregard Tromp, Christelle Terreblanche and Moshoeshoe Monare, and Sapa-AFP
Harare and Bulawayo - A South African-led mission of southern African election observers says it is "seriously" investigating opposition evidence of "major" "and "tangible" vote-rigging in Thursday's parliamentary elections in Zimbabwe. With five results still outstanding late yesterday, President Robert Mugabe's ruling Zanu PF had won the election by a landslide, getting 74 seats to the opposition Movement for Democratic Change's (MDC) 40 - a gain of 11 - and one to Mugabe's sacked spin doctor Jonathan Moyo, who stood as an independent. As a result of its investigation into vote-rigging, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) observer mission led by Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, the minister of mineral and energy affairs, yesterday called off a press conference to announce its preliminary assessment of the elections. "There are major queries at 32 constituencies - that's more than 25 percent," said Nomfanelo Kota, a spokesperson for the observers. "The results that the candidates themselves signed at the polling stations were not the same as the results announced on national television," she said. "This doesn't mean that there are necessarily huge discrepancies in the figures," she cautioned.
However Welshman Ncube, the MDC secretary-general, who brought the complaint to SADC, said it had "tangible" evidence of large discrepancies. "For example, when the ZEC [Zimbabwe Electoral Commission] announced the results of Beit Bridge constituency, we discovered that 16 200 votes could not be accounted for. We had the same situation in Manyame constituency, where the votes were extra by 8 900." But a spokesperson for the ZEC denied that there were problems with the results. In contrast with SADC, the South African government observer mission led by Membathisi Mdladlana, the South African labour minister, reported that the elections "reflect the will of the people", though at a press conference he said that, although the poll had been free, he would not say it had been fair. He would only report on that aspect confidentially to President Thabo Mbeki. The South African parliamentary mission reported that it had "unanimously agreed that the elections were credible, legitimate, free and fair and conformed to the SADC elections guidelines" - but that was after the Democratic Alliance and Independent Democrats had pulled out. Mbulelo Goniwe, the ANC leader of the mission, said it would recommend to parliament that the two parties be disciplined for making their own statements.
At a press conference late yesterday, the 81-year Mugabe declared that he intended to stay in power until he reached 100. With the 30 seats he appoints himself, he has 104 seats, four more than the two-thirds majority he needs to change the constitution. Because of the election results, opposition forces have moved closer to extra-parliamentary politics. MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai said as his party's defeat became apparent: "This time we won't go to court, as it would be a waste of time." He hinted that the MDC was considering mass action as an alternative to electoral politics. Elsewhere, mass mobilisation is now being advocated openly. A group of dissident war veterans, mainly from the now-defunct Zapu liberation movement, called on exiled Zimbabweans in South Africa to join them in a new armed struggle against Mugabe.
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From The Sunday Times (SA), 3 April
Labour minister unfazed by ‘ghosts’
S’Thembiso Msomi
Labour Minister Membathisi Mdladlana, who has controversially led the government election observer mission to Zimbabwe, put his foot in it again yesterday at a packed press conference in Harare. A correspondent asked him why, in his written statement, he chose not to declare the elections "free and fair", as is traditionally done, but said "they reflected the will of the people". In a response that seemed to amaze his own colleagues, former Limpopo premier Ngoako Ramathlodi and South Africa’s ambassador to Zimbabwe, Jerry Ndou, Mdladlana told journalists that he saw no reason to "follow anybody else’s culture". When another journalist asked him about claims that there were massive discrepancies with the voters’ roll, Mdladlana said he had heard about the existence of "ghosts" but did not believe in them. Cornered by TV cameras after the briefing and questioned about the allegations of ghost voters, he said: "Have you seen them? Why do you expect me to see them when they are dead?" The mission has said it will recommend that Parliament "severely reprimand" Democratic Alliance member Roy Jankielsohn and Independent Democrats member Vincent Gore for issuing media statements that prejudged the outcome of the elections and contained untrue, unverified claims. The mission, led by ANC member Mbulelo Goniwe, who commended the poll as "credible, legitimate, free and fair", said it would also ask that the two men reimburse Parliament for the cost of their trip.
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From Zim Online (SA), 2 April
Statement by Dianne Kohler-Barnard MP, DA Member of SADC Observer Mission
On Friday, the last day of the SADC observer mission, I walked out of the final meeting in disgust after mission leader and SA minister for minerals and energy Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka endorsed the Zimbabwe election as "peaceful, credible and dignified", saying it was carried out in an "open, transparent and professional manner". She also said there were "high levels of political tolerance and maturity. It is little wonder I was rounded on by hugely frustrated MDC leader Silas Matamisa on election day, who bellowed, "You! You're a South African and you've already determined that these elections are free and fair but all they want is to turn it into a one party state!" He was watching as his agents were turned away from polling station after polling station because of what seemed to be either gross negligence or intentional obstructionism on the part of the Chief Electoral Officer who merely looked off into the distance as this enormous man shouted in frustration. No one who has been in Zimbabwe for the full three-week period SADC requested (a ten person Zambian delegation arrived the day before the election) and actually left their air-conditioned comfort zones to ask the tough questions at the grassroots level could declare these elections to have been either free or fair.
The SADC observers were given very clear guidelines as to what indicators would have to be present in order for them to take such a decision and I have travelled the length and breadth of this land and have satisfied myself that this sham of an election has been one of the most cynical frauds perpetrated on the international community in electoral history. The team I travelled with were deliberately lied to by the Police, who seemed desperate to participate in the national fraud that they had freely approved the holding of MDC rallies when the reality was that they threw every conceivable obstacle in their path. I saw the relevant documents myself - and ensured that a team member saw them, too. The intimidation of anyone even suspected of having MDC sympathies has been endemic, and the ruthless propaganda campaign by the totally State controlled Zimbabwean media has been utterly repugnant. The launch of the election manifestoes sums up the entire situation: The launch of the Zanu PF election manifesto on the 11th February was given four hours of live coverage, 18 minutes on the evening bulletin, over 13 minutes in subsequent evening bulletins on the next two days plus 30-minute long repeats of the event on two separate days. The ZTV announcers all wore Zanu PF T-shirts during the launch. By contrast the MDC was given 2 minutes and 35 seconds on the main news bulletin on February 20th. If the SADC observer mission insists on endorsing this election as free and fair, I want no part of it!
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From Reuters, 2 April
Zimbabwe holding Telegraph reporters
By Stella Mapenzauswa
Harare - Zimbabwe police have detained two British journalists into a third day, exceeding the statutory 48-hours suspects may usually be held without appearing in court, their lawyer says. Toby Harnden, chief foreign correspondent for the London Sunday Telegraph, and his photographer colleague Julian Simmonds were arrested during Thursday's election on charges of working without state accreditation as required under strict media laws. If convicted they could face a fine and up to two years' imprisonment under the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act, which critics say aims to silence criticism of President Robert Mugabe. "We were supposed to go to court in Norton today but that never happened and we don't know why. The police officer dealing with the matter just disappeared," the pair's lawyer, Beatrice Mtetwa, told Reuters. The journalists were arrested at a polling station in Norton, near Zimbabwe's capital Harare. "I've filed an urgent High Court application for their release because the 48 hours within which they should have been brought to court have expired," Mtetwa said.
Police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena said the men would not be brought to court until Monday. He said police were entitled by law to file for a warrant to extend their detention beyond the statutory 48 hours, but could not confirm whether such an application had already been made. Police said on Thursday the pair had entered the country as tourists over the border from Zambia. The Sunday Telegraph declined to comment on the accusation. Government officials say more than 200 journalists were accredited to cover the March 31 elections but dozens of others had their applications rejected. Media laws forbid foreigners from working permanently in Zimbabwe as journalists and compels them to seek temporary licensing with a state commission for brief assignments. Zimbabwe has arrested or deported dozens of journalists and denied others entry under the laws, adopted by Mugabe's government three years ago in the face of rising international criticism during a political and economic crisis.
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From The Zimbabwe Standard, 3 April
Rigging exposed
By Foster Dongozi
Glaring discrepancies in vote figures Zanu pF won 78 seats in the final count of Thursday's Parliamentary elections, but the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), which managed 41, last night said it had uncovered evidence of massive "vote-rigging". The remaining seat out of the 120 that were contested, went to an independent in Tsholotsho. Zanu, which has won the Chipinge constituency since independence in 1980, lost spectacularly to the ruling party. It managed a paltry 2 129, against 16 412 for Zanu PF's candidate. During the 2000 Parliamentary elections, Zanu PF won 62 seats, while the MDC nearly levelled the contest with 57 seats. The remaining seat was won by Zanu. While the final count announced yesterday suggests gains for the ruling party, the MDC says it has discovered discrepancies in 31 constituencies, with the largest discrepancies recorded in Beitbridge, Goromonzi, Makoni North, Murehwa South, Mutare South and Seke. The discrepancies allegedly occurred in Mashonaland East, Manicaland, Mashonaland West and Matabeleland South. With the opposition still trying to come to terms with how it could have lost an election that it was so confident of winning, The Standard can reveal what could have happened.
After voting was completed on Thursday, a Zimbabwe Elections Commission (ZEC) official announced the number of people who had voted in each constituency. The announcement was abruptly stopped without explanation. An example of the discrepancies is that in Chegutu, where although ZEC announced that 19 763 people voted, the total votes cast for the two candidates amount to 24 828, leaving 5 065 votes unaccounted for. In Beitbridge, ZEC announced that 36 821 had voted but the totals for the candidates only add up to 20 602, leaving 16 219 votes unaccounted for. In Goromonzi, for example, ZEC announced the total votes cast as being 15 611. However, the winning Zanu PF candidate received 16 782 votes to the MDC's 8 578, totalling 25 360, with the discrepancy being 9 749 votes. The total votes cast for Makoni North, according to ZEC was 14 068. However, the winning Zanu PF candidate received 18 910, with the MDC's candidate polling 6 077 votes, giving total votes for the two candidates as 24 987. There is a difference of 10 919 votes between this total and the ZEC's.
One of the six constituencies registering higher discrepancies, Mutare South, shows that the total votes cast is 28 575, with 16 412 of these being for the winning Zanu PF candidate and 12 163 for the MDC.However, the ZEC figures for the total votes cast is 14 054, registering a discrepancy of 14 521. In Murehwa South the total ZEC figure for votes cast is 8 579, however, the winning Zanu PF candidate received 19 200 votes, while the MDC candidate received 4 586, giving a total of 23 786. There is a discrepancy of 15 207. ZEC's total votes cast in Seke are given as 11 344, but the winning Zanu PF candidate received 15 434, while his MDC counterpart received 8 843, totalling 24 277, and registering a discrepancy of 12 933. When asked for an explanation last night, the ZEC spokesperson,, Utloile Silaigwana, asked The Standard to put its question in writing. Chief Elections Officer, Lovemore Sekeramayi, said they had already dismissed their staff. "We would have to sit down and consult on the figures. But we have not received any formal complaints," Sekeramayi said.
While President Robert Mugabe was last night crowing, claiming victory in the elections, several observer missons suddenly postponed media briefings on the out-come of the elections. MDC president, Morgan Tsvangirai, last night said senior officials in the Central Intelligence Organisation had informed him that in Matabeleland North and South they had only lost Tsholotsho while in the Midlands, they had only lost in Mberengwa East and West. "In Mashonaland West, we had won Kariba, Chinhoyi, Hurungwe West, Chegutu and Manyame. In Mashonaland Central, we won Guruve North and South, Shamva and Bindura. "In Mashonaland East we won in Chikomba, Hwedza and Goromonzi, while in Masvingo we won in all the constituencies." Only the South African Observer Mission pronounced the election as "a reflection of the will of the people of Zimbabwe". Its head of delegation, Membathisi Mdladlana, has already discredited himself and his government after declaring that the elections would be free and fair before they had even started. Organisations that postponed press conferences on the elections include the African Union, the SADC Elections Observer Mission, Zimbabwe Election Support Network and an organisation of churches.
Last night, information on the discrepancies started filtering through and could result in the ruling party's two-thirds majority being whittled down and could even result in an MDC victory. President Mugabe declared on Thursday after casting his ballot that he was confident of getting a two-thirds majority. When The Standard challenged Mugabe yesterday at State House on what he had based his confidence, he declared that it was because of the party's role in liberating the country. "It was based on the fact that we are a strong party, from our pre-independence times when we fought for the liberation of our country and the same is for the ANC in South Africa, SWAPO in Namibia, MPLA in Angola and FRELIMO in Mozambique. "People don't forget those who liberated them." A week before elections, a University of Zimbabwe lecturer, Joseph Kurebwa, published an opinion poll whose prediction is startlingly close to the outcome of the final results. In a move that was interpreted as an attempt to keep the international media spot-light away from the Zimbabwean elections, George Charamba, President Mugabe's spokesperson and Permanent Secretary in the Department of Information and Publicity, announced the government would today take foreign journalists on an all-expenses paid free trip to Victoria Falls on an Air Zimbabwe flight. Foreign news crews jostled to put their names down for the trip, paid for by a nation, which is failing to provide medical supplies for its collapsing health sector. Tsvangirai said the party leadership had obeyed the wishes of its supporters who had insisted on participating in the elections despite the uneven playing field.
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From The Times (UK), 4 April
Opposition demands new poll
From Xan Rice and Jan Raath in Harare
Zimbabwe’s main opposition party yesterday called for fresh elections after it claimed that "massive vote-rigging" had kept it from power. Official results announced on Saturday gave President Mugabe’s ruling Zanu PF party 78 of the 120 seats on offer. Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change, said that his party had won 94 seats, rather than the 41 that it was awarded. "Massive vote-rigging was hidden behind the benign tranquillity of many polling stations," Mr Tsvangirai said last night. "We make the fundamental call for a fresh election under a completely different constitutional dispensation." The MDC’s claim was rejected by African election observers, who yesterday de |
