EU observers witness Zanu PF bus fraudulent voters - we need a clean start W Mukori

“Kutaurirwa hunyimwa mbare dzokumusana!” (There are somethings in life one only fully appreciate by seeing them with their own eyes!) so goes the Shona saying.

One of the most significant changes with this year’s election compared to many Zimbabwean elections these past 38 years is that many more foreign election observers were allowed to observe these elections. The European Union (EU) observers were some of the new faces who observed today’s elections; they were able to see for them, with their own eyes, the contact of Zimbabwe elections. The EU observers were not impressed!

"In some cases, it (the voting) works very smoothly," commented Elmar Brok, the head of the EU observer team. "But in others, we see that it's totally disorganised and that people become angry, that people leave."

But worse still, Mr Brok was alarmed to note that the ruling party delivered 100 people by bus to vote in a district where they didn't live. The observer team is now going to check whether this was a single example or part of a pattern "which might have influence on the result of the elections".

The EU elections observers were very lucky to have seen this bus delivering 100 Zanu PF supporters to fraudulently vote for the party because no one, much less the foreign observers, were supposed to see it.

There were loads and loads of people milling around at most polling stations this year; some queuing to vote for the first time whilst others were queuing for the second or third time because their details were missing in the previous polling station’s voters’ roll. Mr Brok was right, the process was “disorganised”. But there was a method is the madness.

In all this confused melee it is infinitely easier to bus in one’s supporters from one polling station to the next to cast multiple votes. Since there was no verified voters’ roll bussed supporter could use their true identity documents of false ones in committing the fraud, no one will ever know.

TeamPachedu, a team of data analysis experts, has found cases of people’s details appear 20 times in the incomplete voters’ roll ZEC has given out, or be it with one or two minor variations to the name and/or ID number.

This year would not be the first time Zanu PF has bussed supporters from one polling stations to the next to cast multiple votes; the party used the same dirty trick in 2013. Tendai Biti, MDC-T candidate for Mount Pleasant, a low dentist urban constituency in Harare, confronted of some Zanu PF supporters bussed in from outside the constituency. The supporters failed to name even one street in the area. They must have stood out like a sore finger! Zanu PF was careful not to make the same mistake again; this year, the bussed supporters blended in!

The vote rigging we have just witness is certainly was certainly not an amateurish operation but a carefully planned, well-funded and ruthless implemented befitting the regime’s decades of vote rigging expertise and contemptuous disregard for the freedom and democratic rights of the common man!

After all the big song and dance and expense buying and setting up Zimbabwe’s new Biometric Voting System (BVS), it was never used. The prospective voter was asked to present their ID and someone thumbed through a printed voters’ roll to confirm the individual was in the voters’ roll. Other than having the photograph of the voter the voters’ roll was no different from the old voters’ roll. But then, so does the ID.

The nation was told the BVS was needed to stop multiple voting and other voting irregularities. ZEC and the regime did not even bother to say why they had reverted to the old name and ID number system.

What the EU and all the other foreign elections observers must understand is that without something as basic as a verified voters’ roll the Zimbabwe elections were bound to be a chaotic process. What matters here is that this Zanu PF regime has gone the extra mile to make sure the elections were as chaotic as possible because in the ensuing confusion the regime was able to hide many vote rigging dirty tricks. It is no exaggeration therefore to say the disorganised process was organised chaos!

With no free public media, no verified voters’ roll, Zanu PF able to rob the nation blind to bankroll its vote rigging schemes, etc. How can these elections ever be judged free, fair and credible!

Even if all international election observers ignored the facts and pretended these elections were free, fair and credible; not everyone will be so easily fooled.

The foreign investors and lenders are a shrewd and savvy lot, they can see Zimbabwe is still a pariah state ruled by thugs whose flair for rigging elections is second to none. President Mnangagwa cry “Zimbabwe is open for business!” from the rooftop, they will not hear him. Investors do not do business with thugs.

Oh, by the way, if President Mnangagwa and his junta’s vote rigging had failed to deliver the electoral victory; the junta had a plan B – a military coup. They prefer to call the coup “a military assisted transition!”  The blood pressure of a certain tyrant and his shrew wife shoot up every time they hear the phrase “military assisted transition”!

By declaring these elections null and void, the international community will give Zimbabwe a realistic chance to implement the democratic reforms and a fresh start!   

We condemned ourselves to 38 years of rigged elections - will add more years, until we learn W Mukori

‘Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it,’ said Winston Churchill in a speech to the House of Commons.

We have learned nothing about how Zanu PF has rigged elections and so, after 38 years of rigged elections, we in Zimbabwe will be having another rigged elections tomorrow. a repeat of that tomorrow. After what happened in 2008, no Zimbabwean out there can say they did not know Zanu PF was rigging elections.

“We went into the GNU 2008 because Morgan Tsvangirai failed to win 50% plus one!” Answered former Zimbabwe dictator, Robert Mugabe when he was asked whether he agreed Zanu PF rigged the 2008 elections during a press interview today, 29 July 2018. Nonsense!

By his own inadvertent admission, Tsvangirai had won 73% of the vote and Zanu PF had forced ZEC to recount the vote. After six weeks of cooking up the figures, Tsvangirai’s victory was whittled down to 47%, enough to force the run-off. During the run-off Mugabe and his cronies has resorted to harassment, beatings, rape and over 500 innocent Zimbabweans were murdered in cold blood all to punish the people for having rejected Mugabe and Zanu PF in the early vote and force them to vote for the tyrant in the run-off.

“What was accomplished by the bullet cannot be undone with a ballot!” Mugabe had barked. The outburst was to drive his Zanu PF party thugs and rogue war veterans supported by Police, Army and CIO bizek; it worked. The nation was subjected to some of the worst acts of wanton elections related violence ever seen.

“Mugabe has declared war of the people!” moaned Tsvangirai, when he announce his withdrawal from the elections race.

SADC forced Mugabe to go into the GNU because the regional group, together with AU and other international observers, would not accept his victory as a true reflection of the democratic wishes of the people given the blatant cheating and wanton violence of the 2008 elections. The primary task of the GNU was to implement the raft of democratic reforms designed to stop Zanu PF rigging the elections.

When it was clear to SADC that not even one reforms was implemented during the GNU, the regional leaders wanted Zimbabwe’s 2013 elections to be postponed.

“But can elections be postponed?” Violet Gonda asked Dr Ibbo Mandaza in an interview last April.

“Of course they can be postponed,” answered Dr Mandaza. “In 2013 the Maputo Summit, in June 2013, before the elections, the Maputo Summit was all about having the elections postponed – the SADC summit. I went there.

“I was there at the Summit and Mugabe pretended to agree to a postponement of the elections. If you recall, the postponement was based on the need to reform at least electoral laws.

“And after that Summit, Morgan Tsvangirai, Tendai Biti, Welshman Ncube, all of them were called to a separate meeting by the Heads of State of SADC in the absence of Mugabe, that same evening. And they were told; I was sitting there outside the room with Mac Maharaj; they were told ‘if you go into elections next month, you are going to lose; the elections are done’.”

So, why did Tsvangirai and his MDC friends disregard SADC leaders’ sound advice not to take part in the 2013 elections with no reforms in place? Greed, as David Coltart, an MDC senator and minister in the GNU, admitted in his book, The Struggle Continues.

"The worst aspect for me about the failure to agree a coalition was that both MDCs couldn't now do the obvious - withdraw from the (2013) elections," he wrote.

"The electoral process was so flawed, so illegal, that the only logical step was to withdraw, which would compel SADC to hold Zanu PF to account. But such was the distrust between the MDC-T and MDC-N that neither could withdraw for fear that the other would remain in the elections, winning seats and giving the process credibility." 

For this year’s, 2018, elections; three of the main MDC factions did agree to the formation of a coalition, the MDC Alliance, and yet they have still participated in these elections knowing fully well no reforms were implemented since the rigged July 2013 elections. Greed got the better of them.

So, tomorrow 30 July 2018 the people of Zimbabwe will be going through the motions of yet another rigged elections, after 38 years of rigged elections, because we have refused to “learn from history and are therefore condemned to repeat it,” as Winston Churchill said.

For the record and completeness’s sake here are some of the irregularities in this year’s elections, making it impossible to judge these elections free, fair and credible:

1)     The right to free, fair and credible elections is a birth-right and not a privilege and this Zanu PF government has a legal obligation to afford every Zimbabwean a reasonable opportunity to register to vote, to participate in the electoral process and then to vote. This Zanu PF regime has failed to fulfil its legal obligation in many ways including:

a)     By flatly refusing the 2 to 3 million Zimbabweans in the diaspora the opportunity to register and then vote in these elections

b)     By starting the Biometric Voter Registration exercise very later, in September 2017 when it should have started in January 2015, at the latest. And when the exercise started, it was beset with many operation problems making the voter registration process a frustrating affair. By its own admission ZEC only managed to register 5.6 voters (figure is highly suspect for reasons stated in c) below) out of the targeted 7 million.

c)     ZEC has failed to release a clean and verified voters’ roll at least one month before nomination day, in this case14 June 2018, as is required by law. This has very serious ramifications as witnessed in the 2013 elections when election observers said nearly 1 million (ZEC’s figure was 300 000) people were denied the vote because their details were not in the constituency voters’ roll they expected. Meanwhile Zanu PF was able to bus an unknown number of its supporters from one polling station to the next casting multiple votes. This would have never happened if ZEC had released the voters’ roll timeously! We can be certain these problems will happen again this years!

2)     Yes, the incumbent party will use state resources in its election campaigning; however, what is happening in Zimbabwe is an outrage. Zanu PF has spent millions of dollar of state funds buying new vehicles for its 300 MP and senate candidates, 282 Chiefs, all the party’s provincial chairpersons, etc., etc. And yet most of the country’s provincial hospitals, catering for 1.5 to 2 million, do not something as basic as a reliable ambulance service, for example!

3)     Zimbabwe’s dominant public print media and only electronic media still remain at the use of Zanu PF to be the exclusion of the opposition.

4)     Other state institutions such as the Army, Judiciary, etc. will continue to show their Zanu PF partisan bias until the democratic reforms design to severe the Zanu PF dictatorial controls are implemented.    

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result!” said the Great Physicist Albert Einstein.

Zimbabweans have participated in the country’s rigged elections for the last 38 years either because they buried their heads in the sand and pretended, in this day and age, not to know what constitutes free, fair and credible elections. Or they knew Zanu PF rigged the vote and they participated regardless, hoping against reason, that the party will rig the vote but LOSE the elections.

By noon 30 July 2018 everyone will know Zanu PF rigged the 2018 vote and WIN the election. I derive no pleasure in saying “I told you so!” My fervent hope is that, after 38 years of rigged elections, this nation will finally learn the historic lesson of the sheer folly of participating in flawed and illegal elections. And the people will finally demand the implementation of the democratic reforms before holding the next elections.

Meanwhile; I have all my fingers and toes crossed; I sincerely hope that the international elections observers in the country will punish the whole nation for the sins of greedy of the opposition. The observers cannot judge these elections to be credible, free and fair when they have not seen something as basic as a credible voters’ roll. By declaring these elections null and void the observers will force the country to revisit the raft of reforms agreed at the onset of the 2008 GNU and, this time, make sure the reforms are implemented before the next elections!