IOL
30th March 2005
By Fanuel Jongwe
Harare – As millions of Zimbabweans prepare to vote on Thursday, the opposition says it is worried that as many as one million long-dead or non-existent voters on the roll could hand victory to President Robert Mugabe’s party.
The so-called “ghost voters” or “Zimbabwe zombies” on the voters’ roll could undermine the credibility of the parliamentary elections in which Mugabe’s ruling Zanu-PF party is seeking to clinch a two-thirds majority.
“It’s a sad situation when you have a million ghost voters,” says David Coltart, a candidate for the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) in the Bulawayo region and MDC secretary for legal affairs.
Coltart, who ran into trouble with the police when he tried to verify the voters’ roll, says his concern is that the ruling party could use inaccuracies in the list to tilt the elections in its favour.
He said a biased electoral body and the flawed voters’ roll could be used to rig the elections.
But the head of the newly appointed Zimbabwe Electoral Commission, Justice George Chiweshe, denies the voters’ roll is flawed.
“We have said ‘Can you bring us this evidence of ghost voters and everything else?’ – but no one has come to us with that information. As far as we are concerned ghost voters are dead people and they have no effect on an election.”
But the head of the non-governmental Zimbabwe Election Support Network says the voters’ roll is “problematic”, although it is unclear how many of the 5,8 million registered voters should be taken off the list.
“There are genuine concerns,” said Reginald Matchaba, chairman of the Zimbabwe Election Support Network. “The voters’ roll is what entitles people to vote. It’s important that there be accurate information.”
Denis Kadima, executive director of the Electoral Institute of Southern Africa, based in South Africa, said that when his organisation last observed elections in Zimbabwe, the main problem was that the voters’ roll was not available.
When Coltart sent 15 aides to check the voters’ roll for his constituency, it was found at least 9 000 people “could not be accounted for”.
“If you multiply that by 120 constituencies, you come up with more than one million ghost voters,” Coltart said.
The team visited about 500 homes in his Bulawayo South constituency in February, but 12 of the 15 were arrested and released without charge.
MDC shadow minister for home affairs Tendai Biti expressed concern about the office of the registrar-general, which controlled the voters’ roll and which he dubbed the “rigger general”.
“The rigger general, whose impartiality we have doubted… can unilaterally remove names from the voters’ roll and do all sorts of things,” Biti said.
Registrar General Tobaiwa Mudebe defended his office.
“I went through their system and I am satisfied with what they are doing.
“They will always say the system is in a shambles, but they have not brought the evidence for us to investigate.”
The head of the Southern African Development Community’s observer mission, SA Minerals and Energy Minister Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, said unless the opposition produced the names and constituencies, “there is nothing we can do”. –