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

“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!