The Homepage of Vusumuzi Sifile Sibanda: ZEC, Zanu PF in 'rigging plot'

Thursday, March 27, 2008

ZEC, Zanu PF in 'rigging plot'

By Vusumuzi Sifile and others

SOLDIERS and police officers started voting yesterday, as the MDC led by Morgan Tsvangirai and independent presidential candidate Simba Makoni revealed they had unearthed plans to rig Saturday’s elections in favour of Zanu PF. The Standard learnt yesterday that casting of postal votes started in the morning and would end on 29 March. But voting for millions of Zimbabweans will take place on a single day.

Tendai Biti, the MDC secretary general, said Zanu PF and ZEC were running the elections “like a private function”.
“We only heard late on Friday afternoon that postal voting was scheduled to start on Saturday morning, which means many of these polling stations for postal ballots will not have polling officers.”

Biti said he had written to the ZEC demanding to know how many postal ballots had been printed and where they would be cast, but had received no response.
Fears of rigging heightened after ZEC ordered Fidelity Printers to print 600 000 postal ballot papers.

ZEC chairman, Justice George Chiweshe, last week said only 8 000 postal ballots had been requested by voters.

Postal ballots are issued to security personnel such as soldiers and police and Zimbabweans at foreign missions. They also apply to voters on official government business but not necessarily outside the country.

A news crew from The Standard yesterday visited Girls’ High School in Harare where polling officers said postal voting had started in the morning.

Officials in Makoni’s camp said they had been told that there were seven senior CIO functionaries who had been attached to ZEC since last week “to do its dirty work”.
This involved inflating postal votes and printing more ballots than were required.
Tsvangirai said they had information that ZEC had ordered nine million ballot papers for each of the elections, despite the fact that ZEC had announced only 5.9 million people had registered to vote.

Tsvangirai showed journalists a letter allegedly written by ZEC, asking the printers to print the postal ballot papers.

“What we are witnessing is an attempt by Zanu PF and Robert Mugabe to try and rig the elections,” said Tsvangirai. “Uniformed forces, including the Zimbabwe Defence Forces, the police and prison services are not more that 100 000 when combined.”
“We don’t have any forces on duty in foreign lands. The diplomatic community has also shrunk dramatically over the years. So who does ZEC want to give the 600 000 postal ballots to?”

There has been an outcry after ZEC announced that local council, House of Assembly and Senate results would be announced at polling stations while the results of the presidential poll would be announced at the national command centre.

Makoni told journalists and observers in Marondera on Friday that they were not happy with attempts by ZEC to “shift the goal posts” a few days before polling day.
Makoni said: “Is it going to be at polling stations? Is it going to be at the central command centre? We are looking into these ambiguities about the issue of announcing the results. We are also concerned that a few days before the elections, the final voters’ roll is not yet out.”

Tsvangirai said there was no provision for a command centre in the Electoral Act.
Tsvangirai said an independent analyst had done an analysis of 28 rural constituencies and had unearthed serious discrepancies between the ZEC figures and those on the voters’ roll.
In Goromonzi South, for example, ZEC said there were 28 086 registered voters while the voters’ roll showed 19 422 had registered to vote, giving a discrepancy of more than 8 000. In Chegutu East, ZEC said 31 226 had registered to vote while the voters’ roll puts the number at 25 000 — a discrepancy of 6 000.

In Chikomba Central, while the voters’ roll said 24 000 had registered to vote, ZEC puts the figure at 26 000.
“In all the 28 constituencies the analyst has done there are 90 000 unaccounted for voters,” Tsvangirai said.

The Standard sent a list of questions to the ZEC offices in Harare on Thursday seeking clarification on allegations that they were playing a key role in rigging the elections.
The ZEC director of public relations, Shupikai Mashereni, yesterday acknowledged receiving the questions, saying he had forwarded them to Utloile Silaigwana, the deputy chief elections officer (operations).Silaigwana said: “Honestly I didn’t see your questions. What were they about?”

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About Vusa

Vusumuzi Sifile Sibanda is a Zimbabwean journalist currently working as editor of The Mirror, a weekly newspaper in Gaborone, Botswana.

He joined the Mirror in January 2009 having worked s a Staff Writer for The Standard, Zimbabwe’s only independent Sunday newspaper for close to four years. He also had stints with the now defunct Parade Magazine and The Weekly Times newspaper.

Born in 1981 in Mberengwa, a rural district in the south western parts of Zimbabwe, on the boundary of Midlands and Matabeleland South provinces, Vusumuzi did his primary and secondary education at Danangombe Primary and Matabo Secondary schools respectively.

In 2000, he was named the best student in the Gwanda High School Advanced Level class. A year later, he became the first student from Gwanda High School to enrol at the National University of Science and Technology (NUST) in Bulawayo when he became part of 19 pioneer students in the Bachelor of Science Honours Degree in Journalism and Media Studies. He completed the programme in 2005.

While still studying at NUST in June 2003, Vusa joined Parade Magazine, then Zimbabwe’s leading monthly magazine for Industrial Attachment. The very day he joined the publicatioon, on June 2 2003, the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) embarked on their "final push". This was a real rude awakening for a young, raw journalist.

In November 2003, when all indications were that Parade would not continue publishing, Vusa left to join the World Agroforestry Centre/International Centre for Research in Agroforestry (ICRAF) where he worked as an intern communications assistant for the organisation’s Southern Africa regional programme. At ICRAF, he worked as an assistant Editor of the organisation’s regional publications, Miombo Voices ans Living with Trees in Southern Africa, as well as the organisation’s website, www.icrafsa.org. He was also a regular contributor to the organisation’s international weekly, Transformations. He also collaborated with Livai Matarirano in establishing Agroforestry Forum, an agroforestry newsletter focusing mostly on the ICRAF Zimbabwe national programmes and its partners.

In addition to his Bachelor’s Degree, Vusa also has a number of other qualifications like Reporting Politics, Multimedia and Online Journalism, Population and Rural Development. During his stay at ICRAF, Vusa participated at a number of training programmes, with the two main ones being the Integration of Gender into Agroforestry Development (2003) and Teaching with Trees in Southern Africa (2004).

Towards the end of 2004, Vusa and nine other students from his class grouped themselves to form the editorial team of The Weekly Times newspaper. Despite being inexperienced, the team managed to produce a high quality weekly newspaper, which proved to be an alternative source of information for Zimbabweans. So serious was the newspaper that the authorities saw it as a threat, resulting in it being forced to shutdown in February 2005 after publishing just six issues.

During his at The Weekly Times, Vusa also contributed to Tariro/Ithemba Magazine, a publication focusing on orphans and vulnerable children (OVC). The magazine was edited by Parkie Mbozi, his industrial attachment supervisor at ICRAF Southern Africa.

His experience as a communications assistant inspired Vusa to write a dissertation titled: “An assessment of the knowledge and understanding of agroforestry issues by newspaper journalists in Bulawayo”.

On completion of his studies, Vusa joined The Standard newspaper as a junior reporter and rose through the ranks to the position of a Senior Staff Writer. He is also a regular contributor for reputable international news agencies.

Vusa is a God fearing journalist. He is a born again member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Zimbabwe (ELCZ). Among other positions in the church, Vusa is the current chairperson of the Luther League (Youth) Fellowship in the Martin Luther Deanery of the ELCZ.

As part of his contribution towards the ministry of the Gospel of Christ, Vusumuzi is among the founders of Anointing Magazine, a fortnightly Christian magazine published in South Africa. He is the magazine’s deputy editor.

My Writings

Zimbabwe impedes Sadc intergration’

By Vusumuzi Sifile

THE continued economic and political meltdown in Zimbabwe is endangering any prospects of regional integration within the Southern Africa Development Community (Sadc), political analysts have said.
During a debate in Harare recently, the analysts were unanimous that the current situation in Zimbabwe was making it virtually impossible to integrate the region.
The debate focused on what role Zimbabwe could play in helping to integrate Sadc.
Among other factors was Zimbabwe’s inflation rate, estimated at more than 14 000% — more than 1 000 times the average across the region.
Weber Chinyadza of the MDC, who presented the argument, said although there had not been much effort in integrating the SADC region, Zimbabwe would “make the attainment of the integration objectives difficult”.
“The rest of the region is suffering as a result of Zanu PF’s misrule,” said Chinyadza. “Zimbabwe is short-changing the rest of the Sadc members. How can you integrate Zimbabwe, with an inflation of 14 000% with, say, Botswana, whose inflation rate is about seven percent?”
Chinyadza said the huge difference between the official and parallel market exchange rate was inconveniencing other countries.
The chairperson of the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA), Dr Lovemore Madhuku said “the levels of human rights abuses in Zimbabwe are not found anywhere in Sadc”.
“The extent of human rights abuses on its own makes it difficult for Zimbabwe to fit into a community of nations with respect for human rights,” Madhuku said.
“Our political culture is clearly outside the framework that is necessary for integration. Zimbabwe is not so much in a class of its own in terms of creating problems for the SADC. For example, we have Angola which still wants to rerun the 1990 presidential elections, and Swaziland which is still run by a monarchy. But the difference between Zimbabwe and those countries is that in those places there is a genuine effort to implement the Sadc guidelines on the holding of free and fair elections.”
Madhuku said Zimbabwe had polarised regional and world politics, making it difficult to implement any form of integration. He said “each time the issue of Zimbabwe is raised, so many other irrelevant issues arise, diverting people’s attention” and as such, if the “Sadc were to be serious with any form of integration, they have to handle the Zimbabwean issue with openness”.
At the same time, said Professor John Makumbe, it was impossible for the rest of Sadc to integrate without Zimbabwe, as “the country is literally at the centre of the region”.
“The country’s position at the centre of the region forces every infrastructure to somehow touch Zimbabwe. Our position makes Zimbabwe key to any efforts to integrate the region,” Makumbe said.
The newly conferred Professor jokingly added that Zimbabwe was already implementing its own form of regional integration.
“The whole country is now a training centre where people are trained and exported into the region. Zimbabwe is exporting victims of human rights violations into the region and elsewhere, forcing neighbouring countries to spend lots of money on deporting Zimbabweans,” Makumbe said.

The Homepage of Vusumuzi Sifile Sibanda

Thursday, March 27, 2008

ZEC, Zanu PF in 'rigging plot'

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