No free referendum or election can be held in Zimbabwe on the basis of the current voters’ roll, says the South African Institute of Race Relations (the Institute). President Robert Mugabe has repeatedly ignored the Global Political Agreement (GPA) of September 2008, which requires a new constitution approved by referendum before any general election can take place.
“Instead, Mr Mugabe is pushing for quick elections later this year, based on a voters’ roll so defective as to boggle belief,” the Institute says. Though life expectancy in Zimbabwe has dropped to 45 years, the voters’ roll, as it stood in October 2010, contains the names of:
• roughly 1 490 ‘new’ voters (never previously registered) aged over 100;
• over 41 100 voters (some new and some earlier listed), aged 100 or more,
which is four times the number of centenarians in Britain;
• some 16 800 voters with the same birthday of 1st January 1901;
• about 4 370 new voters over 90 years old; and
• a total of some 132 500 such nonagenarians.
The October 2010 voters’ roll also lists about 230 new voters under the voting age of 18. Most are under ten years old and some are only one or two. To make matters worse, the current roll is also based on the 2008 voters’ roll, which contains about 2.5 million names too many, given Zimbabwe’s population size.
This phantom vote is more than enough to decide the outcome of any election. Instead of removing these 2.5m fictitious entries, the Registrar-General, Mr Tobaiwa Mudede, an outspoken Zanu-PF supporter, has added more than 360 500 new voters to the current roll. Yet many are far too old or too young to merit inclusion.
“If past experience is any guide, phantom ‘voters’ are likely to vote early and often in the next Zimbabwean poll,” the Institute cautions. Says the Institute: “Mr Mugabe is no doubt hoping for South African and SADC support for his plan to push for new elections based on the current constitution and a defective voters’ roll.
“But President Jacob Zuma has done well to date in keeping Mr Mugabe to the terms of the GPA. He and the SADC can prevent Mr Mugabe ignoring the GPA and cheating his way into power again. The SADC should remember this when it meets again in South Africa on 11th June 2011 to help lay down a road map to democracy in Zimbabwe.”
This press release is based on a new report, Preventing Electoral Fraud in Zimbabwe, written by R W Johnson and published by the Institute.
