By Lance Guma
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The retirement age for civil servants in Zimbabwe is 65 years, but the country’s Registra General Tobaiwa (nicknamed To-Rigger) Mudede is 69. There is a reason why President Robert Mugabe has stuck with him for over 33 years.
Among other duties like issuing passports, birth and death certificates, Mudede and his corruption ridden department is in charge of the shambolic voters roll that has helped President Mugabe win countless controversial elections.
In October last year Mudede was accredited to the Second All Stakeholders Constitutional Conference as a Zanu PF delegate. Apart from being the man who gave refuge to the then fugitive diesel mystic Rotina Mavhunga (Nomatter Tagarira) Mudede has been in charge of all elections held since 1985.
Last year in March Mudede told the Zanu PF controlled Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC) that the country’s voters’ roll is ‘perfect’ and ruled out any possibilities of rigging through double registration, saying this would be detected by a ‘computer system’.
Before presidential elections in 2002 Mudede told a meeting at the International School in Harare that, “he could imagine no circumstances in which he would declare anyone other than Mugabe the winner.” Only after four court orders were pressure groups able to see a copy of the shambolic voters roll he used.
In June 2011 a report by the South African Institute for Race Relations said there were 42,000 people over the age of 100 on the voters roll and that this was an ‘impossible’ number. Some appeared to be 120 years old, in a country with a life expectancy of 43, according to the World Health Organisation.
The independent Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN) also noted that nearly a third of registered voters are dead and described the voters roll as a ‘shambles’ that needs to be overhauled before fresh elections are held. ZESN also wanted the voters roll in electronic form, rather than the paper version.
Two separate independent audits also exposed that the voters roll has thousands of ghost voters used to inflate figures for Zanu PF and Mugabe. Experts say there are 2.6 million too many names on the voters roll and this phantom vote is more than enough to settle the outcome of any election.
Mudede’s refusal to relinquish control of the voters roll reinforces suspicions that he is a central player in rigging elections on behalf of Zanu PF and Mugabe.
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