THE police crackdown against non-governmental organisations involved in voter education has raised fears hardliners are trying to limit the number of new voters to aid Zanu PF in the forthcoming elections.
Report By Kholwani Nyathi Assistant Editor
Analysts say the voters’ roll will be the new battleground during the polls expected in June after political parties realised during the 2008 debacle that elections are a game of numbers.
In less than a week, police — widely believed to be supporting Zanu PF’s campaign — have arrested over 40 activists who were carrying out voter education in Matabeleland North and raided the offices of the National Youth Development Trust (NYDT) in Bulawayo.
At the NYDT offices, police claimed that they were searching for “information prejudicial to the State” before seizing voter education material.
The raid came hard on the heels of the arrest of ZimRights officials including director Okay Machisa in Harare for allegedly tampering with the voters’ roll.
For many years the voters’ roll has been tightly controlled by the Registrar-General’s Office amid accusations that the government department fiddled with the register to give President Robert Mugabe an unfair advantage in elections.
But following the establishment of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC), the voters’ roll is now more open to outside scrutiny.
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Jack Zaba, an official from the Harare-based Election Resource Centre Zimbabwe, said Zanu PF would use all means to ensure that its opponents do not increase the number of their potential voters.
“Zanu PF`s grand plan towards the next election is to increase their own potential voters whilst decreasing those who might vote for their competitors,” he said.
“In the realm of reformed electoral institutions, strengthened election observation and the direct regional and international interest on Zimbabwe`s next election, Zanu PF has realised that its chances of manipulating the outcome of the next election are limited.
“They are finally conscious of the fact that they cannot continuously rely on ghost voters, rather they must engage in deliberate and more civilised efforts to either resurrect the ghost voters or breed a new generation of voters.”
One of Zanu PF’s mobilisation strategies after its December 2012 conference has been door-to-door campaigns to encourage people to register as voters.
Campaigns are also being carried out in rural areas to register new voters.
Service chiefs are on record urging their subordinates to register to vote for Zanu PF in the next polls.
International Crisis Group’s Southern Africa senior analyst Trevor Maisiri said voter registration was a central aspect of the next election and the huge interest on the voters’ roll must not come as a surprise.
“Zanu PF has been very proactive in calling for registration of voters because the party is aware that there are a lot of people, including its supporters, who are not registered,” he said.
“There are potential votes that the party wants to secure.”
Maisiri said the MDC formations had a lot of members and supporters who were not registered, but the parties did not seem to be taking the registration exercise seriously.
“In fact, one of the weaknesses of the MDC parties has been their failure to turn supporters and members into voters, simply because they are not registered,” he said.
“In fact, there are some cases of people in the structures of parties holding key positions, who are not registered and never voted in the previous elections.
“Again I am not sure if the MDC parties are out there in full force to encourage their members to register.”
Rejoice Ngwenya, a Harare-based social commentator, said Zanu PF was confident of attracting new voters because of programmes such as the economic empowerment and Chiadzwa mining activities.
“It makes sense that after four years of so-called inclusive government success, diamond looting and indigenisation, Zanu PF feels confident enough to attract new beneficiaries or at least lure new voters with promises of prosperity,” he said.
“Old voters are well aware of Zanu PF’s false promises.
“New voters — especially the youths and women — may be tempted to ditch MDC-T on the basis of its (local government) failure.
“Zanu PF knows apathy is bad for it. They want legitimacy, seeing that violence will be difficult to implement. So they need a new generation of political idiots to deceive. The land reform hooligans and war veterans have nothing more to gain.
“This can only be achieved through an expanded voters’ roll.”
Although voter registration is an ongoing exercise, ZEC has failed to carry out a countrywide outreach exercise that was scheduled for last month due to lack of funds.
Maisiri said there seemed to be lack of political will to openly encourage Zimbabweans to register as voters ahead of the polls.
“You would expect ZEC and the Registrar-General’s Office to be flighting adverts and doing publicity campaigns to encourage people to register,” he said.
“Registration centres are also secretive, not everyone is aware of where registration centres are.
“This tends to frustrate potential voters who want to register.”
He said given the hectic lifestyle where everyone was trying to make ends meet in Zimbabwe, the current exercise was focused on frustrating people waiting to register.
