MDC election expert deported by immigration authorities

By Lance Guma

3 August 2006

The man credited with rigging several elections for Robert Mugabe has engineered the deportation of Topper Whitehead, a computer expert who helped the opposition MDC build up evidence of the rigging. Last month the Registrar Generals office led by Tobaiwa Mudede refused to renew Whitehead’s Zimbabwean passport and instead issued him with a Prohibited Immigrant (PI) order, signed last year. This follows a long history of harassment in which the election expert has had his home ransacked by police this year under the pretext they were looking for subversive materials. The raid however saw security officials confiscating valuable evidence that the MDC wanted to use in the election petitions.

The weekly Financial Gazette quotes Home Affairs Minister Kembo Mohadi saying, “it is not in the public interest for me to disclose the reasons why I deemed Roland Whitehead to be an undesirable inhabitant or visitor to Zimbabwe.’ The paper also quotes the Chief Immigration officer Ellasto Mugwadi as saying they had confiscated his travel documents after he surrendered his passport voluntarily to the Registrar General offices. ‘He had taken South African citizenship and as we speak he is in South Africa,’ Mugwadi claimed.

In an interview with Newsreel David Coltart, a member of the MDC legal team that worked with Whitehead, described the deportation as ‘malicious.’ He explained that allegations of Whitehead having dual citizenship were not true as he only used a temporary South African passport for travel to Zambia to take up a job opportunity. This happened because authorities delayed the renewal of his Zimbabwean passport. Coltart described Whitehead as a fine patriotic Zimbabwean who had done a lot for his country, adding that deportations of this nature should be reserved for people like drug dealers and not someone like Whitehead.

Whitehead was a key member of the MDC electoral challenge team and his efforts alongside others culminated in the auditing of the 2002 presidential election ballots between August and November last year. Mudede was found in contempt of a court order that sought the handing over of these ballot boxes. By deporting Whitehead, Mudede has got his revenge, Coltart said.

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