Thousands rush to check voters’ roll as deadline looms

By Tichaona Sibanda
12 February 2008

Thousands of people countrywide are rushing to meet Thursday’s deadline to register to vote in next month’s general election, amid reports that many registered voters have had their names deleted from the voters’ roll.

A snap survey carried out by our Harare correspondent Simon Muchemwa in Kuwadzana constituency in the capital on Tuesday, revealed that five out of ten people who checked the voters’ roll found out that their names had been deleted after registering to vote last year.

‘By coincidence some of the people who had their names missing had foreign surnames but were born in Zimbabwe and are Zimbabwean citizens. These people all voted in 2005 and they were shocked not to see their names on the voters’ roll. Others had Zimbabwean names but still could not find their names,’ Muchemwa said.

The government’s Election Commission reported in December that over five million people had registered to vote in the March elections, but the opposition parties insist the voters roll is in a shambles. Muchemwa said the independent Zimbabwe Election Support Network has also reported that it has received numerous complaints from individuals whose names do not appear on the voters’ roll.

‘The voters’ roll is widely believed to be in shambles. A detailed analysis of only 3 constituencies’ voters’ rolls used in the presidential election in March 2002 indicated that as many as 2 million voters out of 5 million on the roll were either dead, not known at a registered address, or had duplicate entries,’ said Muchemwa.

He added that a check he did on the Kuwadzana voters’ roll revealed as many as 15 people residing in a single house. This is a system generally used by Zanu-PF to rig elections. It is very rare for a family in the country to have 15 adults of voting age to be living under the same roof.

‘This is how Zanu-PF rigs the election. Because of stringent rules that they’ve introduced, such as producing identity cards, a letter from a land lord of you don’t own a house, it is easy to register a bunch of people under the same roof as long as you belong to Zanu-PF structures in the area,’ Muchemwa said.

Constitutional Amendment No. 18 signed into law last year, created an additional 60 constituencies and brought the total representatives in the House of Assembly up to 210, from 150.
The Zimbabwe Election Commission claims that 5,612,464 are registered to vote. They divide this by 210 constituencies saying that this gives an average figure of 26,726 voters per constituency.