Problems with voters lists nothing new in Zimbabwe

BY LAURA LYNCH — It's a new twist on an old tale I've seen before.

I came to Zimbabwe for the first time in 2005 to cover elections. Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF party won that contest easily amid claims from the opposition that victory was stolen from them.

I saw some of the problems up close in a rural riding east of Harare. The opposition candidate claimed the voters list was filled with the names of people who couldn't possibly be registered to vote.

He certainly had the facts to back up his claims. His father was on the list, and his father had been dead for 10 years.

Roll forward three years. Another election — and again, the claims of abuse are flying. The 2008 version seems, if anything, more imaginative.

I am standing in an empty field as the opposition candidate, Theresa Makone, lays out what she says is the plot. Take this piece of land, fill it with the names of about 8,500 voters who don't live anywhere near it, and tell them to come out and vote here on election day.

Election officials say it is legal because they are registered to vote here.

Voters given addresses in area with no homes

Makone has scrutinized the voters list and found that the field has been divided into small sections and each has been given an address. In some cases, there are dozens of voters listed as living in one place where there is no building to house them.

One man, Herbert Mushambi, boasts he has travelled 45 kilometres from where he actually lives to cast his ballot here for Robert Mugabe.

Why bother?

Mushambi says Mugabe gave him a small parcel of land here a few months ago, then officials told him to come here on election day to show his support.

Makone and her party, the Movement for Democratic Change, have filed an official complaint.

Observers from the Pan-African Election Observation Mission have also filed their concerns with the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission.

Mugabe, for his part, says he's no cheater. He said the same thing after the 2005 elections.

I remember going to a news conference with opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai the day after that election. Even as he accused Mugabe of rigging the vote, even as he called on Zimbabweans to defend their vote, Tsvangirai would not call on the people to rise up in protest.

Perhaps he feared being charged with fomenting unrest. Or maybe he worried Mugabe would crush any uprising with brute force as he has done in the past.

When I met Tsvangirai a few years later, I recalled that day when he declined to call to the people to protest.

"Well, the difficulty, if I may put it, is that, how do you fight a dictatorship using democratic means? You are in a helpless situation," he told me.

As the results from the vote are tallied with no change in the situation, he may have to choose a new strategy to fight against Robert Mugabe's iron grip on power.