The Mysterious 700,000 Ghost Votes That Won Zimbabwe’s Election Exposed

Why can’t elections ever be simple in Zimbabwe? Why do they always have to be hideous at worst and complicated at best?

That, more or less, is what most urban folks say or would say if asked about the state of play after opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) Alliance candidate Nelson Chamisa lodged his challenge to results of the presidential election at the Constitutional Court in Harare last Friday.

The court can insist on a recount, declare a winner, or call for a fresh or run-off election in 60 days. It must make its decision, which cannot be challenged, by month-end.

The format for the present challenge emerged from multiparty negotiations for the 2013 constitution because in previous elections, beginning with the presidential poll in 2002, the MDC had been fobbed off by the court system.

But most punters say they expect Emmerson Mnangagwa’s victory to endure, despite the legal challenge. The nine-member Constitutional Court is, they say, beholden to Mnangagwa’s ruling Zanu-PF. Records suggest that only one or two judges of the court can be relied on to deliver on the law.

Zimbabwe’s judiciary, with some notable exceptions in the three higher courts, is thought to have been regularly biased since the emergence of the MDC in late 1999.

There are several already well-publicised points within Chamisa’s challenge that suggest electoral law was broken: the media’s crude, persistent bias; the ballot paper which, counter to procedure, gave the more prominent position to Mnangagwa’s face; and the few thousand policemen who were said to have executed their postal votes under scrutiny of their commanding officers.

It is thought that 40,000 teachers who may have been on duty on election day, and who are usually opposition supporters, weren’t able to vote.

But the most shocking chapter is the gross miscounts by the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC). Some are absurd clerical errors, released by the commission and published in a 70-page supplement in the state’s main daily newspaper, The Herald.

• It is hard to see how the commission will mount any defence of errors that include:

• More ballot papers counted than registered voters;

• Duplicated figures replicated at several polling stations;

• Candidates scoring the same number of votes at different polling stations; and

• Results that don’t add up to 100% of the vote.

Results announced by the commission also sometimes differed from what was released online.

Several lawyers not connected with the case have read the submission and suggest that at the least the ZEC should be sacked because it could not manage the arithmetic.