Excerpts from a report by RW Johnson for the South African Institute of Race Relations:
Comparing the voters’ roll as of October 2010 with the roll used in the 2008 harmonised elections, we find that in 2010 there are 366,550 new voters who have not appeared on any previous roll.
This is extremely surprising considering that the overall population of Zimbabwe has been falling due both to a very high mortality rate and large-scale emigration. It might have been expected, nonetheless, that there would be some new voters in the youngest age group of roughly 18 to 25.
There is also a very unlikely total of 49,239 new voters over the age of 50 – and this when average life expectancy in Zimbabwe has fallen to 44.8 years. Even more surprising is the fact that 16,033 of these new voters are over the age of 70 years, while 1,488 of them are over the age of 100...
Then again, a number of these new voters have no valid address, despite the stipulation requiring this. In the Gwanda Central constituency alone, there are three people without a valid address, for example...
All told there are 228 new registered voters who are under age. Some of these under-age “voters” are actually small children...
Further, it is important to point out that the 366,550 new voters who have been added to the roll as of October 2010 are by no means equally distributed around the country, as one might expect. In the extreme cases, one finds that the constituency of Cheredzi South has only 33 new voters added to its roll while the constituency of Gokwe Nembudziya has no less than 13,896 new voters added to its roll. There can be no satisfactory reason for such extraordinary variations.
One of the most striking anomalies is the number of exceptionally old people among the new voters. There are, indeed, no less than 4,368 new voters over the age of 90 years on the voters’ roll as at 1st October 2010. If one amalgamates the list of new voters with the old list, one finds an extraordinary total of 132,540 persons over the age of 90 on the roll. Given the average life expectancy of less than half that figure, this is completely incredible.
In addition, we find that once again these nonagenarians are not evenly distributed among constituencies. Instead, they are again bunched into the same minority of constituencies which have had exceptionally high numbers of new voters added to them.
As may be seen, there is a particular concentration of nonagenarians in the three Mashonaland provinces – the Zanu-PF heartland – and in a few selected key seats elsewhere. In Chipinge East there are no less than 662 of these nonagenarians. All told, there are 4,368 nonagenarians among the new voters – an almost impossible number.
It is worth pointing out that there are also 1,425 voters on the roll whose gender is, oddly, declared to be undetermined – denoted with a “U”. Among these new voters of uncertain gender, there are no less than 171 voters under the age of 18 – who, accordingly, should not be on the roll at all.
There are also 1,235 new voters whose address is given as *** Box -. Their inclusion defies the requirement that addresses must be given. Even more spectacularly, of these 1,235 people, no less than 1,160 are more than 100 years old.
There are thus a considerable number of centenarians among the new voters. But this astonishing fact pales into insignificance when the total voters' roll of October 2010, incorporating both “old” and “new” voters, is examined. Thus, in the single constituency of Mount Darwin East, we find 118 registered voters over 100 years old, the majority of whom have their date of birth recorded as 1st January 1901. This means they are all more than 110 years old! Another nine have birth-dates of 1st January 1905, and 25 are given as having been born on 1st January 1910. Overall, the full voters' roll shows no less than 41,119 centenarians. This is an impossible figure. The United Kingdom (UK), with a total population of over 60 million and an average life expectancy more than 30 years longer than Zimbabwe's, has only 10,000 centenarians.
The data on the roll also shows that only 19,626 of these centenarians are women, while 437 are of uncertain gender (!) and 21,056 are men. This is a further absurdity, for the roll thus reveals a large masculine majority among the centenarians, even though women in Zimbabwe, as elsewhere in the world, have a longer life expectancy than men. A male majority among the centenarians is thus an impossibility. An additional impossibility is a male majority among the centenarians purely among the new voters.
Finally, there are no less than 16,828 registered voters with the same date of birth, given as 1st January 1901. It might be argued that the enumerator simply gave this birth date to all very senior citizens who were in doubt as to their true age – though that already suggests an impermissible degree of official intervention in the registration process. However, if one's credulity is stretched by this extraordinary number of 110-year-olds, it is stretched way beyond breaking point when one learns that no less than 1,101 of these 110-year-olds are registered in Mr Mugabe's birthplace, Zvimba, presumably to act as a reserve category capable of producing particularly pleasing results for Zanu-PF there.
Equally incredible is the fact that the full roll of both “old” and “new” voters includes 624,794 voters over the age of 70, who make up more than 10.6% of the total. The fact that the entire roll now includes 702 under-age voters (some of them “old” and some of them “new”) seems trivial by comparison, though there can be no good explanation for including those whose given ages clearly disqualify them.
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There are other anomalies too. For instance, 1,744 voters are registered in the Harare North constituency, with their addresses given as Kadungure, Fast Track, Chimurenga or other similar housing co-operatives within the Hatfield area. All told there are 18,525 registered voters with a physical address of “housing co-operative” of some sort. Yet this is not an address. To be a member of a housing co-operative is simply to have an associational membership which may, one day, result in housing. It does not fulfil the requirement of a proper address.
In addition, it is disturbing to note that there are people who are still on the roll even though they are known to have been killed in the violent struggles of recent times.
To conclude, then, the Zimbabwe voters’ roll, as at October 2010, is not only a wholly incredible document but an extremely dangerous one, which lends itself to all manner of electoral manipulation or ballot-stuffing. It is more or less guaranteed to produce disputed results. It is beyond redemption and cannot even be used as one of the building blocks in the construction of a new and authoritative voters' roll. It simply has to be scrapped completely, while work on a proper roll must begin again from scratch.
