1 zimbabwe election support network [zesn] - Nehanda Radio

declaring their rejection of the elections, terms such as “farce” and “sham” generally used to
characterize it. The Government of Botswana openly called for the expulsion of Zimbabwe
from the SADC and the AU while the African National Congress youth league Chairman
Julius Malema called the run off “a joke of the worst order”.
Reports by the Pan African Parliament Observer Team, the African Union Observer Mission,
the Botswana Observer Team, and the SADC Election Observer Mission [SEOM] Preliminary
Report also roundly condemned the election process and outcome as generally “not giving
rise to the conduct of free, fair and credible elections”, “falling short of accepted AU
standards”, “not representing the will of the people of Zimbabwe”, “not conforming to SADC
Principles and Guidelines Governing Democratic Elections’, among other characterizations.
The Group of Eminent African leaders that include Nelson Mandela also expressed visible
disquiet on the conduct of elections, generally describing the election as illegitimate and in
fact a dark patchy in Africa’s electoral history.
Observed Electoral Gaps and the way forward
Such a highly agitated electoral environment hardly suffices for free and fair elections. The
two political parties must engage in power-sharing talks in order to find a lasting solution to
the political impasse. Such dialogues should however be guided by the “will of the people” as
anything short of that constitutes a truce and not a permanent settlement. The message of
zero tolerance to political violence must also cascade from the top leadership structures to
the grassroots, with political leaders publicly denouncing political violence in both words and
action.
While Zimbabwe continues to conduct its elections within the Westminster system of first
past the post [FPTP] based on the “winner- take-all” model, the solution to the political
stalemate in Zimbabwe lies in an electoral paradigmatic shift to more inclusive,
accommodating, win-win electoral systems based on proportional representation [for Senate]
and Mixed Electoral Models [for the Lower House].
On voter registration and inspection of the Voters’ Roll, it was noted with concern that the
exercise started late with little time allocated for voter registration and inspection; that the
voters roll is not up to date and that the problem of ghost voters remains a problem and that
in some cases, insufficient and incorrect information was provided to citizens about the
registration process. Voter registration must be approached as an ongoing process, stringent
requirements which discourage people from registering as voters must be done away with,
and that the voter registration exercise be sufficiently publicized to ensure maximum voter
participation.
While the Electoral Act obliges ZEC to conduct voter education it was disturbing to note that
voter education started late and in some cases with reports of “little voter education” having
been conducted by ZEC by the time of elections. ZEC should be availed with adequate
resources for voter education and that adequate monitoring mechanisms should be put in
place to ensure that voter education is conducted in a uniform, professional and non-partisan
manner. ZEC should also provide more space to NGOs to provide gap filling voter education.
Although ZEC now has direct responsibility over the delimitation exercise, its management of
the delimitation process was far from satisfactory. Insufficient time was allowed for people
and parliamentarians to participate in the process. The final Delimitation Report was tabled in
Parliament very late in the electoral process leaving little time to educate the public on
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