Zimbabwe’s long poll queues are ‘plot to suppress votes’
Results of historic election for Zimbabwe’s presidency are expected to be tight – and may be disputed
ZIMBABWE’S leading opposition candidate accused the country’s electoral authorities of trying to suppress voter turnout at presidential elections yesterday, raising fears of a disputed outcome to the historic poll.
Millions of Zimbabweans voted in the country’s first presidential, parliamentary and local government elections since dictator Robert Mugabe was ousted in a military coup in November.
Turnout averaged 75 per cent, larger than the last vote in 2013, electoral commission chairman Priscilla Chigumba said.
The outcome will decide whether Emmerson Mnangagwa, a 75-year-old former ally of Mr Mugabe, or Nelson Chamisa, a 40-year-old lawyer and preacher leading the opposition MDC Alliance, will be the next president.
The only poll released in the run-up to the vote showed Mr Mnangagwa leading by just three per cent, and the results, which must be announced by Saturday, are expected to be tight.
Mr Chamisa, who has repeatedly accused electoral authorities of colluding with Mr Mnangagwa and his Zanu-pf party, claimed queues at some polling stations in Harare were a deliberate attempt to reduce turnout in traditional strongholds of the MDC Alliance.
“There seems to be a deliberate attempt to suppress and frustrate the urban vote,” Mr Chamisa wrote on Twitter. “Good turnout but the people’s will being negated & undetermined due to these deliberate & unnecessary delays.”
There were queues of up to one hour at Harare polling stations visited by The Daily Telegraph. Polling stations are technically obliged to remain open until all those still in line at 7pm, when polling closes, have voted.
Elmar Brok, the EU chief observer, said many voters left queues in frustration at long delays but that it was as yet unclear whether those delays were deliberate or down to poor management.
“In some cases it [voting] works very smoothly but in others we see that it is totally disorganised and that people become angry, people leave,” Mr Brok told reporters in Harare.
No violence was reported, however, several voters said memories of 2008, when Mr Mugabe unleashed thugs to terrorise MDC activists and supporters, still loomed large. Another observer, in contact with groups in other parts of the country, said there had been isolated incidents of intimidation.
“I’m glad we voted. We really badly need change,” said a 61-year-old man who cast his ballot in the Harare suburb of Newlands. “But I don’t want to give you my name or say who I voted for because we don’t know what the repercussions will be. It would be easy to track me down.”
Zanu-pf has ruled Zimbabwe for 38 years and Mr Mnangagwa’s near-total dominance in the media makes him the front-runner. He has sought to attract former opposition voters by publicly breaking with Mr Mugabe and promising a “new dispensation” of democratic and economic reforms.
However, Mr Chamisa has made significant inroads into former Zanupf strongholds in rural areas and has attracted large crowds at rallies. He has said he is certain of victory and that any other outcome could only be the result of vote-rigging by Zanu-pf.
“I am moderately bullish,” said Terence Mukupe, the Zanu-pf candidate for the constituency of Harare East. “The MDC vote is split, and the business community, the white community,
‘I don’t want to give you my name or say who I voted for because we don’t know what the repercussions will be’
and the middle classes who used to vote for the opposition have largely switched to ED,” he said, referring to Mr Mnangagwa’s by his first initials.
One 71-year-old grandmother from a village 40 miles north of Harare said she did not vote for Zanu-pf for the first time because she said she now felt “safe” to support the opposition.
The election has been dominated by the now-retired Mr Mugabe, with both candidates promising a break with the stagnation and political violence of his rule. The former dictator, 94, made a surprise intervention on the eve of the election, saying he would not vote for his own Zanu-pf party and hinting that he would back Mr Chamisa instead.
He was cheered when he arrived to vote at a polling station in Highfield, a township on the outskirts of Harare, with his wife Grace. She was yesterday stripped of her diplomatic immunity by a court in South Africa, where she is facing allegations of assaulting a model, Gabriella Engels.