500,000 Voters Prevented from Voting or Influenced in Zimbabwe

French Translation of the Week

Nearly 305,000 people were unable to vote and some 206,000 others were reportedly influenced by electoral officers at the July 31 general elections in Zimbabwe, according to figures publishes on Thursday by the Electoral Commission.

Près de 305 000 personnes ont été empêchées de voter et quelque 206 000 autres influencées par des agents électoraux lors des élections générales du 31 juillet au Zimbabwe, selon des chiffres publiés jeudi par la Commission électorale.

This article has been translated from French. Click here to read the original version on Libération.

The area with the largest number of voters deprived of their voting rights was the capital Harare (64,483), followed by the provinces of West Mashonaland and Manicaland, while only 3.5 million people out of the 6.4 million registered on the lists managed to vote. The elections resulted in a large victory of President Robert Mugabe, who has been in power for thirty-three years. The outgoing Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, who has lost three presidential elections against Mugabe, claimed that the voting process had been fraudulent and requested an audit of voter lists.

Electoral lists were only made public on the eve of the election, which made any inspection or appeal impossible. Many voters were unable to vote because their name was not on the records, others did not go to the right polling place, while others did not have the required identity documents.

The Zimbabwe Election Support Network, an independent election watchdog organization, agrees that Election Commission's figures are an underestimate. Citing a "systematic effort to deprive millions of the right to vote," they estimate that more than 750,000 urban voters were omitted from voting lists.

"In rural areas, almost 99.97% of voters were registered, compared to just 67.94% in urban areas," which are considered strongholds for the Zimbabwean opposition, said organization spokesman Solomon Zwanan. African Union observers emphasized the large number of voters influenced while voting, a practice that is particularly used to target members of the opposition, who encounter force from police officers or electoral agents, according to human rights groups.

"The involvement of these officials may influence or restrict the free expression of the right to vote," said the African Union's observation mission in its preliminary report. "We rejected the results published by the Electoral Commission, which are not free, fair, credible, or legitimate," added Simba Makoni, former Minister of Finance who resigned from Mugabe's party in 2008.

"These results do not reflect the free will of the people of Zimbabwe," said the head of the Mavambo Kusile Dawn party, which supported Morgan Tsvangirai. "Hundreds of thousands of potential voters weren't able to register and couldn't vote. This had a large impact on the election results, said Makoni.

Article translated by Andrea de Mauro and Joshua Lacey, Staff Interns for the African Program at the Wilson Center

Photo attributed to Feuerborn, on Flickr Commons