By Evans Muranganwa.
The Bikita West parliamentary poll was marred with acts of intimidation and vote buying ahead and during the poll, a human rights organization has claimed.
In its post-voting assessment, ZimRights noted public statements of intimidation by ruling party Zanu-Pf’s officials, claims of violence by opposition candidates and politicisation of government-sponsored food aid as a central problem.
It went on to claim that on polling day, in stations visited by ZimRights the independent Zimbabwe Election Commission (ZEC) had cooperative staff that welcomed independent observers.
According to ZimRights, observers visited most of the polling stations, including all of the polling stations in Ward 19 and 22 and that some presiding officers in countable stations refused with information including on how many voters had been assisted to vote.
The organization said in most of the polling stations that it visited, accredited Zanu-Pf polling agents outside the polling stations appeared to be writing names of villagers who came to vote, a move that caused worries of intimidation.
Intimidation, or “the harvest of terror” still lingering in rural communities after the unhealed political violence of 2008, appeared to be the most unfortunate way in which the ruling party Zanu-Pf’s officials tried to sway the vote in favour of their party candidate whether that had a bearing on the outcome or not.
It is reported that at Zanu-Pf’s major rally in the Bikita West constituency ahead of the National Assembly by-election attended by Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa at Gwindingwi Primary school, Provincial Affairs Minister, Shuva Mahofa openly made threats.
She allegedly likened what would happen if Zanu-Pf lost, to the deadly election bloodshed of around June 2008 – in the same utterances where she used reportedly unprintable language – in a way that was openly calculated to reinforce fear and that hurt the memories of past victims.
The organization prescribed to ZEC that it should find a way of stopping election agents outside polling stations from writing the names of people coming to vote, given that such activities, have often been linked to voter intimidation.
The human rights lobby group termed politicisation of food aid as ‘a gross human rights concern’ and that it is a case of vote-buying that supports discrimination based on political affiliation and suppresses freedom of conscience. Politicisation of food aid is said to have been rife ahead of the Bikita West.
“Lessons learnt from the Bikita West by-election are that the behaviour of political actors during elections continue to enable human rights violations, there is still need to respect citizens’ freedom of political choice, and stakeholders need to work extremely hard to end the culture of intimidation,”reports Zimrights.
The Bikita by-election was won by Beauty Chabaya of ZANU PF who garnered massive votes ahead of ZimPF candidate Kudakwashe Gopo, NCA’s Murdock Chivasa and Heya Shoko, independent.
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