Zim election rigging fears grow

For the eleventh time since independence, voting is underway in Zimbabwe's presidential and parliamentary elections, with concern growing around whether the elections will be free and fair. 

The election is seen as a fiercely contested one, pitting President Robert Mugabe against his rival Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, who has vowed to push Africa's oldest leader into retirement after 33 years in power.

Catholic Church election observer Sean O'Leary told Talk Radio 702’s John Robbie on Wednesday morning he expects no violence or intimidation today.

However, O’Leary said if there are going to be problems, it will be after the announcement of the results. 

“There’s no way they can rig it on the spot. There are 18,000 observers across the country. They will record in each voting centre the actual outcome. All that goes to a central point in Harare and it’s at that stage we’re very worried. They have five days to announce the results. The longer the wait the more the tension will rise.” 

Meanwhile, anti-conflict organisation International Crisis Group (ICG) says conditions for a free and fair election in Zimbabwe have not been assured.

The NGO predicts the polls will be rigged and that the outcome will be skewed.

The group's Piers Pigou says the organisation’s biggest concern is that the credibility of the elections can’t be secured in a situation where the contextual environment is highly uneven and problematic.

“There is an uneven application of the law and there are a range of significant problems in the preparation for these elections around the integrity of the voters’ roll.” 

The Southern African Development Community’s (SADC) 600 election observers are armed with documents from Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) outlining plans by Mugabe to rig the poll. 

The dossier lists examples of duplicate or questionable voters assembled from an initial examination of the voters’ roll that was released only last night. 

SADC’s chief observer to Zimbabwe, Bernard Membe, has expressed concern and observers speaking anonymously also say it’s extremely worrying.

Research and Advocacy Unit (RAU), a non-governmental organisation, alleged last month that the role includes around 1 million dead voters or people who have moved abroad, as well as more than 100,000 people aged over 100 years old. 

The MDC believes Mugabe intends using these ghost voters to secure a win.

'I WILL SURRENDER’

Mugabe said on Tuesday he will respect the will of the people if he loses and step down.

“Win or lose, you can’t be both. You either win or you lose. If you lose you must surrender to those that have won.”

Mugabe denies charges by Tsvangirai that he's trying to rig the elections and attributed his allegations to the cut and thrust of an election campaign.

The 89-year-old Zanu-PF leader said being in a power-sharing government with Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has broken down suspicion and suggests they can shake hands once the election battle is over.

Tsvangirai appears confident his party will win this year's polls.

“It is a historic event. What I can only anticipate is a victory for the MDC as shown by the overwhelming desire by the people of this country for change.”

Zimbabweans have been lining up since just after midnight, waiting to cast their votes.

At a primary school in the eastern Harare suburb of Greendale around 500 people were standing in the queue.

Voters said they were in good spirits but not all were excited as they had been through the process many times before. Inside the polling station 18 people crowded around the ballot boxes.

There were local observers looking on and party agents but no sign of the hundreds of foreign observers who are in the country to monitor the elections. 

Zimbabweans Vote in Pivotal Election

By LYDIA POLGREEN

Thousands of Zimbabweans streamed to the polls on Wednesday, casting their ballots in what many are calling the most pivotal election since Zimbabwe voted out white rule in 1980. Despite frigid predawn temperatures, people lined up before the polling stations opened, eager to cast their votes.

In Harare, the capital, there was none of the violence and intimidation that characterized the disastrous 2008 presidential election.

“This is a huge change, the fact that people can stand around and talk openly about their views,” said Namo Mariga, an agribusiness entrepreneur, after casting his ballot in the upscale suburb of Borrowdale. “The atmosphere is much freer.”

The election pits Robert G. Mugabe, 89, who has ruled Zimbabwe for 33 years, against former union organizer Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change. Mr. Tsvangirai won the most votes in the first round of the presidential election in 2008 but refused to participate in a runoff because of crackdowns on his supporters that left 200 people dead. A deal brokered by regional powers put the two rivals into an uneasy power-sharing agreement and both candidates are seeking an outright victory to govern alone.

“It is quite an emotional moment sometimes when you see all these people after all the conflict, the stalemate, the suspicion, the hostility,” a wistful Mr. Tsvangirai said after casting his ballot. “I think there is a sense of calmness that finally Zimbabwe will be able to move on again.”

Sporadic problems were reported from a number of regions. Lines were long in urban areas, raising concerns that not everyone would be able to vote on Wednesday. The challengers claimed that the Zimbabwe Election Commission had deliberately reduced the number of polling stations in their strongholds to discourage voters but the commission denied this. Some voters who registered recently found that their names were not on the rolls, but were able to cast ballots using the registration receipt.

But fears of rigging remained high. Neil Padmore, 35, brought his own pen to the polling station because he had heard that the government’s pens used invisible ink that would disappear a few hours after the ballot was cast.

“I am hoping that the sheer volume of the voters will prevent them from rigging,” said Mr. Padmore, who runs a company that lays fiber optic cable. “We need change in Zimbabwe. We can’t have this draconian environment.

But some voters said that Mr. Mugabe and his party, ZANU-PF, deserve to stay in power because they put Zimbabwe’s agricultural land, long controlled by a few thousand white commercial farmers, into the hands of black people through seizures.

Amina, a 26-year-old clothing trader who lives in Mbare and asked that only her first name be used, said that her brother was given a farm by the government and has prospered.

“He’s getting rich by the season,” she said. Her father had fought in Mr. Mugabe’s insurgent army in the 1970s and lost a leg to a bomb. Mr. Mugabe, she said, had made black people masters of their own destiny.

“He always told us the main grievance for the war was that we needed land,” she said. “They wanted to be masters of their own country.”

President Mugabe, the man who has ruled Zimbabwe since the end of white domination in 1980, retains his iron grip on the country’s feared security apparatus and there are few signs that he is ready to give up the reins of power.

“The 89 years don’t mean anything,” a confident Mr. Mugabe said in a rare interview. “They haven’t changed me, have they? They haven’t withered me. They haven’t made me senile yet, no. I still have ideas, ideas that need to be accepted by my people.”

But even with the shadow of the last election still looming, Edison Masunda was unafraid as he joined others streaming into a dusty field at the edge of the city center, part of a crimson wave of tens of thousands who gathered for the challenging party’s final rally on Monday
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Government silent on Mandela operation

 South Africa government  has declined to comment on whether former President Nelson Mandela's life support machine showed he was in distress last week.

Over the weekend the press  reported that Mandela recently underwent a surgical procedure to unlock his dialysis tube and that his life support machine shows he's in distress.

The reports indicates  that Madiba  wasn't responding well to his medications this past week.

Madiba has been treated for a recurring lung infection for over a month and a half at the Mediclinic Heart Hospital in Pretoria. 

He turned 95 on 18 July and his birthday was celebrated in both South Africa and around the world.

It is not yet clear how many more procedures Mandela will have to undergo in order to recuperate. 

The Presidency is yet to release a statement confirming Mandela's operation.

Spokesperson Mac Maharaj reiterated the Presidency’s last statement released on 22 July and said the former President is critical but his condition is improving.

Mandela underwent operation

South Africa  former president Nelson Mandela  underwent a surgical procedure on Friday to unlock his dialysis tube and that his life support machine shows he's in distress.

It is reported that Madiba  was not  responding well to his medications this past week.

Today Mandela clocks 50 days since has been hospitalised for a recurring lung infection at Pretoria's Mediclinic Heart Hospital, the longest he's ever been in hospital.

It is not yet clear how many more procedures Mandela will have to undergo in order to recuperate. The presidency is yet to release a statement confirming Mandela's operation.

Its last update was that the former president is still in a critical condition but shows sustained improvement.

Mandela’s daughter Zinzi told local media  on Mandela Day that her father was getting better and they were expecting him to be discharged soon.

Zinzi spoke a few days after former president Thabo Mbeki said Mandela’s doctors had assured him that Madiba would be discharged soon to recuperate at home.

A letter to Joyce Banda: Tears of an orphan

By Catherine Makala

Everyday is a mystery…People  think that as you age the Pain of losing a loved one must also age and eventually die away. Unfortunately not.

I live with the reality day and night more so that I lost two important figures I n my life at a time that I needed them most. I lost my mother and father in a tragic accident on the shores of Lake Malawi.

 This was all attributed to ones duty of care for the people carried on Board. For details you could reference the BOAT Accident of October 2000. With such a loss you could only imagine how families of the victims in such a fateful event  cope beyond this day. First and foremost they are immediately robbed of their pillar and financial provider.

Its been 13 years now with a determination and Presidential Directive issued in 2007 that families must be compensated for the loss of life. 

Six years down the line no one and I mean no one is willing to take responsibility. Being tossed and turned from one office to the next is the order of the day. Where is the Justice. Where is the action of what we speak about.

For how long will we wait for the Malawian Government to make good of this determination. Who is responsible and why has the case not been settled to date. We are left with so many questions but I believe one of the designated Offices in Malawi will one day respond.

It’s a determined Compensation Case why then shouldn't the responsible office honor their responsibility.

Think of the Plight of the children and Dependents left behind to fend for themselves.

Traditional Healers summon ancestors to heal Mandela

 South Africa traditional healers on Wednesday called upon the ancestors to heal former South Africa president Nelson Mandela who has been in hospital  for 47 days.

The healers performed a ritual for Madiba when they visited  MEDICLINIC Heart Hospital in Pretoria.

They said they believe that  the ritual will help to  chase away the evil spirits from Mandela's family and around the hospital and fasten Madiba's recovery  , 

During the ceremony  incense were burnt in a pot,a knife was stake in the ground , sprinkled tobacco, sang and summoned the Mandela's ancestors to heal Mandela.

Leader of the delegation Khubane Mashele who is also  the chairperson of the South Africa  traditional healers' interim council, called upon  the spirits of those who had passed during the struggle to help heal the anti-apartheid icon.

"We summon the great kings and soldiers of the struggle to help us in calling the ancestors of Mandela, and help him heal because we still need him," Mashele said in xiTsonga during the ritual.

Earlier in the day, a group of traditional leaders from the North West arrived at the Medi-Clinic Heart Hospital to deliver messages of support and a bucket of flowers.

Malawi president Joyce Banda summons deported diplomat

More details are expected emerge in a development which one of the Malawian diplomat was harshly evicted from her house and deported from South Africa as she is expected to appear before president Joyce Banda by the end of this week.

On Tuesday Malawi police which was lead by a Mr. Chaima a Mr Abiya from ministry of Foreign Affairs facilitated the deportation of First Secretary Emmie Nkangama after several attempts to recall her proved futile. The police, from Malawi and Home Affairs officials from South Africa, raided her house on Tuesday morning ordering her to dress up and leave the country before sunset.

Malawi police officer Mr. Chaima who was sent to facilitate the deportation 

However it has been reported that president Banda has distanced herself from the development saying she did neither ordered the deportation nor is she aware of the plan.

According to an investigation it has been revealed that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Malawian embassy acted on their own to deport Nkangama without the approval of the president.

" She reached Malawi safe though she was harassed but it was surprise to hear that the president Joyce Banda was unaware of the deportation and as I am talking she has been requested to meet the president to give her side of the story.” said a relative who chose not to be named.

According to the court documents Nkangama was allowed to continue staying in South Africa following an injunction she obtained on the matter which was granted by Justice Mwaungulu through her lawyer Kalekeni Kaphale.

“ I obtained an injunction on the matter and I wonder that my government has gone to the extent of facilitating my deportation,” said Nkangama on Tuesday.

Malawi embassy sealed Nkangama's house with all her belongings inside and left her children and workers stranded.