Denford Magora's Latest Zimbabwe News Blog

All the drama that Nelson Chamisa is currently engaged is completely unnecessary and utterly self-defeating. The MDC Alliance and all the opposition candidates are well placed to stop any supposed rigging without damaging the institutions of our country that are needed to make sure democracy endures and Zimbabwe becomes prosperous. And stopping any potential rigging is so easy one now understands why most observers are now of the view that Nelson Chamisa and his Alliance are cry-babies who do not want to go elections at all for fear of a loss and to push for a non-elected GNU. ZEC has said that the Voters' Roll they gave out is clean, it has not ghosts on it. Chamisa and his people do not believe them. Fine. Skepticism is a good thing. But there is a better and more ironclad way to not only check this, but also protect the vote of Zimbabweans. Instead of insulting the ZEC Chair, alarming and demotivating his supporters will constant talk of a basically already-stolen vot...

JUSTICE Chigumba, the ZEC Chair, briefing observers at the Harare International Conference Centre earlier today, doubled down on a trend of refusing or failing the transparency test. She is within the law on everything she has done, but ignoring the key test of transparency impacts massively on the credibility of this poll, to the detriment of whoever end up winning this election. We have always defended ZEC against the baseless accusation thrown against them by an opposition that is bent discrediting the election in the hope of it being declared not free and fair and thereby, hopefully, forcing a Government of National Unity with Nelson Chamisa as Prime Minister, but the needless lack of transparency by the electoral body is now wildly carvoting in sabotage territory. Take Justice Chigumba's briefing with Observers today at the Harare International Conference Centre. One thing that has raised alarm bells is her announcement that the electoral body will not be using indeli...

Welshman Ncube of the MDC Alliance, at Ross Police Camp in Bulawayo today, where police voted today in an incident made a scandal only by the fact that ZEC appeared not to know that ballot papers that it should be in charge of were now in Bulawayo, at a police camp   It is a blunder of monumental proportions, no doubt and we do not need to recount to you what transpired at Ross Police Camp in Bulawayo. But just in case you have been on Mars today, here goes: An alert was sent to the MDC Alliance by a policeman at Ross Camp saying the policemen there were being "forced" to vote in the presence of their superiors and crying out for help. The Alliance immediately broadcast the alert across social media. The Acting Chief Elections Officer for ZEC denied that there was any voting taking place, saying he was still processing postal vote applications. Videos and images soon emerged showing that there had indeed been voting at that Camp and ZEC Commissioners scrambled t...

Things are getting very interesting now although I doubt Nelson Chamisa and his Alliance will be amused. It's stunning, I tell you. Although Nelson Chamisa believes he is going to meet Justice Chigumba tomorrow (Thursday July 12 2018), the ZEC Chair has decided that neither she nor her Commissioners will meet the opposition leader or any of his cronies. In a heated phone call today with Justice Minister Ziyambi, Chigumba threatened to seek a court injunction barring the Alliance from "harassing" ZEC and disrupting, interrupting and impeding the implementation of its mandate at law. The Justice Minister made it clear that he would not support that move, although he could not stop the ZEC Chair from proceeding with the action if she thought it suitable. He even went so far as to declare that his government would publicly distance itself from the move if it happens, just to register the position of government, since he could not order to proceed or not. After ...

Nelson Chamisa, it turns out, is playing straight into the hands of ZANU PF with his constant agitation around the voters' roll and the ballot paper. This was revealed to us yesterday, Sunday, 08 July, entirely by accident. We were not supposed to hear what we are about to tell you and I hope we will not get into trouble for it! ZANU PF, like the Republicans in the USA, the Tories in the UK and many other parts of the world, knows that one of the most effective ways to "rig" an election is to ensure that your opponents' supporters do not show up on voting day. It is called voter suppression. It is a micro strategy that the Republicans used in the USA for decades before the Dems and the Independents woke up to what was happening (and it involved manipulating local laws to demand the sort of ID documents the Republicans knew Democratic supporters were unlikely to have). Demotivating MDC supporters is ZANU PF's number one prize, and Nelson Chamisa and hi...

The "BVR" Voters' Roll is now out and has been given to all and sundry. Surprisingly, it looks like whatever anomalies have been picked up do not amount to even a thousand in number. It is not enough to swing an election. The anomalies range from a handful of people who are reputed to be above 100 years old. They do not number more than 100 across the country. The other anomaly has to do with the residential addresses of voters. Too many people living at one address, apparently, is an issue that has been picked up. Again, this does not amount to even a thousand people across the country. Within opposition circles, we know for a fact that debate around this raged this last week. Senior Alliance members pointed out that the issue of addresses had nothing to do with ZEC. The MDC-T, during Tsvangirai's twilight years specifically lobbied and cried foul over the requirement for proof of residence in order to register to vote. They claimed this disenfranchise...

On Monday, 21 May 2018 at around 7:30 in the evening, two private jets out of Mozambique landed at Charles Prince airport on the outskirts of Harare. On Board were 16 Chinese nationals, nine of whom are, according to sources, employees of Guangdong Information Technology Security Evaluation Centre. This comes as we are also being informed that, since the call for people to verify their registration online, the electronic database has come under two unsuccessful attempts to breach it. Credit for that level of security is being given by my sources to the team from Guangdong Information Technology Security Evaluation Centre. It is claimed they are the most sophisticated cyber security experts in the world, feared even by American cyber experts. GITSEC is a contractor of the Chinese People's Army. Also on board were Electrical Engineering University staff, a institution of higher learning for China's armed forces.  "No doubt at all, three of the guys that are from Unit...

Mugabe and Grace arrive at Margarita Island in Venezuela for Africa-South America Summit. Back home, the president appears in no hurry to see to things like the Media Commission and even the Electoral Commission Harare, Zimbabwe, 28 September 2009 I got the emails. Fungi and Paul were especially irate that I had not bothered to update you at all through the day!! By way of explanation: I attended a Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN) workshop all day today and then had to go out of town after that. The ZESN workshop was basically an attempt by the NGO to inform intelligent input into the Constitution-making process. Focus was on the various forms of governance, the variety of voting methods around the world and pros as well as cons of all of them. Most parties were represented, but the ZANU PF delegation only arrived ten minutes before lunch. After lunch, one of them took strong exception to one of the presenters calling POSA and AIPPA "draconian". He said his party did ...