2008 election rigging has started

A reliable source in the Ministry of Home Affairs has revealed that while frustrated Zimbabweans queue in their thousands to obtain their birth certificates, identity and passport documents, Government has hijacked the process and is clandestinely handing out documents to Zanu-PF supporters. "These supporters from far off places are preferentially given identity cards and passports and registered as voters", this is in order to reconfigure the Harare and Bulawayo urban constituency voters rolls ahead of the 2008 harmonised elections.

Zimbabwe's electoral law allows only holders of national identity cards and passports to vote.

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In the parliamentary election of 2005, former MDC spokesman Paul Themba Nyathi lost the Gwanda constituency seat to Zanu-PF after the CIO secretly registered thousands of graduates from the Border Gezi youth militia.

Many see this as on reason why, in 2005, the Zanu PF government embarked on 'Operation Murambatsvina' or 'Clear out the Trash', a police operation to destroy homes belonging to poor urbanites, exposing victims to the cold winter. Despite condemnation by the United Nations (UN), President Robert Mugabe endorsed the action, arguing that these were necessary slum clearances. Homeless victims, many of whom were MDC supporters, were forcibly removed to remote areas and rendered unable to vote since they are now far from where they are registered to vote.

Government is also setting up self-help and grocery clubs for Zanu-PF supporters with funds drawn from the fiscus, and these have also been associated with clandestine voter registration.

Self-help projects, the brainchild of Vice President Joice Mujuru, entail chicken rearing and the supply of farm fertilizer and these are targeted at boosting the morale of personnel in the army and police force. According to our sources, beneficiaries of the project are secretly registered as voters to swell the Harare and Bulawayo urban constituency voters roll.

Grocery clubs, led by Ministers Oppah Rushesha and Sithembiso Nyoni, buy scarce commodities such as cooking oil and washing soap in Botswana and South Africa for profit sale back home. Many interpret this as an open admission by the government of having ruined the economy. Grocery club members are each given Z$10 million sourced from the Reserve Bank - this is to facilitate the purchase of scarce commodities. They are then directed to illegally buy foreign currency in the streets. Again, sources say that beneficiaries are being registered as voters in Bulawayo.