Zimbabweans up in arms over alleged privacy breaches, as analysts find 250,000 ‘ghost voters’ on roll
Welcome to the Zimbabwe Daily Briefing - the new product from Zitamar News, bringing you the top news from Zimbabwe each day as the country gears up for crucial elections at the end of this month.
Today’s headlines:
Zimbabweans up in arms over alleged ZEC privacy breaches, as analysts find 250,000 ‘ghost voters’ on roll
Parties ‘will never be satisfied’ with electoral process, says ZEC head
South Africa avoids endorsing Zimbabwe’s electoral process
Nkosana Moyo calls for parliament to oppose executive
Zimbabwe elections a chance to break with 'decades of gross human rights violations’
MUST READ: World watching Zimbabwean polls as Zanu-PF confident of re-election
Zimbabweans up in arms over alleged ZEC privacy breaches, as analysts find 250,000 ‘ghost voters’ on roll (Newsday, The Zimbabwe Mail, The Herald, Daily News, NewsDay)
Zimbabweans are up in arms over an apparent data breach from the body running the elections, the ZEC, after ruling party Zanu-PF sent personalised SMSs to thousands of registered voters yesterday. ZEC has denied handing over the numbers, which it collected as part of the registration process, saying such data is for sale from mobile phone providers if parties want to buy it - something denied by the biggest operator in the country, Econet. Jameson Timba, chief election agent for MDC Alliance candidate Nelson Chamisa, said the release of mobile numbers to Zanu-PF might constitute a breach of the constitution.
One voter is also bringing a legal case to prevent the ZEC from publishing photos of voters on the electoral roll, saying it is an invasion of privacy. The law requires photos to be published, but ZEC appears not to want to do so. However, the MDC Alliance is calling for the law to be upheld.
Meanwhile, an independent team of electoral administration, human rights and data science experts say Zimbabwe’s voters’ roll contains more than 250,000 ‘ghost voters’.
“Several techniques were used to sift/dig through all the 5,683,936 records in the voters’ roll,” the report said, according to NewsDay. “One of the key concerns that have emerged is the existence of both double registrants and the high possibility of ghost voters in the roll. Both scenarios were, ordinarily, not expected given that the Electoral Commission used the most sophisticated BVR [biometric voter registration] system to capture voters data. At the time of writing, the number of red-flagged entries basing on all techniques used stood at 250,000.”
Both scandals represent further damage to ZEC’s integrity as an election management agency. It looks increasingly likely that if the opposition loses this election, it will be able credibly to claim that the elections were not free and fair.
Parties ‘will never be satisfied’ with electoral process, says ZEC head (NewZimbabwe, ZBCOnline, The Insider, The Herald)
ZEC head Justice Priscilla Chigumba said yesterday ZEC is limiting parties’ access to voter data because of privacy concerns. “Would you like your picture and your fingerprint, your name and your identification card number, your telephone, address number to be flighted around somewhere in the public arena? We have a duty to actually protect our registered voters from identity thefts and all sorts of things, we balance conflicting interests,” she said.
Chigumba said she had tried to include the parties in the ZEC’s processes, even beyond what is required by law - but implied she had had enough of having her efforts thrown back in her face. “Political parties will never be satisfied because there is no legal framework,” she said. “There is no legal framework that allows some of these requests or demand by political parties. Different political parties want different things and quite evidently we have failed to build consensus so far we are now debating whether we continue the consensus-building exercise or just stick to the letter and spirit of the law.”
ZEC has gone the extra mile in transparency in some areas - allowing the opposition to watch the ballot papers being printed, however. However, there are clearly still areas where the ZEC’s operation has been opaque to the point of lacking credibility - see the item above, or the printing of the ballot paper to put Mnangagwa at the top.
South Africa avoids endorsing Zimbabwe’s electoral process (Herald)
South Africa’s ambassador stopped short of endorsing Zimbabwe’s electoral process after a meeting of ambassadors from the Southern African Development Community with acting foreign minister Simon Khaya Moyo. “In the event of the new dispensation that started at the end of last year, it became very important for the leadership of the country under President Mnangagwa to have proper, free, fair credible and transparent elections which will then lead to a normal Government that will be elected for the next five years with a full mandate of the people of Zimbabwe to govern this country,” Ambassador Mphakama Mbete said. “As far as [minister Moyo] was concerned the situation is set towards free, fair, credible and democratic elections,” he concluded.
Mbete’s colleague from Namibia, Balbina Daes Pienaar, gave regime-supporting paper The Herald the quote that it wanted, saying “We believe that the elections will be free, fair and credible” - but the South African endorsement is the one that really counts.
Nkosana Moyo calls for parliament to oppose executive (NewZimbabwe)
Alliance for People’s Agenda (APA) leader and presidential candidate Nkosana Moyo says Zimbabweans should choose a leader who won’t control parliament after this month’s elections. “If Zimbabweans really want Zimbabwe to progress and not be hijacked by any party at all, we need to try and vote for the presidency as a totally separate exercise and for parliament as yet another separate exercise where we vote for individuals and not for parties,” he said.
Moyo’s call echoes recent comments by MDC veteran and former minister Eddie Cross who blogged that although he has little doubt that Mnangagwa will win the presidency, “I expect almost a hung Parliament [which] is going to be much more difficult to deal with by the new Executive. Question time is going to be the hottest hour in the week! This will be good for our democracy and it could mean that Parliament will be able to hold the Executive to account.”
There is, as NewZimbabwe points out, a whiff of self-interest in Moyo’s call, given that he is the presidential candidate of a small party that won’t get anywhere near a majority in parliament. Nevertheless, ‘cohabitation’ as the French call it, can be an effective brake on an executive and lead to better policy-making. The ‘harmonised elections’ that Zimbabwe has had since 2008, when President and parliament are elected on the same day, make such an outcome unlikely; but perhaps after these elections, the opposition will push for the country to go back to a staggered election system where the two elections are held separately.
Zimbabwe elections a chance to break with 'decades of gross human rights violations’ - Amnesty International
Zimbabwe must break from decades of politically-motivated human rights violations - including mass killings and forced disappearance of critics - Amnesty International said today. It highlighted the case of journalist and pro-democracy activist Itai Dzamara who has been missing since 9 March 2015 after demanding the resignation of Mugabe for violating human rights and mismanaging the economy, and listed number of others who have disappeared or been killed or tortured for political reasons.
Old habits die hard - especially for Mnangagwa who was Mugabe’s enforcer - but this should be an area where Zanu-PF can clean up its act. If Zanu-PF win and Mnangagwa really does bring improvements in how the country is run, he should be able to tolerate criticism. But the danger will come if the MDC Alliance wins, or believes it has won, the election - which could lead to post-election violence.
World watching Zimbabwean polls as Zanu-PF confident of re-election (Daily Nation)
“Not since South Africa voted for Nelson Mandela in 1994 has an African election been so closely monitored. Nor has an outcome been so eagerly and anxiously awaited,” writes Michael Holman, who was the Financial Times’ Africa correspondent and then Africa editor between 1977 and 2002. Outside observers are “aware that the outcome and aftermath of the election is their equivalent of the canary that used to accompany coal miners working underground,” says Holman. “But the critical test will come after the observers have left for home. Will the canary remain healthy – or will it be showing signs of distress?”
Of all the overviews of the Zimbabwe situation published in the international media over the past few weeks, this is the best we’ve seen. A must-read.
Tweet of the Day
Not long ago, when some cautioned against the sort of private info ZEC held, Zim Twitter told us “your privacy doesn’t matter more than elections. Don’t be paranoid”.
Suddenly, because the inevitable has happened, the same experts are the loudest megaphones for data privacy.
July 9, 2018Happening Today:
Not long ago, when some cautioned against the sort of private info ZEC held, Zim Twitter told us “your privacy doesn’t matter more than elections. Don’t be paranoid”.
Suddenly, because the inevitable has happened, the same experts are the loudest megaphones for data privacy.
President Mnangagwa chairs Cabinet
Mnangagwa launches the Zimbabwe National Geospatial and Space Agency in Harare (today, not yesterday as we said yesterday - apologies for the error)