… ..says will be in trouble with village head
Brighton Chiseva
A Zaka man who claimed to have lost his national identity card and could not vote pleaded with the presiding officer at St James Chivamba High School Polling Station to mark him with indelible ink so that he could show his village head whom he claimed was going to give him a hard time if he did not vote.
Robson Mugoti said villagers had been instructed by the village head to bring proof that they had voted, failure of which meant trouble.
“I plead with you to just put ink on my finger. I do not care about voting because my ID fell into a blair toilet pit; what I want is something to show to my village head because if I fail I will be in big trouble,” said Mugoti.
Mugoti caused a scene in the polling station refusing to sit on a chair which he was offered saying he wanted to show how serious he was with his request.
The presiding officer said the least they could do was registering him in their records, with Mugoti adamant that putting his name down was never going to help him unless the book was then taken to his village head afterwards.
“So if you write my name down will you take the book to my village head for him to see that I have been here? I don’t want trouble with him please I beg,” he said.
The presiding officer tried to give the Mugoti a chair to sit on as they discussed his issue but he refused opting to sit on the floor in the middle of the polling station.
In Zaka and many other rural areas in Masvingo, Zanu PF aligned organization Forever Associates of Zimbabwe (FAZ) which had a desk at almost every polling station labelled ‘poll exit survey’, registering people before and after they voted, a development which was seen by many as a form of intimidation.
In other areas, village heads rounded up their people and allegedly forced them to pass through FAZ desk and those who failed to abide were threatened with undisclosed consequences.
Another form of intimidation was whereby known opposition supporters would allegedly be forced to pretend that they were not able to vote and would be assisted by someone.
Shocking statistics were recorded at a number of polling station in Zaka, Gutu, and Chiredzi where a significant number of people would be assisted to vote at ceratin polling stations.
At Jinjika Secodary School in Zaka, by 1500hrs, about 79 people had been assisted to vote at one polling station and surprisingly, the next polling station which is Mutonhori High, an opposition stronghold since 2008, only three people had been assisted to vote by around 1600hrs.
