२७ जून 2008

27JUNE 2008 When I arrived at the voting station at Zengeza 7 primary school for the ward seven where I was a registered voter I was told I had to first of all go to a Zanupf village headman by a gang of Zanupf youths stationed at the gates to the school। I asked them whether they were now village headmen in towns and he told me yes there were now village headmen for the cities as well।

They told me that for me to be on the safe side I had to go there. They told me that the ZANUPF militias, the headman, and the ZANUPF youths were going to do a reconciliation of all those who would have voted for the opposition party against the details that they now had. They also threatened they would also carry out a reconciliation of all those who wouldn’t have voted so that everyone had to vote whether they liked it or not. They pointed for me where I had to go. It was at the home of the local Zanupf head, a certain Mr Jena who stayed in Dovi Street. The place was just a street away from the voting station, in sight of even the presiding officers of this polling station, some of whom were even stationed at the gates where those Zanupf youths were turning people away from the station to Mr. Jena residence. When I arrived at Mr. Jena’s residence there was this very long queue of people registering their details and so I followed the queue of those registering their details. When I got to the front of the queue they asked for my details, that is my full name, address, telephone number and identity numbers, and then this village headman had given me a blank piece of paper which I was told I had to fill in with the serial number of my ballot’s paper.



At the voting station I voted the normal way but I also wrote down my serial number on that blank piece of paper when I was behind the booth and then I took that piece of paper to the village headman who recorded that serial number against my details. It meant that whether I liked it or not I had to vote for Mugabe
It was in the afternoon, at about 3 o clock when the headman and the militias were arrested, but most of the people had been forced to participate in this shame election and to think that it was happening all over Harare, and also that most of the presiding officers knew about it, especially those in my ward where the voting station was a stone’s throw away, in sight of this headman’s residencies, left a lot to be desired.But this is how we elected our president who is the president of Zimbabwe now, on 27 June 2008