Since the voter registration exercise began last year, the independent Zimbabwe Electoral Supervisory Network (ZESN) has compiled meticulous reports, cataloguing in minute detail the complete shambles that has characterized the entire process around the country.
Given this litany of blunders, it is patently obvious that the Registrar General’s office could not possibly have registered even half the number it claims to have done. The identities of thousands of long-deceased voters are still on the rolls, together with further thousands of people who no longer reside at the addresses listed. This alone is sufficient proof that, if indeed there are six million names on the voters’ roll, the vast majority of them are ghost voters put their specifically to make it easier for Zanu (PF) to stuff the ballot boxes.
Let us do some simple arithmetic. Zimbabwe has an estimated population of 12million.More than half of these are children under the age of 16 who do not qualify to vote. That leaves six million. Between three and four million Zimbabweans have fled the country. That leaves two or three million adults. The government would have us believe that each of these people has registered twice! Please…
Can we afford this family?
While the Christmas holidays for most Zimbabweans were wrecked by confusion over the introduction of the new currency and government’s inability to manage the economy in even a remotely responsible manner,Mugabe and his family holidayed in style.Mugabe was given US$100 000 from the Reserve Bank at the official rate of 30,000ZD:1USD.
Zimbabweans other than the top Zanu officials and hangers on are unable to go direct to the Reserve Bank, or to the commercial banks, and are forced to buy forex on the parallel market at the rate of 2 millionZD: 1USD.
Mugabe thus paid ZD3 billion for his holiday spending money, while ordinary Zimbabwean citizens and businessmen trying to source food,medicines,spare parts,fuel,water and water and electricity would have had to fork out ZD200 billion for the same amount.
But that is not all. The Mugabes were accompanied by a retinue of officials and security personnel, each drawing his own forex allocation for the trip directly from the Reserve Bank.
Can Zimbabwe continue to afford this family?
Word for Today:
Hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. Romans 8:24-26.