I have been in business for about 40
years and in my experience 85 per cent of theft in a company is by staff. I
called in the manager of the audit department and asked why I never saw a
report on employee theft? Our business was selling predominately for cash
and handled truckloads of cash every day. I then threatened him with
dismissal if I did not start to see real evidence that they were doing their
job and for the next three years the disciplinary committee was very busy
with reported cases of theft and abuse of privileges.
In the recent election I received an invitation from the Zimbabwe Electoral
Commission to witness the “sealing of the postal ballot boxes” in my
district. This election was run on a ward basis and therefore I attended one
such sealing and my Chief Election Agent the other. I arrived at the polling
station designated; this was about a week before the election itself and
found about 20 people and several policemen milling about.
After a few minutes we were called to order and the presiding officer for
the ward then proceeded to conduct an elaborate and painstaking procedure to
demonstrate that the plastic box was empty and then sealed. We were told to
take the numbers down and to sign the seals on the box so that they could
not be tampered with. I then asked what would happen to the box until the
election? I was told it would sit in the polling station in splendid
isolation guarded by a policeman 24 hours a day.
What a waste of time – the real action was many kilometers away in police
stations and army barracks and diplomatic missions where postal ballots were
being completed by civil servants and serving officers under the supervision
of their superior officers. Nothing transparent about that process and we
have plenty of evidence that they were forced to vote one way – if they did
not, they were told to do it again. These ballots were then sent to selected
districts where they were used to ensure that certain candidates won.
My District was not one of those – I think I had 27 postal ballots. But what
I recall was the elaborate dance conducted for absolutely no purpose in that
primary school polling station. It served no purpose other than to give the
impression that this was a process above suspicion, when it fact it simply
disguised what was really going on.
Now take yesterdays recount of 23 constituencies. The claim by Zanu PF made
10 days after the results were known, was that the returning officers under
counted the Zanu PF vote. They first targeted 25 such districts and then
trimmed this to 23. All in rural areas.
The statistics are awesome for an exercise of this nature. The 23 districts
had 1380 polling stations. At those polling stations were nearly `15 000
staff – excluding 5 000 police officers – all of whom were on duty the whole
day and well into the night and observed the whole process. The returning
officers in charge were all senior civil servants carefully selected for
this task and well paid for their time.
Each team of over 15 people had to watch while an average of 275 voters went
through the elaborate process of having their names and identity documents
checked against the voters rolls. Collected their ballot papers and then
completed them in secrecy before showing the polling station code number to
the returning officer or their deputies and then placing them into one of
four boxes – all color coded.
In the evening after closing the polling station they had a short break and
then, in front of up to 20 party polling agents, they proceeded to empty
each box onto an open table and divide them into piles – one for each
candidate, before counting and recounting until everyone was satisfied with
the count which was then recorded by all involved – agents on their own
returns and the staff on the official documents.
The process went on for hours – eventually all is finalized and the
returning officers filled in the V11 form recording the results of the poll,
it was signed by all parties and then posted on the door of the polling
station and he or she then took the form to the district control center
where the senior returning officer and his staff were and they then
consolidated the returns from all stations and finally declare the result
for the ward, constituency or senatorial district. At the same time they
announced the result of the presidential poll.
In every polling station the police watched every step and radioed in the
results as they got them. I know that because at our polling stations during
the counting we were hearing, via the police on duty, results from other
stations.
Now Zanu PF and the Mugabe regime want the world to accept that this
elaborate and painstaking process at 1400 polling stations was flawed to the
extent that the results – drawn up by 15 000 staff, watched by 5 000 police
officers, were wrong! How wrong we are about to discover. They started at
08.00 hrs yesterday and it will take three days to finish. The process of
the recount will be elaborate for the benefit of the watching press, SADC
observers and the curious. They will hold up each ballot – all 400 000 of
them, carefully place them on the appropriate pile and then start the count.
Remember the count is 400 000 times 4 – 1,6 million ballots from 5 000
ballot boxes.
But it is an elaborate sham, put on for the benefit of the gullible and the
region – which knows full well what is going on and yet will applaud the
process as being “transparent” and above board. Why have they not done this
with the V11 forms? Why not sit down with the four Chief Election Agents and
count the results of 9 400 forms filled in by returning officers on the
night of the 29th March. Why not simply verify the signatures on those forms
and ask the parties to justify any queries. Why this elaborate and time
consuming process when the obvious has not been done?
It is quite clear to me and to millions of others that this exercise – like
the sealing of the postal ballot boxes with nothing in them, is just a ploy
to hide the fact that fraud is being committed in front of the whole
watching world. They have had the ballot boxes for three weeks behind closed
doors and like my employees, simply cannot be trusted with the cash! Zanu PF
and ballot boxes is a bit like the staff and the cash box – do a snap audit
and fire the employee afterwards.
That ship with its genocide cargo from China is on its way to Angola – from
there its cargo will probably be flown to Harare. Yesterday three MDC
activists were picked up in Harare, beaten to the edge of death and then
dumped in the bush at Mtoroshanga – many kilometers from Harare. A meeting
was held at Raffingora yesterday, addressed by army officers in uniform.
They told the people that there would be a run off and that this time they
“will” vote for Mugabe or else there will be civil war. They also said they
would shortly start to take over businesses and mines and urban property.
If nobody starts to act soon, this is going to be a bloody few weeks.
Eddie Cross
Bulawayo, 20th April 2008
Post published in: News