Senior cop admits 2008 rigging, violence

The mainstream MDC and its leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, had overturned Zanu (PF)s 28-year-old parliamentary stranglehold at the polls and given Mugabe his first ever personal electoral defeat.

Documents in our possession, backed by statements from reliable sources within the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP), indicate that Police Commissioner, Augustine Chihuri, chose senior police officers, ranking superintendent and above, to lead the gory retribution operation because so many officers in the lower ranks had begun to support the MDC.

Although it could not be ascertained how much they were given for taking part in the bloody campaign, the senior officers are said to have earned a lot of money and been rewarded with subsequent promotion.

During the reign of terror, between 200 and 500 MDC supporters were murdered in cold blood, while some were left with horrific injuries and thousands of others were displaced during the bloody Operation Mavhotera Papi? (Who did you vote for?) which also involved war veterans, soldiers and Mugabes youth militia.

New Mazdas

Junior officers also revealed that superintendents and trusted inspectors, especially war veterans, were given brand new Mazda B1800 and Mitsubishi pick-up vehicles without registration numbers, which they used on their terror campaigns.

They went about threatening people with war if they continued to vote Tsvangirai, saying that they would not stand and watch while this country was given back to the whites, said another police officer. Some even went to the extent of abducting people and torturing people who were deemed to be MDC supporters.

The junior officers said that the superintendents were taken to provinces where they were not known, so that they would not be easily identified by members of the public, while PISI details were always at hand to record all the campaigns and note them down, after which they would transmit their records to Chihuri.

Shifting loyalties

Chihuri is said to have accused junior officers of having connived with members of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) to engineer Mugabes defeat, as they had allegedly shifted their allegiance from Zanu (PF) to the MDC.

We were accused of being sell-outs who were determined to see Mugabe being toppled by Tsvangirai, whom the superiors said was an agent of the West, said a Bulawayo-based Assistant Inspector, who cannot be named.

They even supervised our postal ballots because they knew that most of the junior officers would vote Tsvangirai, as had happened in the earlier round of voting. Several junior officers were either dismissed or frustrated into leaving their jobs, after they were followed by members of the PISI (Police Internal Security Intelligence) everywhere they went and everyone they spoke to was scrutinised.

The junior officers said that Chihuri wrote several signals to all police officers in Zimbabwe, in which he accused junior officers of having watched while elections were being rigged in favour of the MDC and Tsvangirai. One of the signals in our possession was written by Faustino Mazango, the then Chief Staff Officer (Operations).

Irregularities

Written on May 2, 2008, when he was still a Senior Assistant Commissioner, Mazango (now Commissioner responsible for Human Resources), claimed that the widely-recognised March 29, 2008 elections were fraught with irregularities and discrepancies that occurred right in the presence of our police officers who were deployed at all polling stations throughout the country.

In the signal, titled, Security of voting process and whose reference number is 326/1/1, Mazango gives an indication that the ZRP was under fire from Zanu (PF) authorities, who blamed its officers for the partys and Mugabes electoral embarrassment.

Mazango, who signed the signal in his capacity as the ZRPs Commander for Harmonised Elections, addressed the signal to Chihuri and copied it to all police provincial, district and station commanders.

This was after Chihuri and other members of the Joint Operations Command (JOC) comprising commanders of the army, police, air force and the much-despised Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) – had demanded an explanation of what had gone wrong during the elections and a strategy that would resuscitate Mugabes then failing political life.

Police blamed

This poor record in the history of Zimbabwean elections has been blamed on the police who were docile and unpalatably passive throughout the whole voting process, said Mazango in the 10-page signal, also identified as Circular number 17/2008.

It is hereby directed that for the forthcoming run-off elections, ZRP shall have a tacit responsibility to monitor as well as take charge of the whole voting process at every stage.

Mazango said that in the run-off, the police would, among other things, take over the responsibility of checking prospective voters names against the voters role and assisting those who could not vote on their own.

The discrepancies and irregularities that consist of serious electoral fraud as well as silly errors could have been avoided had deployed police officers taken a keen interest in their job and properly followed the proceedings at their respective polling stations, said the senior police officer, who is also one of Chihuris close confidants.

ZEC rigging

Mazango also blamed Mugabes defeat and what he termed polices flaccid and resigned approach to the voting process on lack of training for police officers and their willingness to allow ZEC officials to rig elections.

He also went on to give some statistics of alleged vote rigging, deflation and inflation of results in a bid to rob Mugabe of victory. He claimed that at some polling stations, unregistered people were allowed to vote, while some of those registered, including police officers, were turned away.

It was also exposed during the recounting exercise that some unregistered persons were allowed to vote in the harmonized elections, said Mazango. In one such alarming case of electoral fraud, a police officer at a polling station in Bikita South Constituency connived with the presiding officer and allowed nine (9) unregistered persons to vote. The two officers were subsequently arrested and charged with electoral fraud.

Living hell

Last month we published a story detailing how junior ZRP members were subjected to a living hell by their commanders in the run-up to the sham June 27, 2008 presidential election run-off.

Their freedom of movement was curtailed, leave and time-off cancelled, their visitors barred from camps, while they were threatened with either dismissal from their jobs or firing squads if Mugabe lost to Tsvangirai again in what would have been the decisive presidential poll.

They also revealed that they were hauled to Zanu (PF) campaign meetings, presented as Police Projects and harangued by their superiors, who would denounce the MDC and order the officers and their dependents to vote Mugabe back into power.