Launching the fourth decennial census in Harare, Mugabe dismissed accusations of vote rigging by his party, Zanu (PF), in the past, saying ballot theft happened in ‘‘some African countries’’.
In his speech, Mugabe admitted that there was a possibility that some unruly elements would want to tamper with the census figures as is done in election time when ballot boxes disappear in some African states but distanced Zimbabwe from the practice.
Mugabe has been accused of rigging elections since the early years of independence, using the national intelligence agency and a partisan electoral body.
In 2008, he withheld general election results for almost a month in a move that observers said was intended to doctor the outcome.
Even though Tsvangirai beat him, the results showed that he did not obtain enough ballots to form a government on his own, prompting a bloody runoff from which the MDC-T leader withdrew in protest.
Mugabe blamed ethnic and religious differences in other African countries for irregularities and violence during election and census times.
"There are countries even in Africa where censuses are impossible to conduct because of ethnic divisions in them, religious divisions in them and midway as the censuses are conducted, boxes start missing just as they go missing when they start voting.
‘‘People actually carry them away. But what for? We don't want that. We want honest, objective facts, the data that will help us," he said, referring to the census.
Tsvangirai also spoke at the launch and hoped that the census would be carried out in a manner that promoted legitimacy.
He alluded to recent interruptions of the training of census enumerators by the military, saying the population stocktaking process had always been a civilian preserve.
‘‘Conducting the national census has always been a civilian exercise and it is my sincere hope that we will have a legitimate census that will give us credible results to enable national visioning and planning,’’ said Tsvangirai.
Both Mugabe and Tsvangirai called for transparency and accuracy during the census.
Post published in: News