Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum Report — Of Stuffed ballots and Empty Stomachs in the constituency during the March poll as election officials were able to record specific wards and villages where the ruling party lost to the MDC and supplied the statistics to Ncube. The MDC said it had reported Ncube’s alleged threats to starve the opposition party's supporters to the police. The Zimbabwe Peace Project102 has also reported that ZANU(PF) councillors in Mberengwa have allegedly stepped up retribution and victimisation campaigns against the MDC using food distribution programmes. Committees headed by coordinators and set up by local councillors a week before the March 31st elections have organised the distribution of maize which reports say, is discriminatory in nature. It is said villagers who refused to “register” to vote for the ruling party before the elections were being denied access to maize. Conclusion Although many of these reports do not come from non-partisan sources, the allegations of violence and denial of food aid are remarkably consistent with the reports of threats made prior to the elections, outlined earlier in this report. This consistency lends credibility to all allegations of this nature made prior to, and after, the elections. It also supports the hypothesis advanced in this report that ZANU(PF) won the election in a manner which was neither free nor fair, not due to stuffed ballot boxes, but by creating a captive electorate dependent upon the favours of the ruling party and one which was starved of information, free choice and food. 102 ZPP Report 13 April 2005 41