Generally, Heal Zimbabwe noted that the BVR process was characterised by gross human rights violations that range from forced submission of serial numbers of voter registration slips, assault, threats of denial of food aid, forced attendance to political meetings, writing down of people’s personal information etc. Two notable categories of perpetrators of these human rights were Traditional leaders (mostly Village heads) and ZANU PF structures. The prevalence of such violations greatly runs against the grain of Part 8 of the Electoral Act on Offences in Registration of Voters that criminalises acts of intimidation during voter registration. Between 10 October 2017 to 08 February 2018 when the mop up exercise came to an end, Heal Zimbabwe recorded a total of 5 707 cases of BVR related violations countrywide. 2

Select target paragraph3