Zimbabwe – Ready for Elections? 15 A further challenge arose in relation to those Zimbabweans who had previously been disenfranchised as a result of their parent/s being born outside Zimbabwe, which had caused them to have their Zimbabwean citizenship revoked – the derogatorily-called “aliens”. The new Constitution clarified citizenship issues and restored Zimbabwean nationality (and therefore the right to be included on the voters’ roll as a registered voter) to such individuals. Nevertheless, these Zimbabweans faced great obstacles when they attempted to restore their names to the voters’ roll. The current R-G is also the R-G of Citizenship,63He has a long track record of unilaterally denationalising numerous Zimbabwean citizens by birth, rendering them stateless and disenfranchising them in the process due to his erroneous interpretation of citizenship laws.64 He was at it again during the registration exercise, until the case of Mawere arose. The R-G refused to issue Mawere with identity documents to allow him to register as a voter using the excuse that he had lost his citizenship and should apply to the R-G before it could be restored.65The new Constitution allows for dual citizenship to those who are citizens by birth, as described above, but the R-G ignored this. The Constitutional Court had to order him to restore Mawere as a citizen; however it is not clear whether others in the same predicament as Mawere were as lucky when they attended registration centres. Once again, the R-G used the excuse of lack of adequate resources to justify the fact that he was unable to ensure 30 days of continuous voter registration and inspection in each and every ward of the country (Zimbabwe currently votes using a ward-based system) despite the large numbers of individuals who wished to register and inspect the roll. Instead, the mobile teams spent only a maximum of 3 days in each district, with some mobile centres being too far from some areas and therefore restricting the number of individuals who could benefit from the exercise and access the station.66 Occurrence of registration and inspection at the same time also proved costly. Problems of long queues and the limited number of days for voter registration in each ward proved to be a challenge. At the end of the 30-day period, it was clear that there were still many people who wished to register and had not been able to do so. The Constitution provides leeway for ZEC to extend the 30-day period, and in light of the critical importance of this national election, it would have been prudent to do so. A contributing factor to this disenfranchisement was the imposition of an election date deadline by the Constitutional Court in the Mawarire case, which interfered with the 63 He is also responsible for registering births, deaths and issuing passports. See the Births and Deaths Registration Act. 64 See ZLHR “Submissions to the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Defence and Home Affairs” available at http://www.zlhr.org.zw; Your link to citizenship. After submissions were made by ZLHR members to the Portfolio Committee a report was tabled before Parliament upholding ZLHR submissions. See Parliament of Zimbabwe “Fourth report of the Portfolio Committee on Defence and Home Affairs”, Second session sixth parliament presented to parliament on 13 June 2007; The concern of disenfranchising the citizens by birth was raised in Tsvangirai v Registrar of Citizenship High Court Harare case no. 29 of 2002 and other High Court and Supreme Court cases. 65 Mawere v Zimbabwe Electoral Commission and 3 Ors unreported Constitutional Court case 47/13; T Kamhungira “Mawere drags Mudede to constitutional court” Daily News (5 June 2013) p 2. 66 Nyashanu “Thousands denied vote, MDCs accuse CIO, RG’s office of being behind chaos” Newsday (10 July 2013) p1.