Human Rights Archive Zimbabwe

Brief by the Chairperson of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission to Local and Foreign observers for the 2018 Harmonised Elections at Harare International Conference Centre (HICC) 13 July 2018.

This report outlines the purpose of elections, characteristics of Parliament, electoral system,transitory provisions, general political considerations and conduct of elections. It also showed the distribution of members of the house of assembly according to their professional category, distribution of seats in the senate, distribution of House of Assembly members according to sex and according to age group.

The 2005 Parliamentary elections represented an important improvement on the 2000 and 2002 elections in that the elections were performed in a peaceful environment without state-controlled violence. Despite this notable improvement from previous elections, the Parliamentary elections in Zimbabwe failed to meet some key internationally recognised election standards.

This is the first in the series of Special Reports issued by the Research Unit of the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum. It displaced the original proposal to deal with gender and constitutional issues. This change was necessitated by the wave of lawlessness which resulted in massive human rights abuses during most of 2000.

On March 29, 2008, Zimbabwe held presidential, parliamentary and local elections. Months later, the country’s political future remains uncertain. For the first time since independence, the ruling party has lost its majority in the National Assembly. After a month of rising tensions, the results of the presidential race were belatedly announced on May 2.

In this report for 2008,there are certain trends and characteristics which have been attendant on the incidents reported to the Human rights Forum which rebut the denial of ZANU PF that in most instances the violence that was reported was between over zealous youths and villagers.

This report provides a thorough analysis primarily of the technical aspects of the elections, complementing the observer reports that have been published by other organisations.

Zimbabwe held itsnationalelections on the 30th of July 2018. The electoral process was generally peaceful until the 1st of August 2018, when many demonstrators took to the streets of Harare demanding the immediate release of the election results. These events, particularly those that occurred within Harare’s Central Business District (CBD), resulted in the death of six (6) people, injury of thirty-five (35), and massive damage to properties.

This report contains the findings of the EU Election Observation Mission (EOM) on the Harmonised Elections 2018. The electoral commission lacked full independence and appeared to not always act in an impartial manner. The final results as announced by the Electoral Commission contained numerous errors and lacked adequate traceability, transparency and verifiability.

This is the first report by the consortium which covers the period 1 to 9 August 2018. A total of 199 violations were documented from 1 to 9 August 2018.

This briefing paper reviews the political and historical context of the Zimbabwean election with a view of determining the contribution of this past to the electoral outcomes. We hypothesize that the 2018 electoral outcome will be a function of its immediate past and the broader national historical context.

This report focuses on how Zimbabwe has an unenviable reputation for being the most politically violent country in Southern Africa, certainly since the civil wars ended in Angola and Mozambique, and the independence of Namibia and South Africa.

The harmonised elections set for 31 July 2013 remain perhaps the most significant yet contested polls in the history of Zimbabwe. Not only has the timing of the actual poll been uncertain, but the polls are also approaching at a time when the curtains are coming down on the embattled Inclusive Government (IG) that was akin to a love-hate relationship amongst the three main political parties represented in Parliament.

The Petitioners beseech the Parliament of Zimbabwe to consider and pass the relevant legislation that give life to tenets of the 2013 Constitution.

ZESN strongly believes that the pathway to the next election should be defined by a comprehensive electoral and political reforms process established and implemented by all key stakeholders.

Government needs to immediately align all electoral laws with the Constitution of Zimbabwe.

On 28 May 2018, another Electoral Amendment Act was passed and the 2018 Election date was announced thereafter. Consequently, as a result of the announcement of the Election day as 30 July 2018, any amendments to the Electoral Act that happen after the proclamation do not apply to the 2018 elections, but other future elections.

Following several requests by the Zimbabwe Election Support Network ZESN and other stakeholders for Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) to release data, on the numbers of voters registered disaggregated by province and gender, the ZEC published the Biometric Voter Registration BVR data on its website in March 2018.

The paper has guidelines on what constitutes free and fair elections.

The overarching objective of the report is to provide ZESN and interested stakeholders with ward based comprehensive scientific data on population dynamics for 2018.

As Zimbabwe readies itself for the new polling station based and biometric voter registration for the 2018 harmonised elections, it is imperative that efforts and resources are channelled towards ensuring that all eligible voters are registered so that they are able to vote come 2018.

A closer scrutiny of this Bill shows that it largely mirrors a law passed a week earlier, through the gazetting of Statutory Instrument (SI) 117/2017, on the 15th of September 2017, through the Presidential Powers (Temporary Measures) Act. The Bill is meant to eventually substitute the SI given that laws promulgated via the use of presidential powers do not have shelf life beyond six months.

The review is juxtaposing the content of the promulgated regulations against the draft regulations, in light of the submissions made to ZEC by ZESN. More specifically the review analyses the extent to which written recommendations made by ZESN have been incorporated into the promulgated regulations.

This policy brief intends to inform and advise on how to improve transparencyin electoral processes in particular the voter registration, voting and resultsmanagement processes. Transparency is a key principle for credible and democratic elections.

There are dislocations between the progressive Constitution of Zimbabwe (2013) and the laws that were crafted underthe Lancaster House Constitution, whichthe government of Zimbabwe is reluctant to repeal and replace with democratic legislation. This has perpetuated the restrictive environment within which the Zimbabwean media operates.

This paper contains a framework to guide lobby and advocacy efforts with parliamentarians, policy makers and other critical stakeholders such as ZEC.

The paper contains the definition of BVR, What BVR is not, Advantages and Risk of BVR as well as ZESN's position on BVR.