President Robert Mugabe 'raises the dead' to secure electoral victory in Zimbabwe

[Mugu]

Jan Raath in Harare

Zimbabwe has the highest proportion of elderly voters in the world, according to the voters' roll being used for elections next week. A glance at one page of the roll yesterday for a ward in the Mount Pleasant suburb of Harare turned up a Fodias Kunyepa, who was born in 1901. Over the page was Rebecca Armstrong, born 1900.

Somewhat younger was Desmond Lardner-Burke, born 1909, who was the notorious Minister for Justice in the rebel Rhodesian Government and responsible for the harassment, arrest and detention without trial of tens of thousands of black nationalists, including President Mugabe, fighting against white rule in the 1960s and 1970s.

Mr Lardner-Burke left the country soon after the demise of the illegally constituted Rhodesian state in 1980, and the establishment of Zimbabwe's independence. He died soon after, in South Africa. Mr Kunyepa and Mrs Armstrong are also long dead.

Opposition campaign workers say that the voters' roll is stuffed with the names of the dead, of non-existent people, of those with fake identity numbers and with names repeated numerous times in different constituencies, sometimes in the same ward.


Complete article at:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/africa/article3571706.ece

[otherlander]

1. meh.

It's been done before.

[rpannier]

2. Mugabe will do anything to stay in power

and the South African and Angolan governments are his enablers.

Although this story does bring a "Simpson Moment"

The dead are rising and they're voting for Mugabe.

(Bart Simpson: "The dead are rising and voting Republican")