Assisted Voter Tries to Assist Another Voter

By Kenneth Matimaire

Nyanga North – A high number of assisted voters was recorded in Nyanga North constituency in Manicaland province.

The most disturbing incident was recorded at Kambudzi Secondary School where an assisted voter is alleged to have tried to assist another voter.

“Things moved on well. It was peaceful, no violence or any acts of intimidation but I think we recorded one glaring incident involving an assisted voter. The person came and was assisted to vote by someone. After some time the same person came back trying to assist someone to vote and to us, it did not add up and we had to intervene,” said William Chingombe, a presiding officer at Kambudzi Secondary School.

At Rest Camp Tent polling station similar trends were recorded.

The presiding officer, Tendai Masoche said there were more than 37 assisted voters – a figure he described as worrying.

Masoche said some of the cases were genuine but 10 of them were questionable.

“We had 30 females and seven males who were assisted to vote. Most had poor eyesight and could not see well in the tent because of the poor lighting, others were illiterate while one was paralyzed. But about five to 10 of them were questionable. They claimed they could not read,” said Masoche.

He added that there were also other cases of electoral malpractices such as intimidation and dumping of campaign fliers within the polling area.

“We had several incidents here. Two were of intimidation, the first one involved the village Head and we enlisted the help of the police to warn him about interfering with voters. The other involved some youths who were intimidating voters. We also had fliers thrown within the polling station and police had to step in again,” he said.

He expressed gratitude to the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) officers for managing to move in swiftly to contain the cases of intimidation.

There was an average of 40 assisted voters out of the 65 polling stations in 13 Wards in Nyanga North.

Zanu PF won all the 13 Wards. The party’s parliamentary candidate, Chido Sanyatwe won the Nyanga North seat.