Senior cop admits 2008 rigging, violence

The nation-wide bloody reign of terror unleashed against MDC
supporters after that party's March 2008 electoral victory was conducted by
senior police officers because junior officers could no longer be trusted to
support the defeated Zanu (PF) leader Robert Mugabe, according to leaked
police documents.

The mainstream MDC and its leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, had overturned Zanu
(PF)'s 28-year-old parliamentary stranglehold at the polls and given Mugabe
his first ever personal electoral defeat.
Documents in our possession, backed by statements from reliable sources
within the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP), indicate that Police
Commissioner, Augustine Chihuri, chose senior police officers, ranking
superintendent and above, to lead the gory retribution operation because so
many officers in the lower ranks had begun to support the MDC.
Although it could not be ascertained how much they were given for taking
part in the bloody campaign, the senior officers are said to have earned a
lot of money and been rewarded with subsequent promotion.
During the reign of terror, between 200 and 500 MDC supporters were murdered
in cold blood, while some were left with horrific injuries and thousands of
others were displaced during the bloody "Operation Mavhotera Papi? (Who did
you vote for?)" which also involved war veterans, soldiers and Mugabe's
youth militia.

New Mazdas
Junior officers also revealed that superintendents and trusted inspectors,
especially war veterans, were given brand new Mazda B1800 and Mitsubishi
pick-up vehicles without registration numbers, which they used on their
terror campaigns.
"They went about threatening people with war if they continued to vote
Tsvangirai, saying that they would not stand and watch while this country
was given back to the whites," said another police officer. "Some even went
to the extent of abducting people and torturing people who were deemed to be
MDC supporters."
The junior officers said that the superintendents were taken to provinces
where they were not known, so that they would not be easily identified by
members of the public, while PISI details were always at hand to record all
the campaigns and note them down, after which they would transmit their
records to Chihuri.

Shifting loyalties
Chihuri is said to have accused junior officers of having connived with
members of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) to engineer Mugabe's
defeat, as they had allegedly shifted their allegiance from Zanu (PF) to the
MDC.
"We were accused of being sell-outs who were determined to see Mugabe being
toppled by Tsvangirai, whom the superiors said was an agent of the West,"
said a Bulawayo-based Assistant Inspector, who cannot be named.
"They even supervised our postal ballots because they knew that most of the
junior officers would vote Tsvangirai, as had happened in the earlier round
of voting. Several junior officers were either dismissed or frustrated into
leaving their jobs, after they were followed by members of the PISI (Police
Internal Security Intelligence) everywhere they went and everyone they spoke
to was scrutinised."
The junior officers said that Chihuri wrote several signals to all police
officers in Zimbabwe, in which he accused junior officers of having
"watched" while elections were being "rigged" in favour of the MDC and
Tsvangirai. One of the signals in our possession was written by Faustino
Mazango, the then Chief Staff Officer (Operations).

Irregularities
Written on May 2, 2008, when he was still a Senior Assistant Commissioner,
Mazango (now Commissioner responsible for Human Resources), claimed that the
widely-recognised March 29, 2008 elections were "fraught with irregularities
and discrepancies that occurred right in the presence of our police officers
who were deployed at all polling stations throughout the country."
In the signal, titled, "Security of voting process" and whose reference
number is 326/1/1, Mazango gives an indication that the ZRP was under fire
from Zanu (PF) authorities, who blamed its officers for the party's and
Mugabe's electoral embarrassment.
Mazango, who signed the signal in his capacity as the ZRP's Commander for
Harmonised Elections, addressed the signal to Chihuri and copied it to all
police provincial, district and station commanders.
This was after Chihuri and other members of the Joint Operations Command
(JOC) - comprising commanders of the army, police, air force and the
much-despised Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) - had demanded an
explanation of what had gone wrong during the elections and a strategy that
would resuscitate Mugabe's then failing political life.

Police blamed
"This poor record in the history of Zimbabwean elections has been blamed on
the police who were docile and unpalatably passive throughout the whole
voting process," said Mazango in the 10-page signal, also identified as
Circular number 17/2008.
"It is hereby directed that for the forthcoming run-off elections, ZRP shall
have a tacit responsibility to monitor as well as take charge of the whole
voting process at every stage."
Mazango said that in the run-off, the police would, among other things, take
over the responsibility of checking prospective voters' names against the
voter's role and assisting those who could not vote on their own.
"The discrepancies and irregularities that consist of serious electoral
fraud as well as silly errors could have been avoided had deployed police
officers taken a keen interest in their job and properly followed the
proceedings at their respective polling stations," said the senior police
officer, who is also one of Chihuri's close confidants.

ZEC rigging
Mazango also blamed Mugabe's defeat and what he termed police's "flaccid and
resigned approach to the voting process" on lack of training for police
officers and their willingness to allow ZEC officials to rig elections.
He also went on to give some statistics of alleged vote rigging, deflation
and inflation of results in a bid to rob Mugabe of victory. He claimed that
at some polling stations, unregistered people were allowed to vote, while
some of those registered, including police officers, were turned away.
"It was also exposed during the recounting exercise that some unregistered
persons were allowed to vote in the harmonized elections," said Mazango. "In
one such alarming case of electoral fraud, a police officer at a polling
station in Bikita South Constituency connived with the presiding officer and
allowed nine (9) unregistered persons to vote. The two officers were
subsequently arrested and charged with electoral fraud."

Living hell
Last month we published a story detailing how junior ZRP members were
subjected to a "living hell" by their commanders in the run-up to the sham
June 27, 2008 presidential election run-off.
Their freedom of movement was curtailed, leave and time-off cancelled, their
visitors barred from camps, while they were threatened with either dismissal
from their jobs or firing squads if Mugabe lost to Tsvangirai again in what
would have been the decisive presidential poll.
They also revealed that they were hauled to Zanu (PF) campaign meetings,
presented as "Police Projects" and harangued by their superiors, who would
denounce the MDC and order the officers and their dependents to vote Mugabe
back into power.

MUGABE HAS TO GO