By Nobleman Runyanga
Last week former Sunday Mail editor, Edmund Kudzayi notified Zimbabweans and other interested parties that he would post on his twitter micro blogging site information which would expose President Emmerson Mnangagwa and the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) Chairperson, Justice Priscilla Chigumba’s alleged involvement in unnamed criminal activities.
Damp squib
When he released the information by way of a video on the morrow many people were disappointed. The mere mention of President Mnangagwa and Justice Chigumba had seen many social media users already locating the matter in 2018 elections but what they were grossly disappointed when they discovered that the hype which preceded the release was not in proportion with the content of the video, which was entitled: “Excelgate: How Mnangagwa, ZEC chairperson Priscilla Chigumba Stole The 2018 Presidential Election.” One viewer of the video praised Kudzayi for the professional editing of the production but was not equally charitable in his judgement of the substance of the video.
Instead of adducing irrefutable evidence to support his claims of alleged poll theft on the part of President Mnangagwa and JusticeChigumba, Kudzayi spent time finding fault with the police and the army alleging that they were anticipating political violence as if he knows anything how the country’s law enforcement agents and security apparatus operates.
This was an election, an emotive matter, and anyone who knows the MDC would tell you that due to lack of sound strategy and tact that party defaults to violence as a way of fighting any matter that its members do not agree with. The MDC’s poor showing was expected given Chamisa’s jocular campaign addresses which lacked substance. Kudzayi complained as if the Police and the Army were planning anything illegal when they were planning how to ensure peace and order in Harare, one of the most politically volatile areas given the MDC’s dominance in the country’s capital. Kudzayi went on to shamelessly claim that the army and police’s proactive planning was indicative of a known plan to rig elections. Again no evidence was brought forward to support this sensational claim.
Building a case on a neighbour’s hearsay
Perhaps the most absurd part of Kudzayi’s effort is his dependence on the European Union (EU) Observer mission’s unsubstantiated claim that it had observed that at 10 out of the 52 polling stations it had observed ZEC V11 forms were not posted publicly and that in Makoni North it had allegedly come across some ZEC staff members still filling V11 forms two days later citing stationery shortages.
Without verifying the observer mission’s claims Kudzayi just used its information which could not be confirmed by anyone. It is interesting that it is not the MDC, a very interested party in the matter, which is raising the alleged anomaly. In such a high stakes election, one expects the MDC to have its own people on the ground and be the one to raise the flag in the event of any anomaly.
Put differently, the MDC was happy with the way the poll progressed in Makoni North constituency but the EU observer mission and Kudzayi were not. Very interesting. Kudzayi attempted to build a case against ZEC using borrowed evidence.
The shaky main charges
Kudzayi attempted to build his pathetic video on the basis of part of President Mnangagwa’s affidavit in the election petition brought before the Constitutional Court by the MDC leader, Nelson Chamisa in August 2018 and Justice Chigumba’s alleged statement that her 20 plus staff went through 10 985 V11 forms which they input into an Excel spreadsheet. The former editor contended that the President had indicated that a ZEC server had been tampered with and results amended.
He sought to connect this, with Justice Chigumba’s statement that her staff were working on V11 forms to give the impression that ZEC abandoned its server and resorted to a manually-fed Excel spreadsheet to rig elections. He sought to lay against Justice Chugumba charges of contravening some provisions of the Electoral Act which stipulate that all V11 forms should be bundled together at ward command centre with other election materials to form poll residue which she should have no access to.
Kudzayi went to some very considerable length gathering copies of correspondence including letters between the then Minister of Home Affairs and Cultural Heritage, Obert Mpofu and the then Vice President, Retired General Constantino Chiwenga proving the effort and resources he invested into this enterprise but he failed to bring before his camera any person who was willing to attest to the existence of the Excel spreadsheet.
Kudzayi embarrassed himself by claiming that, “it is clear based on electoral process as outlined in the Electoral Act that the V11s that ZEC purported to verify at its National Command Centre were bogus as all V11s were sealed into election residue at the Ward collation Centre” when he did not provide any evidence of the existence of the forms. In other words Justice Chigumba could be said to be guilty of the charges laid against her if Kudzayi proved that indeed ZEC staff were working on V11 forms, which he did not do.
The President could have mentioned a hacked ZEC server but he is not the ZEC accounting officer and cannot be pinned for and accused of rigging elections. It is surprising that it is not the MDC which is the most affected by the result of the 30 July 2018 election which is raising these issues. Despite putting up a show claiming non-legitimacy on the part of President Mnangagwa, the MDC knows that it was beaten fair and square. This is the reason why it has never revisited its poll petition given its embarrassment when it failed to produce its own V11 forms despite Chamisa claiming on twitter that he had them all in the bag when he was aware that he had not paid his polling agents, who withheld these upon payment.
Another Jonono project gone awry
Those who are familiar with ZANU PF succession politics would note the striking similarities between Kudzayi’s poor attempt at tarnishing the President’s name with his handler, the disgraced, expelled and self-exiled former Politburo member, Professor Jonathan Moyo and the latter’s shenanigans of bringing to the Politburo all manner of audio visual materials to convince former President, Robert Mugabe that the then Vice President, President Mnangagwa should be expelled from the party for allegedly promoting factionalism in party.
We all know that Prof Moyo, who is also informally known as Jonono, was not doing this for the party but for his ambitious self. Prof Moyo has not changed much. Does it come as a surprise that Kudzayi’s project came at a time that the G40 elements are trying to revive their fortunes through another disgraced former ZANU PF Politburo member, Saviour Kasukuwere who they are pitching to replace President Mnangagwa come 2023.
Fortunately not all people are stupid. The majority saw through the trick and told Kudzayi in his face that his video was trash and his mission a failure. He had no choice except to pull it down from YouTube embarrassedly claiming a “significant error in the V11 sequence.”
Whatever the excuse means, one thing is clear: Prof Moyo and Kudzayi’s attempt to embarrass the President achieved the opposite effect. They exposed themselves big time.
