An aide of Zimbabwean presidential hopeful Simba Makoni has alleged that Israeli intelligence group Mossad has been hired by President Robert Mugabe to ensure he wins the upcoming election by hook or by crook.
Ibbo Mandaza, a senior member of Makoni’s campaign team, told the Mail & Guardian that the voters’ roll was manipulated in order to favour Zanu-PF and that the format of the voter’s roll was devised by Mossad on instructions from the Zimbabwean government.
It has also been alleged that Israeli intelligence has helped Zanu-PF make the voters’ roll inaccessible to the opposition, who had wanted to use it to conduct more focused campaigning.
Information technology expert Valentine Sinemane confirmed last night that the electronic version of the voters’ roll, sold to the opposition by the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission for US$2 400, was compiled by an Israeli company called Nirkuv Projects.
The roll was provided in the form of picture files of the actual voters’ roll rather than in an electronic format.
A Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) candidate initially asked Sinemane to convert the computer files on the CDs from images — photographs of the pages listing the voters in alphabetical order — to Excel files, in order to make analysis of the voters’ roll easier.
He was asked to do this for a single constituency, Harare North, which is traditionally an MDC stronghold.
More than 8 000 ghost voters were found when the addresses on the voters’ roll for this area were visited. Many of the addresses were found to be empty stands with no residential structures. Harare North is an affluent suburb adjacent to Hatcliffe, a poorer suburb.
Sinemane told the M&G that the process of converting the files would take a long time and they would therefore not be ready in time for Saturday’s election.
Mandaza claimed that Zanu-PF called on Mossad to help them because of the experience the intelligence agency has with elections. ”They have expertise in vote-rigging. Also Mossad is looking for any kind of support and alliances and therefore Zimbabwe is the obvious target.”
He said that the opposition has been aware that Mossad had been active in Zimbabwe over the past six months and that two weeks ago six Mossad agents had arrived in Harare and held top-secret meetings with government officials involved in state security.
This is the latest allegation of vote-rigging levelled against Mugabe’s government.
On Thursday, the MDC awaited the outcome of an urgent application asking the High Court to instruct the Zimbabwean election commission to provide more polling stations.
Questions were also asked about the printing of a total of nine million ballot papers for just more than six million registered voters.
The Zimbabwean Election Commission, made up largely of Zanu-PF sympathisers, has said that the printing of the extra ballot papers is a contingency measure to ensure that sufficient ballot papers are available to the voters.
”I don’t know about Mossad, but I will say this: if I have a job that someone else is an expert at, we will seek assistance from them and work with them, if they have the skills we need,” said George Chiweshe, the chairperson of the commission.