The expense of Saturday’s election in Zimbabwe will be enormous, although quantifying exact costs in a country destabilised by hyperinflation and black-market rates is difficult.
Administering the election
The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission claims that it will spend US$5,75-million on salaries for officials who will man about 11Â 000 polling stations.
Each voter will need at least four ballot papers, one each for presidential, House of Assembly, Senate and local government elections. The bill for printing these ballot papers, the purchase of the ballot boxes and transporting them will be footed by overburdened taxpayers in a country where only one in five is employed and the average person survives on less than one US dollar a day.
Buying votes
Allegations of vote-buying, particularly by Zanu-PF, are widespread. The largest expense is “Phase Three of the Agricultural Mechanisation Programme”.
Under it, Mugabe has handed out 300 buses, 3Â 120 bulls and heifers, 500 tractors, 20 combine harvesters, 460 ploughs, 33Â 000 scotch carts, 26Â 200 cultivators, 1Â 000 planters, 50Â 000 ploughs and 60Â 000 harrows. Other freebies include 3Â 000 grinding mills, 5Â 000 generators, 680 motorcycles, 100Â 000 litres of biodiesel and 47Â 000 knapsacks. Some estimates put the cost of the machinery alone at US$25-million.
The cost of these handouts comes on top of the billions of Zimbabwe dollars being spent on massive pre-election pay hikes for the armed forces and civil servants.
The opposition
Mugabe’s rivals have their giveaways too. Each of the major candidates has handed out an average of 50Â 000 T-shirts, says Gordon Moyo, executive director of Bulawayo Agenda, which has organised election events for all the presidential contenders.
Moyo said the candidates have deployed an average of 200 paid campaign workers in every constituency at a daily salary of Z$60-million. With 210 constituencies, this would mean their wages are gobbling up at least Z$1,3-trillion a day. The current official exchange rate is Z$30Â 000 to one US dollar, but the black-market rate is 60-million:1.
Advertising
A full-page advert in the Herald costs about Z$15,6-billion, while the Chronicle charges Z$14,7-billion. The Sunday Mail is the most expensive at Z$19,6-billion, while other weekly papers charge about Z$11-billion. Zanu-PF runs, on average, three adverts a day in the Herald and the Chronicle.
Party funding
Political parties represented in Parliament received a total of Z$15-trillion under the Political Finance Act. The money was divided between Zanu-PF and the MDC’s two factions, under Morgan Tsvangirai and Arthur Mutambara.
Zanu-PF, which has a two-thirds majority in Parliament, got the lion’s share, with Z$9-trillion. The Mutambara faction, with 31 legislators in the lower and upper Houses, was allocated Z$3,3-trillion while the Tsvangirai faction received $2,7-trillion. But with annual inflation of more than 100Â 000%, Z$15-trillion is hardly enough to finance the campaign of a single party.
Estimates put the cost of T-shirts alone at about Z$20-trillion, more than the total allocation for the three parties.