Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe stunned the nation yesterday by using the Presidential Powers (Temporary Measures) Act to gazette amendments to the Electoral Act in the morning. And then he followed this up with a proclamation of election date in the afternoon, gazetting Zimbabwe’s Harmonised Election for 31 July 2013.

President Mugabe justified this action by claiming deference to the Constitutional Court ruling last month that ordered that Zimbabwe’s elections be held on or before 31 July of this year.

Zimbabwe’s Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai immediately issued a statement rejecting Mugabe’s unilateral setting of the election date, calling it unconstitutional.

Indeed, according to Zimbabwe legislation distribution and analysis service Veritas, Mugabe’s actions are problematic (read illegal and invalid) for a number of reasons:

1)      According to section 31H of Zimbabwe’s old constitution which is still in force, the President was required to act in consultation with Cabinet in proclaiming election dates. Given that yesterday’s actions took everyone by surprise, he clearly didn’t do so.

2)      The Presidential Powers (Temporary Measures) Act, states that regulations made under the act shall not cover things which the Constitution provides will be covered by an Act of Parliament – The new Constitution requires that the new provisions for the Electoral Law be passed by Parliament, and not made by regulation in terms of another Act (like the Presidential Powers Act).

3)      The Electoral Regulations and the election proclamation have now both been gazetted on 13 June. So both have the same publishing date, that is, they were published simultaneously according to how government dates Statutory Instrument (section 20 of the Interpretation Act). If they were published simultaneously, the regulations “cannot be said to have had effect before the election was called. Hence, under section 157(5) of the new constitution, they must be disregarded.”

So, it would appear that the 31 July election proclamation is both unconstitutional and illegal. The trouble, of course, is how to enforce the law in a country whose President so flagrantly disregards it. This just makes things doubly worrying, however. As Marko Phiri pointed out yesterday, “if Mugabe can unilaterally call for polls despite Tsvangirai’s own earlier declaration that he holds the keys to elections, what is to stop him (Mugabe) from declaring himself a winner in the elections, or as he did in 2008 refuse to accept defeat.”

Zimbabwe is currently undergoing a 30-day mobile voter registration exercise, in preparation for elections to be held later this year.

We’ve taken the schedule of dates and locations for the mobile voter registration exercise and put them onto a map to make it easier for Zimbabweans to know where to register to vote.

You can pan and zoom on the map to get to your area, then click on it to pull up the list of where and when the mobile voter registration teams will be in your area. If there will be more than one location in your ward, the teams will be at the first location on the list on the first dates listed, the second location on the second dates, etc.

This still picture of the map below gives you a teaser. To make use of it, view it full screen.

View map full screen

To find out more about voter registration, visit the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission website

If your area is not on the map or there are no centres listed for your ward let us know. Also, we want to hear about your voter registration experience! Have you already registered to vote? Have you gone to a registration centre this month? Email info [at] kubatana [dot] net and let us know.

The Herald today announced that ward-based mobile voter registration in Zimbabwe will begin on Monday, and end 9 July. The new Constitution requires a 30-day voter registration exercise before new elections, so this is an essential part of Zimbabwe toward elections. At the mobile centres, there will also be an opportunity for people to get IDs and birth certificates.

According to The Herald, The Registrar General has said four teams are to cover all wards in a given district. If this is the case, if a district has, say, 20 wards, a team would spend 6 days in that ward. But a district like Harare has 45 wards – that means only 2 ½ days per ward – which, if the previous mobile voter registration exercise is anything to go by, is nowhere near enough time.

The Zimbabwe Election Support Network’s report on the May mobile voter registration exercise recommended that for voter registration, ”adequate time must be allocated to each centre in proportion to the population density in the community.” It’s not clear how sending four teams to cover all wards in any given district accomplishes that.

As SW Radio Africa reports, however, the publicity around this exercise has yet to begin – and even basic information like where one should go for their ward, and on what days, has yet to be shared with the public.

Also worrying is the basic fact that, as David Coltart helpfully explains, if mobile voter registration ends on 9 July, elections cannot be legally held before 31 July. It works like this:

• According to the Electoral Act, you need at least 28 days between nomination court (when all the candidates get vetted and approved) and elections
• You can’t have nomination court before the voters roll for that election is finalised, because a) a candidate has to be on the voters roll and b) the people who nominate him/her have to be on the voters roll

Presumably it might also take a day or two to close up the voter registration exercise and get the voters roll out for each relevant ward and constituency for nomination court? But even if it doesn’t, 28 days from 10 July puts us at 7 August. So one way or the other, Zimbabwe’s elections will violate a court order, violate Zimbabwe’s Constitution, or violate the Electoral Act. Promising start. I’m no lawyer. But surely out of those three options, the court order is the one with the least sway? Personally, I think we should drop the ridiculous “elections by 31 July frenzy,” and rather look to hold legal, Constitutional and properly prepared for elections on a date that makes sense and follows the law.

I’ve just made some tea at the office. You know how it goes: open tap, fill kettle, boil kettle, pour water into teapot.

Except, with Harare water in crisis like it is across Zimbabwe, it usually isn’t that simple. Sometimes it’s open tap, find nothing coming out, close tap, grab jug. Sometimes it’s switch on pump, open tap, fill kettle, switch off pump. Incredibly, today, it’s open tap, fill kettle. I should have known it wouldn’t actually be that simple in reality.

But I’m standing there in the kitchen with the boiled kettle, and something does not smell right. If I’m honest, it smells like someone has left their poo in the rubbish bag by the window. But who wants to think that?! So I think maybe it’s the toilets at the service station over the road? Maybe it’s a rotting banana peel in the rubbish (I do loathe bananas)? It takes my colleague to point out: It’s the water.

I sniff, recoil, and sniff again. She’s right. The cup, the teapot, even the kettle now all smell like feces. Open the tap, fill another cup of water? A brown liquid in the glass, and an even stronger feces smell.

I suppose we should be grateful, right – Our office block most often doesn’t have tap water at all. But personally? I’d rather have nothing flowing from my taps than this sewage smell pervading everywhere.

The manager of our office block tells me it started around 10am – when City of Harare water finally came back to the taps. Apparently, the smell is a big infusion of chemicals, not the opposite, and it will just take a bit of time to work it’s way through the system. But since news reports suggests water chemicals in Harare are scarce,  it’s hard not to be suspicious. They’re working on it, he tells me – It was even worse earlier in the day. Again, this implicit: “You should be grateful.”

But I don’t want to feel grateful that my office smells like sewage. I want to be able to open the tap, make a decent cup of tea, wash up afterwards, and not feel nauseated in the process.

Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition Public Meeting

Topic: The Constitutional Court judgement, an era of new Constitution and the SADC special summit on Zimbabwe. What are the implications for holding a peaceful free and fair election in Zimbabwe?

Date: 5 June 2013
Time: 5:30pm – 8pm
Venue: Crowne Plaza Hotel, Harare

Speakers:

• Virginia Muwanigwa – Women’s Coalition
• Douglas Mwonzora – MDC-T
• Nhlanhla Dube – MDC N
• Paul Mangwana – Zanu PF
• Trust Maanda – Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR)
• Pedzisai Ruhanya – Zimbabwe Democracy Institute (ZDI)

Hosts:

• Oslie Matsikenyeri – Former Miss Zimbabwe
• Nixon Nyikadzino – Programs Manager, Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition

Free – Anyone can attend. The police have been notified of this event.

Visit the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition fact sheet