ZAPU Won the 2008 Elections

Published: May 15, 2011

By Mpumelelo Ndlovu

In the three decades since the Lancaster House talks brought universal suffrage to Zimbabwe-Rhodesia, voter turnout in national elections has plummetted from over 95% in 1980 to just about 43% in 2008.

A mammoth drop of about 52 percentage points; 55% to be exact. Judging by the 1980 statistic, Zimbabweans are passionate about voting.

Leading to the 1980 ballot, none of the former patrotic front parties had had the opportunity to do any meaningful voter education.

In fact, even the Lancaster House talks caught them by surprise because they had purposed to take the country through the barrel of the gun.

There had been no youths or green bombers sent to terrorise the villagers forcing them to go and vote. People spent several days in the queue of their own volution.

There were no chiefs bribed with cars or partisan village headmen with registers checking who has voted.

Still, they came in their numbers to the few polling stations which were about 20km apart.

Where, then did all this enthusiasm go? While the Gukurahundi and related activities of the early to mid 1980s saw voter turnout drop 10 percentage points in 1985, it was the bombshell of the 1987 Unity Accord which was the last straw.

Only 60% of registered voters bothered to vote in the 1990 elections. Since then, only the Zimbabwe dollar fell faster than the voter turnout.

In 2008, in a country of about 14million in habitants, there were only 5.9 million registered voters and of these, only 43% cast their votes.

Of the 43% (about 2.5 million) who voted, Tswangirai got 48%.

The monarch got 43%.What does all this statistics really mean? Tswangirayi got 48% of those who voted, who were only a mere 43% of the registered voters.

So only 20% of registered voters voted for Tswangirai. Only 20%!

Who has ever ruled a country with support from only 20% of the population? Zanu got 18%, the other MDC about 4.3% of registered voters.

Well, giving a 5% allowance to ghost voters on the voters’ roll we are still left with over 50% registered voters who have not voted since the ill-fated Unity Accord.

These are the voters who are not part to the current GNU, these are the people whose interests are not represented in the current Sadc mediated talks.

These are the people ZAPU represent. The current parties to the unending talks have long lost the mandate of the majority of Zimbabweans.

Come 2012 elections, ZAPU will restore Zimbabwe to the people of Zimbabwe.

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Source: Mpumelelo