Zimbabwe's 2018 elections rigging: Zanu PF commissar Victor Matemadanda lets the cat out

Zimbabwe's 2018 elections rigging: Zanu PF commissar Victor Matemadanda lets the cat out of the bag.DEFENCE deputy minister and Zanu PF political commissar Victor Matemadanda inadvertently spilled the beans on vote-rigging when he lashed out at his party’s Midlands provincial leadership over poor performance at last year’s disputed elections,

 top MDC officials have said.Zanu PF garnered 23 parliamentary seats in Midlands in last year’s polls, while the opposition MDC got four — Mbizo, Gweru Urban, Chiwundura and Mkoba.Kwekwe Central was won by the National Patriotic Front party’s Blackman Masango Matambanadzo.President Emmerson Mnangagwa got 352 027 votes,

while MDC’s Nelson Chamisa amassed 257 960 votes in the presidential vote.However, on Saturday, Matemadanda seethed with anger while addressing the Midlands Zanu PF provincial co-ordinating committee meeting in Gweru, accusing party leaders of presiding over what he termed dismal performance in the last polls.He later threatened to dissolve the whole provincial executive led by Daniel Mackenzie Ncube, saying it was failing to grow the party’s membership base and roll out programmes to drum up support for Mnangagwa.

Yesterday, MDC deputy spokesperson Luke Tamborinyoka and national secretary for elections, Jacob Mafume, said Matemadanda’s rants had validated their position that last year’s polls were rigged.“Matemadanda’s comments vindicate our position that the last election was pilfered. Otherwise, why would he have said they performed dismally when they claim to have ‘won’ exactly the same seats in 2013.

Remember, this is the same party that claimed victory in 2008 before (the late former President Robert) Mugabe went public several years later to state (the late) president Morgan Tsvangirai won the elections by 73% of the vote,” Tamborinyoka said.Mafume said Matemadanda’s ranting showed that the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission results for Midlands were fake.“The performance of Zanu PF in Midlands (therefore) is fake. It is a result of rigging, terror and unmitigated chicanery …

Chamisa, overall, won the votes by 2,6 million votes,” he said.The MDC has since last year sustained its position that the 2018 elections were rigged and has refused to recognise Mnangagwa as the legitimate president of the country.Exiled former Zanu PF strategist Jonathan Moyo in his book Excelgate says Zanu PF rigged last year’s elections and Chamisa won the presidential elections by 2,6 million votes.Zanu PF has, however, rubbished reports that it stole the election.

MDC spokesperson Daniel Molokele said Matemadanda could have spoken subconsciously.“It looks like he knows the real results, not the fake ones which were announced. So he might have been speaking subconsciously about something which actually happened compared to what we were told happened.The real results are probably different (from those announced by Zec),” Molokele said.