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Full Report
The Zimbabwean Voters' Roll as at October 2010
This Report on the Zimbabwean voters’ roll as at October 2010 is based on the work of
many dedicated Zimbabweans over many years, who have laboured mightily over the
voters' roll in trying to acquire it, turning it into readily usable form, and then analysing
it. I would like to register my debt to all of them.
Given past history, it will be understood that it was not easy to acquire a copy of the
current roll. All I would wish to say is that this was indeed achieved, and I am deeply
grateful to those who made it possible. However, for the usual Zimbabwean reasons, I am
unable to name the people involved without jeopardising their security.
The roll acquired was in digital ASCII (and thus computer-readable) format. It could thus
be loaded into a database which also includes all the fruits of previous attempts to
ascertain the truth about the voters' roll. The full details of the database are given in
Appendix 1.
Comparing the voters’ roll as of October 2010 with the roll used in the 2008 harmonised
elections, we find that in 2010 there are 366,550 new voters who have not appeared on
any previous roll.
This is extremely surprising considering that the overall population of Zimbabwe has
been falling due both to a very high mortality rate and large-scale emigration. It might
have been expected, nonetheless, that there would be some new voters in the youngest
age group of roughly 18 to 25.
There is also a very unlikely total of 49,239 new voters over the age of 50 – and this
when average life expectancy in Zimbabwe has fallen to 44.8 years. Even more
surprising is the fact that 16,033 of these new voters are over the age of 70 years, while
1,488 of them are over the age of 100. The complete list of this 100-plus age group of
new voters is appended. 1
Then again, a number of these new voters have no valid address, despite the stipulation
requiring this. In the Gwanda Central constituency alone, there are three people without
a valid address, for example.
The age distribution of new voters is shown on the following table:
1
For new voters over 100 years old on the voters’ roll in October 2010, see Appendix 2.
3