Zimbabwe: Registrar General Office

Updated April 2005

The Registrar General Office is a department of the Ministry of Home Affairs. In the past the Electoral Supervisory Commission (abolished in 2005) was responsible for supervising the elections, while the Registrar General Office executed the organisation and conduct of the elections.

One of the reasons for the establishment of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) was to remove the execution of the elections from the hands of civil servants and place it in the hands of a professional body independent of government control. This in turn would still the recurring accusations of partisanship and polls manipulation on the part of the Registrar General Office (Molokele 2005).

In the 2005 elections the Registrar General Office compiled the voters roll and supplied staff for the ZEC. Both of these activities drew fire from civil society actors. The ZESN found fault with the opaqueness of the process by which the rolls were compiled for the 2005 elections, for the late publication of the rolls made scrutiny difficult and the correction of errors impossible. They were also unhappy with the large numbers of errors (such as duplication of names) on the rolls (Kubatana.com 2005). Others have openly alleged that the Registrar General Office deliberately manipulated the roll to the advantage of ZANU PF (Legalbrief Africa 2005).

References

LEGALBRIEF AFRICA 2005, "Two certainties in the Zimbabwe elections", March 28, [www] http://www.legalbrief.co.za/article.php?story=20050328155524121 [opens new window] (accessed 30 Oct 2007).

MOLOKELE, D 2005, "An overview of the Zimbabwean electoral institutions", ZimOnline, February, [www] http://www.zimonline.co.za/opinionread.asp?ID=9405 (page off-line 30 Oct 2007).

ZIMBABWE ELECTORAL SUPPORT NETWORK 2005, "ZESN statement 2005 parliamentary elections", [www] http://www.kubatana.net/html/archive/elec/050403zesn.asp?sector=ELEC [opens new window] (accessed 30 Oct 2007).