The Zimbabweans who voted in Mozambique’s election

A peek into the brazen cross-border voter fraud that helped Frelimo to another
controversial electoral victory

By Walter Marwizi and Garikai Mafirakureva

Working as journalists in Masvingo province, south eastern region of Zimbabwe
that borders Mozambique, in early 2024, we heard rumours that our country’s
ruling party Zanu-PF was registering supporters to fraudulently vote in the
October Mozambican presidential elections.
We were sceptical. The idea that one country’s ruling party could be signing
people up in broad daylight to meddle in a neighbour’s election seemed too
outlandish. But, by April 2024, we had heard too many stories to ignore the
possibility.
One morning in April a Zanu-PF supporter – and one of our trusted sources –
showed up at the Masvingo Mirror’s offices and tipped one of us, Garikai, off to a
voter registration station in nearby Nemanwa. That afternoon Garikai and a
team of three from the newsroom went to the scene – Masvingo Rural District
Council offices – and saw a queue of hundreds. The next morning they joined
the queue, had their fingerprints and photos taken and each of them left with a
glossy, newly printed Mozambican voter identification card.
On a separate occasion in April, Walter, an editor of a Zimbabwean fact checking
platform, ZimTracker, also went to Nemanwa to register. A lady at the gate
asked for his name, address and phone number and told him that he would be
invited to Zanu-PF party meetings where he would be told what to do in order to
“help Frelimo win the election”. Inside, his fingerprints and photograph were
taken, and he too left with a newly printed Mozambican voter ID card.
On Mozambique’s voting day, 9 October 2024, two of the Zimbabwean
journalists who had registered actually managed to vote. They wanted to double
check that it was possible to, using those voter IDs.
At a polling station in the Roger Howman Training Centre, Masvingo, a Zanu-PF
activist threw stones at the two journalists after noticing that they were filming.
But later that afternoon in Nemanwa, the same place they had registered to vote
in April, they went in, one after the other, and voted. It was all over in less than
half an hour.

We have since interviewed twenty other Zimbabweans who fraudulently
registered, and in some cases voted too, in Mozambique’s election.
Old buddies, new party tricks
The alliance between Zanu-PF and Mozambique’s ruling party Frelimo is one of
the strongest political pacts in Africa. It dates back to the days of the liberation
struggles in both countries. As the October 2024 election loomed, Frelimo felt
threatened by the growth of opposition parties like RENAMO and PODEMOS. It
appears to have leaned into the old pact for support.
Months before the election, Daniel Chapo, Frelimo’s candidate (now Mozambican
president) travelled to Harare and met President Emmerson Mnangagwa and top
Zanu-PF officials .“We know Zanu-PF is experienced in terms of elections. We
want that campaign spirit in Mozambique,” Chapo said during the June 2024
visit.
But, as our reporting shows, Zanu-PF’s electoral support to Frelimo had been
going on for months prior and it went well beyond transferring the “campaign
spirit” to Mozambique.
In July, Mozambique’s electoral body announced that it had approved 60 polling
stations in Zimbabwe – as part of 602 foreign polling stations in nine countries
with significant Mozambican diasporas. “This presented us an opportunity,” said
a senior Zanu-PF official who spoke to us on condition of anonymity “The
challenge was to attract as many people to register (as possible),” the official
added.

Come one, come all

The testimonies of the twenty registered Zimbabwean we spoke to confirm that
the party undertook a coordinated campaign to mobilise the voters, some of
whom only registered out of loyalty to Zanu-PF.
“I joined those who voted because I saw it as a chance to prove that I’m a loyal
cadre and to try and save my house,” said GZ. He lives in a former mining
compound from which he can be evicted at the whims of Zimbabwe's
government. Another person, SZ, said he heard about the registration drive
through party channels and participated because he believed it was his duty to
serve the party again.
SZ said he also voted in the 2019 Mozambican election and therefore saw last
year’s mobilisation drive as routine. He was not the only one to say this.
GM, another repeat voter, said that after the 2019 Mozambican election, Frelimo
organised trips for its Zimbabwean supporters to shop in Chimoio, a major

market for second-hand clothing in Mozambique. “The trip was profitable. We
brought back second-hand clothing for resale. I hoped this time we could go
again,” GM said.
The expectation of trade opportunities were another recurring rationale that
Zimbabweans gave for participating in the fraudulent registrations.
EM, a 28-year-old who works in Mutare’s banana plantations, had long dreamed
of becoming a cross-border trader but the steep price of a Zimbabwean passport
had kept them from that dream. When she heard that one could get a
Mozambican identity card in exchange for voting for Frelimo, she jumped at the
opportunity.
“They took my fingerprints and photo and I waited briefly before I got a
Mozambican card,” they said. The card said that she was born in Manica,
Mozambique. EM did not mind that it was not true because now she could travel
freely to Mozambique.
LK told us that they had never been to Mozambique, but also registered due to
the promise of free passage to Mozambique to buy goods for resale back in
Zimbabwe. So she just voted, she said, hoping that she would be able to
become a vendor.
“I’m not Mozambican, and I was not doing it to help Mozambique. I know that
Mozambique, especially Frelimo, helped Zimbabwe during the liberation struggle,
but that’s not why I voted,” she said.
Similarly, SN was thrilled at the prospect that her voter ID card would give free
passage to buy goods in Mozambique.
In contrast, DM , whose mother is Mozambican, felt he had some right to vote
and was being helpful. “When my colleagues in Zanu PF approached me to
participate in the Mozambican elections, I felt it was a chance to help my
mother’s country. I didn’t expect anything in return,” he said.
Stories like DM’s are what Zanu-PFhas used to justify the registration drive –
when they have acknowledged it at all. When the Masvingo Mirror first reported
about Zimbabweans voting in the Mozambique election late last year, local Zanu-
PF spokesperson Chris Mutsvangwa said that those people were in fact dual
citizens of both Mozambique and Zimbabwe, who had been given an opportunity
to exercise their political rights.
He now says the matter is moot anyway.
“The Mozambican election is over. President Chapo is now recognized by the
international community. Recently President Trump even gave him $4.5 billion.
So, it won’t matter now whether they had dual citizenship or not. Why do you

always look in the rear view mirror? Try to look in front of you,” Mutsvangwa
angrily told us last month before dropping the phone call.
Farai Marapira, who heads Zanu-PF communications at national level refuted the
fraudulent voter scheme saying that lower cadres like Mutsvangwa whom we
spoke to must have misunderstood our questions.
Frelimo spokesperson, Pedro Guileche dismissed these reports as “truly fake” adding that:
“Frelimo still has the wider range of Mozambican people voting and supporting our party and
consequently our President Daniel Chapo, from Rovuma to Maputo.”
While our reporting provided rare proof of the fraud, allegations have long been
rife that the 2024 Mozambican election was rigged. The heavily contested result
triggered three months of nationwide demonstrations by opposition supporters in
which the security forces killed at least 300 people and injured ten times more
according to local activists.
Negotiations to move the country forward are picking up pace. President Chapo
met his main challenger, Venancio Mondlane who insists he was the legitimate
victor in the election, for the second time this week. Our reporting shows that
the breadth of actions that contributed to the country’s rapture extends beyond
the borders of Mozambique.

This investigation was produced by the SA | AJP, a project of the Henry Nxumalo
Foundation funded by the European Union. The article does not necessarily reflect the views
of the European Union. It first appeared in The Continent.