The Sunday News
We republish excerpts of the committee stage debate on the Electoral Amendment Bill that took place on May 18, 2023, where opposition legislators Mr Charlton Hwende and Mr Allan Norman “Rusty” Markham pleaded with Minister Ziyambi to transfer voter registration responsibilities to the RG’s Office.
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Source: National Assembly Hansard
(May 18, 2023)
Hon Hwende: . . . what we are suggesting, Mr chairman, is that we must have a mandatory electronic voter register that is kept by ZEC and also by the Registrar-General.
I think if we word it properly, most progressive nations these days, when you register for your ID (card), the whole registration is done by the Registrar (General).
They have all the details.
There is nothing that stops us from automatically uploading the same information on the voters’ roll that is kept by ZEC.
We want to introduce a new role for the Registrar-General so that there is automatic upload of the data and also that they keep an electronic biometric voters’ roll.
That is what we are seeking to amend.
Hon Markham: Just to buttress what has been said. There are two things: We have the Registrar-General going round the country and has registered more than 1,8 million people and documented.
If this was adopted, those documented people would already be on the voter registration.
If the Registrar-General was automatically registering people to vote, which is their right, it will have been done already biometrically . . . We now have to spend resources to go and do the same job to put them on the voter register.
Hon Ziyambi: This is not a bad amendment, but it is historical. I want to give a background to this. There was so much mistrust in the person of (Tobaiwa) Mudede to the extent that people from the other side said we do not want anything to do with him and because of the compromise, we then said okay, let us have ZEC being the registrar of voters, but technically, it is costing this country a damn lot of money because the system that is at the Registrar-General is biometric. It can do exactly what ZEC is doing.
Over and above that, ZEC currently cannot function without the Registrar-General. If they want to update their voters’ roll to remove those that are deceased, they have to go and clean their system through the Registrar-General’s Office. If they want to know who is now 18, they have to go through that system. In fact, we created this because of our mistrust yamudhara and we threw away the baby with the bath water.
So, my suggestion is, it is not put under the commission and the Registrar-General; in fact, we can park this and continue with it because we need to refine it and get further instructions.
There is no need for the commission to do voter registration. It is actually better to have the separation. The registrar of voters, being the Registrar-General, makes sense, but let us park it.
What even Hon Markham was saying makes sense. When the Registrar-General was going, it was biometric registration and he could have easily said okay, do you want to be registered as a voter and the person will say yes, and he is registered.
Hon Markham: We are in total agreement. When it comes to registration, the address that you were given is the address that you were currently residing at. From then, your transfer relies on you but the automatic initial registration at the age of 18 is done automatically. If you move to Bulawayo and you do not register, that is your fault.
