Robert Mugabe once threatened that he would rule Zimbabwe ‘from beyond the grave’. Well, it looks like some of his supporters have started without him!

I am 46 years of age - and in Zimbabwe I would be an old man - someone who has lived beyond the expected lifetime, which sits at about 44 years old.

And yet the Registrar-General, Tobiwa Mudede, would have us all believe the information in the current voters’ roll in Zimbabwe.

I would hazard a guess that my name is still on that roll, even though I never registered as a voter and my first vote ever was here in the United Kingdom!

But the fraud goes much further than that…

“A Zimbabwean MP shocked parliament when he produced evidence that the voter’s roll used in last year’s elections had names of hundreds of dead people who had been registered to vote.

MP Tongai Matutu said the anomaly showed “the extent to which the voters’ roll should represent the graveyard”.

“Of those 503 (dead voters), the surprising thing is that they all have a similar date of birth which is 1 January 1901,” said Matutu.

Matutu is a member of Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change.

“I have the list of those people who are 107-years-old still appearing on the voters roll,” said Matutu.

He said he had copies of the voter’s roll used in the disputed elections, which resulted in the formation of the unity government.

“We have 144,202 [people] over the age of 90 on the voters’ roll,” said the fiery MP, adding that the average life expectancy of Zimbabweans was about 44 years.

“There were 115 voters who were below the age of 18 (legal voting age) with the youngest being one-year-old at the time of 2008 elections,” said Matutu. “So what it simply means is we are going to have more ghosts than registered voters.”

Right now there is much noise in Zimbabwe about an intended audit of the civil service - which, according to an article today, will not include the Zimbabwe National Army.

Why should an audit of the voters’ roll not be undertaken? No doubt those of ZANU PF influence will maintain that there is no money - and when some kind international body is prepared to finance such an exercise, the ZANU PF support would protest in the streets that the money should be channelled to some other project which would see them gaining the advantage.

Audits in Zimbabwe are something which we would all want to see, and even when the Auditor-General tabled a report after a check of one governmental department, it was very quickly swept under the carpet and no one has mentioned it since.

The land needs to be audited. With the land changing hands - invariably into the hands of the chosen ZANU PF few - there is a huge need to know who is responsible for the agricultural sector and the produce therein.

It would be unacceptable for a ‘new’ farmer (perhaps the word farmer should also be in inverted commas) to not be held accountable for their produce, just as it would be unacceptable for a farmer to export all of his produce, ignoring the needs in the domestic market.

But Mugabe would prefer that the various sector - and the Reserve Bank - are not audited for fear that such an audit would prove, beyond reasonable doubt, that his tenure in office is built on nothing more than disinformation, misinformation, lies, deceit, threats, theft and ‘lootocracy’…

A simple look at the evidence provided by the MDC MP in parliament would convince any ditherer that Mugabe is nothing more than a man placed in power by his own hand…

Robb WJ Ellis The Bearded Man