Harare – In a stunning revelation, Team Pachedu, the activist group that had vehemently challenged the outcome of the 2023 harmonised elections, has published data revealing who won the presidential race.
Freeman Chari, a prominent member of Team Pachedu, has released data from their collation of V11 forms, which represent 84% of all polling stations used in the election. The data which Chari claims to have verified shows President Mnangagwa garnering 52% of the vote, matching the official results announced by the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC).
This revelation comes a year after the elections and follows months of accusations by Team Pachedu and other opposition groups that the elections were rigged in favour of President Mnangagwa. The group had claimed that their own parallel vote tabulation system, using the Mandla app, showed a different outcome, but they have now admitted that their figures were incomplete and inaccurate.
“We did the best we could to collate results. And citizens did amazingly great by sending us the V11s from their polling stations. Within the first 2 days we had collated about 75% of the polling stations. We eventually were able to collate 10 250 polling stations which we could verify their results. These represent about 84% of all polling stations used. We did receive a lot of results from other polling stations which we could not authenticate or verify. I have excluded those results from this spreadsheet,” Chari wrote in a statement on X, formerly Twitter.
Chari also admitted that their tally excluded many votes from ZANU PF strongholds in Mashonaland East, West and Central provinces, indicating that even by their own figures, President Mnangagwa had a significant lead.
“We got a lot of dubious results from Mashonaland East, Central and West. Those polling stations have been excluded,” Chari wrote.
The revelation has sparked outrage among opposition supporters who had been led to believe that the elections were stolen. Chari has been accused of betraying the opposition and undermining their efforts to challenge the election results.
Professor Jonathan Moyo, a veteran political scientist and former Minister of Higher Education, has been quick to point out the implications of Team Pachedu’s admission.
“ALTHOUGH INEXPLICABLY COMING OUT INCOMPLETE AND TOO LATE, data from Freeman Chari is neither surprising nor new. Tellingly, it vindicates ZEC and explains why:
- Nelson Chamisa did not make public the V11s he claimed he had which allegedly proved he had won the 2023 presidential election.
Said Chamisa, falsely, in August 2023,
“We reject this sham result and flawed process based on the disputed figures. We have our V11s. I have asked our teams to bring those V11s. I’m not so sure if they are here so that you can see them.
We have brought V11s from across the whole country. And those V11s are going to be the basis of our assertion. We have won this election”.
- Chamisa did not approach the ConCourt to challenge the 2023 presidential election result announced by ZEC. He do not have V11s to back up his claim.
- Sadc Election Observation Mission (SEOM) report has been used [abused] in place of V11s, which apparently show that Nelson Chamisa lost the 2023 presidential election. As former [Nigerian] President Goodluck Jonathan who has led various major election observer missions has repeatedly explained, no such mission has the capacity, mandate, authority or power to replace the judiciary of any country to invalidate an election.
- Except for two self-indulgent and wayward of their ranks, CCC MPs elected in 2023 resisted political pressure from Chamisa and his supporters to resign from Parliament in solidarity with Chamisa, when they knew that, unlike him who had no V11s to back up his claim that he won the 2023 presidential election; they had won their constituency seats fair and square and had the V11s to prove their victories.
All told, ‘rine manyanga hariputirwe’: Facts are stubborn!,” Professor Jonathan Moyo wrote on X.
Prof Jonathan Moyo’s comments highlight the hypocrisy of the opposition, who have been using the lack of V11s as a weapon to delegitimize the election results while simultaneously benefiting from the very same system they claim to oppose.
Political analysts have also weighed in on the revelation, suggesting that Team Pachedu’s admission confirms the duplicity of opposition activists who have been undermining the credibility of the elections without providing any concrete evidence.
“There was nothing extraordinary about what Chari and his shadowy group had done. These naysayers have never peddled their own agendas. They have always been emissaries of agents of doom. I am saying so because I don’t believe that they have suddenly seen the light or that they are renouncing their agency,” said Dr Augustine Tirivangana, an educationist.
Dr Tirivangana also pointed out that the SADC Election Observation Mission had endorsed the election results, and that President Mnangagwa has since been appointed as the new chair of the regional bloc.
“Those who watched the inauguration ceremony will also confirm that even the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) publicly threw its weight behind the new chair of SADC, and, in fact, promised to fund several projects. Given this background, Chari and team want legitimacy by dancing along, for any talk about stolen elections has become both superficial and irrelevant. In any case, who are they to endorse our election results? What authority do they have? Just seeking the limelight for their own reasons,” Dr Tirivangana added.
Another analyst, Dr Brain Sedze, accused Chari and Team Pachedu of being disingenuous in not publishing their “results” sooner for fear of upsetting opposition supporters.
“He (Chari) is now coming out now because the person that they were banking on cannot be relied upon to take power. He does not have an institution, he does not have an ideology, he does not respect national emblems and calls it idol worship and he does not respect those who fought for this country . . . ,” said Dr Sedze.
However, Freeman Chari acknowledged in a follow-up statement that the election was not stolen on election day alone, but that the process had been flawed from the beginning.
“I hope in your discussions you remember the election was not stolen on election day alone, it started in 2021. The voters roll was manipulated. The Delimitation disenfranchised CCC of 54 constituencies. ZEC added close to 1000 new polling stations a month before elections and did not provide a voters roll for those and it is from some of these polling stations we would see questionable and unstamped results like ED 999 , Chamisa 0. People who were supposed to vote on election day would go to their polling station and not find their name, there was no way to find where they should vote,” Chari wrote.
