Wednesday, July 21, 2004

More Zimbabwe news... and some childish sniggering at a name

I noticed this article about next year's Zimbabwean election. Essentially, Archbishop Pius Ncube of Bulawayo is claiming that the last election was rigged and the one next year will also not be `free and fair'.

Some of the claims he makes in the article are that last time round there were 800,000 dead people on the electoral roll and 600,000 duplicate names on the list. All in all, the report he was quoting from claims that, of the 5.5 million Zimbabweans registered to vote, two million did not exist. Which is pretty impressive.

If you recall the last Zimbabwean election was one which the European Union and the Commonwealth observers claimed was neither free nor fair. But African groups said everything was tickety-boo — although I don't believe that was the actual wording used by the African observers.

And the childish giggle? Was it inevitable that someone named `Pius' would grow up to be an Archbishop? (Although it would be better if it was spelled pious.) Of course it could have been worse for the poor kid, look what happens when you name your son God. Which I think proves that God (as in The Almighty — if he/she/it exists — and not Mr Chiwelesa), or Mother Nature or something or other, does have a sense of humour.

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