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Mudede: I'm under pressure
Clemence Manyukwe, Financial Gazette
September 06, 2007

http://www.fingaz.co.zw/story.aspx?stid=1162

Registrar General (R-G) Tobaiwa Mudede has for the first time complained of pressure from politicians with regard to the voter registration exercise, which the opposition claims has been used to disenfranchise its support base. A report by the Defence and Home Affairs Parliamentary committee also disputes the R-G's view that the Citizenship Act requires that people born locally to parents of foreign descent must first renounce their "potential foreign citizenship" before they can be recognised as Zimbabwean citizens. Failure to renounce their foreign title, according to the Registrar General, results in forfeiture of Zimbabwean citizenship. Mudede has used this interpretation of the law to deprive millions of Zimbabweans of the right to vote.

But quoting the Government Gazette General Notice 584 of 2002, under the subheading Renunciation of foreign Citizenship, the committee said a person who is a citizen by birth cannot be deprived of his or her citizenship, and cannot be asked to renounce foreign citizenship he or she never acquired. "It is recommended that the R-G should abide by the rulings and interpretation of the courts and Cabinet, as given in the Zimbabwean Government Gazette General notice 584 of 2002," reads part of the committee's recommendation. The committee undertook the probe on citizenship after the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights told Members of Parliament that Mudede was unlawfully withdrawing citizenship from people with rightful title to citizenship, resulting in a flood of lawsuits that his department was losing.

The report shows that in his evidence before the committee Mudede claimed he was under pressure from politicians to register certain groups of people to vote in next year's elections. Although the report does not identify the politicians, Zanu PF summoned Mudede in May to appear before its caucus for a hearing for which the sole item on the agenda was "Citizenship problems." Sources who attended that meeting, which also discussed the looting of diamonds in Marange, told The Financial Gazette at the time that ruling party legislators had pointed out to Mudede that they risked losing the support of millions of potential voters, mainly farm workers, who were affected by laws compelling them to renounce foreign citizenship. The Parliamentary report says: "The R-G gave the following evidence: due to forthcoming elections, some politicians are campaigning to increase their support base using services provided for by the Government. The resistance to dual citizenship has been an ongoing battle fought in various fora." Contributing to the report, Zanu PF Senator for Highfield-Glen Norah-Glen View, Charles Tawengwa, said based on the cases that the R-G had lost in the courts it appeared that the Government was victimising its citizens.

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