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True lies are statistically credible
Rejoice Ngwenya
October 17, 2012

Kubatana, Zimbabwe-s award-winning activist blog has just published a saying: "If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes politics!" My guess is that lies are aggravated by 'statistics-. I see the 'war- between AMH [publishers of Newsday, The Zimbabwe Independent and Sunday Standard] and ZAMPS [Zimbabwe All Media Products Survey] as a battle between truth and credible lies. Statistics are a double-edged sword. They, according to media mogul Trevor Ncube, can also gravitate towards lie credibility! "We maintain that the Zimbabwe All-Media Products Survey is acutely defective in its poor methodology, faulty sampling and unscientific questionnaire." My question: can those who want to hide the truth use figures as camouflage? Consider local Zimbabwe politics.

Recent 'statistical controversy- was triggered by American activist organisation Freedom House. Their research - 'contrary to popular opinion-- elevated Robert Mugabe-s ZANU-PF almost seven points clear of the generally pompous MDC-T. Morgan Tsvangirayi-s party has a vociferous propaganda system habitually contemptuous of competition. It is dangerous to write-off a competitor before the final whistle. At a meeting with slightly less than ten thousand supporters, politician Nelson Chamisa will claim an attendance of 'more than twenty thousand people-. The tragedy is people believe such statistical exaggerations.

When ZANU-PF allege that they are 'the people-s party with strong grassroots structures-, they insinuate another statistical fallacy that they 'control- most rural areas. If it is correct that '80% of Zimbabweans live in rural areas-, would acute levels of rural poverty over the past twenty years, exacerbated by erratic rainfall patterns not have caused a massive rural-to-urban migration? Moreover, ZANU-PF-s policies of extermination have driven 'millions- of Zimbabweans into the Diaspora. Yet the statistical question lingers: exactly how many millions have, since 1998, left rural areas to towns and the Diaspora? Progressive political activists say anything between three to four million. ZANU-PF insists only 'about one and half million economic refugees and disgruntled white Rhodesians- are in self-imposed exile- abroad!

And so who do you believe when caught in a statistical sandstorm? More importantly, is it true that real politics is about credible lying? President Robert Mugabe has been in power since 1980 for good reason - "my people, the people of Zimbabwe - still want me to lead them." Here are the facts: Tobaiwa Mudede-s voters- roll is said to contain about four million registered voters [most of them dead!]. Since 1995, I cannot recall a time when more than two point five million voted. Now if the 'true- population of Zimbabwe is thirteen million, then not more than nineteen percent of the population has voted at any time.

And of those two point five million people who voted between 2000 and 2008, two million of them would have voted MDC had they not been bludgeoned into superficial submission by ZANU-PF war lords. This leaves five hundred thousand Mugabe-s 'my people-, a mere four percent of Zimbabwe-s population. We are also told that Mugabe-s 'successful land reform- took millions of acres of land from 'only four thousand five hundred White farmers- and 'empowered millions of landless Blacks-. Millions of peasants? Consider these figures: out of thirteen million Zimbabweans, only five million are adults i.e. above 18 years. Out of those five million, just fewer than one million would sympathise with ZANU-PF. Tell me that even three hundred thousand of these got anywhere near arable farmland. Perhaps my extrapolation, like the ZAMPS, is "defective in its poor methodology, faulty sampling and unscientific". My point is simple: in Zimbabwe, the truth seems to end where statistics begin!

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