Lord Chitnis, a member of the British House of Lords and an election organiser for the Liberal Party, has been one of the few, and perhaps the only foreign observer of the Rhodesian elections, to draw attention to the terms on which they were held and the methods used to get voters to the polls. At the end of a two week visit on behalf of the British Parliamentary Human Rights Committee, he and his research assistant, Ms. Eileen Sudworth of the Catholic Institute for International Relations, reported that while the voting procedure at the polling stations as such was in many respects scrupulous, the elections as a whole had involved widespread intimidation and could not be described as free and fair.
The following excerpts are taken from the transcript of a press conference given by Lord Chitnis and Ms Sudworth on their return to London on 25 April:
Lord Chitnis: "We were accredited as official observers to the election and we started off by looking at various aspects of the polling mechanism, the polling stations, we talked to returning officers and so forth. My first impression, I must tell you, was that a quite remarkably well-organised job was going on and that, given the circumstances, they were running a not bad election. However, as time went on, and as we got away from the government circuit and went out and talked to people themselves, away from the official machinery, the conclusion that I'm afraid I'm bound to come to is that it wasn't a free and fair election but that in fact it was a gigantic confidence trick.
We found that while many people whom we saw quite clearly did want to vote, quite clearly knew who they wanted to vote for, and were perfectly capable of distinguishing between the policies of the various parties, basically what we had was a cowed and indoctrinated electorate. We found that the government propaganda machine had operated in such a way, that the employers of labour, the farmers, the mine owners and so on had been recruited to help ensure that everyone got out to vote, that by and large we saw enough evidence to convince us that there was quite undue and unreasonable pressure, even from the propaganda machine, to make people go to vote.
But quite apart from that, and much worse, was that we have lots of evidence of physical intimidation. The intimidation ranged from people whom we talked to who honestly didn't really want to vote but who thought it would be best to turn out at the polling station, up to cases where people were either violently attacked or threatened with violent assault if they didn't vote.
Let us take Chipinga. When we got to Chipinga we went that evening with the Special Branch man who was accompanying us, to the Chipinga Social Club. Now the atmosphere of this sort of frontier station with the troops and the white farmers having whatever it was, Sunday, Monday night drinks, was quite amazing in itself to a stranger. And there was a rather tough farmer there in his khaki, brandishing his Mauser, and dropping bullets in the ashtrays while lighted cigarettes were still there and so on. And he said to us that he had got 200-odd employees on his farm, and he was going to find out how many of his chaps had voted. Now if I say those words to you like that, it sounds as if he was an earnest seeker after truth, but I promise you that that man's 200-odd employees were going to have to vote because he was going to make sure they did.
When we got to Mr. Chisholm's farm in Karoi, there were people being brought in on farm lorries by their employers, or accompanied by their employer, and brought in to the polling stations. Everyone would be told to report to a certain place at a certain time and they were brought into the poll on these farm tractors. I asked Mrs. Chisholm if anybody had refused to come and she said to me that not a single person had said they didn't want to vote. And I just don't believe that this was a free choice given to them.
Can I make the point that a lot of people in Rhodesia did want to vote, but the trouble is that the government overdid it. By laying on this immense propaganda exercise; by telling all employers in a leaflet sent out to them that they must try and do everything they could to ensure that all their employees voted and so forth. They might even have got a perfectly reasonable percentage poll, without all this, but having done it, this is what happened."
Apart from visiting polling stations in the Karoi district, Lord Chitnis and Ms Sudworth also travelled through the Beit Bridge area with an official government party. Unofficially, they visited six or seven polling stations in the east of the country between Chipinga and Sipolilo, Harare township outside Salisbury, and (Ms Sudworth only) Wankie.
Eileen Sudworth: "There was a great deal of coercion to get people to the poll. The auxiliaries particularly were telling people that they had to vote and a great deal of pressure was put on by the slogan of Bishop Muzorewa's party - "We are the winners". Not in itself a pernicious kind of slogan. But there was a great deal of fear expressed to me: "What happens if we vote for the losers? Will people know?" There were also numerous reports that auxiliaries were going around saying to people: "Look, in two or three weeks, after the election, we're going to come round and see if you voted". Whether or not people could actually physically check on the secrecy of the ballot, there was very great and widespread fear that somehow, somebody would know, not just whether or not they had voted, but how they had voted."
Specific examples given by Lord Chitnis and Ms Sudworth of intimidation and violence against voters included:-
- members of the Rhodesian army stopped buses and accompanied passengers to the polling stations before they were allowed to proceed with their journey. Evidence of this came from the Mtoko and Mrewa areas in particular.
- teachers were informed that they would be required to serve as polling officers and to help count the votes. A confidential letter from the election directorate warns that "failure to comply with this direction will be an offence and will render you liable to a fine not exceeding five hundred dollars or to imprisonment for a period not exceeding six months, or both". Fifteen teachers from a school in Shabani who failed to turn up at the appointed time were arrested and imprisoned. They were due to stand trial on 26 April at Shabani magistrates' court
- residents of protected villages in the Karoi area and elsewhere were locked into the keeps and not allowed out to work until they had voted.
- in the Shabani district, eight lorry loads of Rhodesian security troops came into a Tribal Trust area on 16 April, pursued fleeing villagers, damaged their houses, and said they were being punished for being 'unco-operative'. On the following day the soldiers returned and transported the villagers to Msipani polling station.
- In the Buhera TTL, 20 lorries of soldiers came to the area and warned the people to "go and vote or we will bomb your homes"
- In the Seke area, the auxiliary army of Bishop Muzorewa's UANC went from village to village with guns, beating up people and forcing them at gunpoint to go to the polls.
- In Kaseke village in the Mhondoro area, at least 10 people were killed by security forces three weeks before the elections. Villagers were told that the soldiers had instructions to eliminate mujibas, or local people, frequently unemployed youths, suspected of acting as sentinels for the guerillas.
- In the Sipolilo area, security forces asked the kraal head to call a meeting for the purpose of teaching people how to vote. He refused to do so. The next day soldiers returned to the village and shot 15 people dead, including an infant and two children aged 14 and nine years.
