The Guardian has a video of vote-rigging in progress in the recent Zimbabwe election. The video shows the organisation of the rigging process.

As has been documented before, basically there is no such thing as a secret ballot in Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe. That means of course that there is no democracy.

The underground video also shows how the violence is organised, and footage of the Moverment for Democratic Change Deputy Leader Tendai Biti, and Jenny Williams (leader of Zimbabwe’s largest women’s organisation), in prison. Jenny Williams is leader of Women Of Zimbabwe Arise, and she - with others - lead a demonstration in support of democratic rights.

The video was shot by a police officer called Shepherd Yuda. Police were made to vote in front of ‘war veterans’. From the Guardian:

A film that graphically shows how Robert Mugabe’s supporters rigged Zimbabwe’s election has been smuggled out of the country by a prison officer. It is believed to be the first footage of actual ballot-rigging and comes as Zimbabwe’s president faces growing international pressure.

Shepherd Yuda, 36, fled the country this week with his wife and children. He said that he hoped the film, which was made for the Guardian, would help draw further attention to the violence and corruption in Zimbabwe.

Much of the footage was shot inside the country’s notorious jail system. Yuda, who has worked in the prison service for 13 years, was motivated by the intensifying violence directed towards the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and the murder, two months ago, of his uncle, a MDC activist.

Initially he intended to chronicle secretly what life was like inside Zimbabwe’s jails but he found himself present when a war veteran and Mugabe supporter organised the vote-rigging by getting prison officers to fill in their postal ballots in his presence.

Using a hidden camera, Yuda filmed for six days prior to last Friday’s run-off election in which Mugabe claimed victory with 90% of the vote. Morgan Tsvangirai, the MDC leader, had earlier said his party would not be participating in the run-off because of intimidation.

“I had never seen that kind of violence before,” said Yuda, of the run-up to the election. “How can a government that claimed to be democratically elected kill its people, murder its people, torture its people?”

The film, made for Guardian Films, shows how Yuda and his colleagues at Harare central jail had to fill in their ballots in front of Zanu-PF activists.

Watch the video at the Guardian website.

Via Paul Canning.