Does Obert Gutu believes this?

In the past three years, a new slang word has come to be popular in the Zimbabwean capital. I've heard it in professional settings and at parties. It's a conjugation of the word nikuv, to say that you were screwed. For example, "Are you trying to nikuv me?" or "I just got a flat tire on my way to this meeting, I'm so nikuved!"

"You want to nikuv me right now, don't you?" Obert Gutu asked me in his law office in Harare. Gutu is the spokesman for the largest Zimbabwean opposition party-Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). He gave countless interviews about the 2013 Zimbabwean elections and the speculation that Nikuv rigged the results for President Robert Mugabe and his party. He said he was going to help me investigate Nikuv's true role in the elections and identify the people behind it. It was the first meeting I had scheduled upon my arrival in Harare.

Gutu told me about special ballots produced by Nikuv that can make ink travel. The rumor says ink disappears from the opposition party check box on the ballot and reappears on the ruling party's check box. "That's your suggestion?" I asked. "You seriously believe that?"

Plenty of people do. Right before the 2013 elections, Zimbabwean media were writing daily about the "shadowy" Israeli company. South African and British newspapers were picking up that story as well, running stories about alleged Mossad connections and former Israeli security officials arriving in Harare. In Pretoria, four days before the elections, activists organized a demonstration in front of the Israeli regional embassy.

But the seriousness with which Gutu talked about the magic ballots made me wonder. He was certain that Nikuv rigged the elections, he told me, but he didn't know how to prove it. Even without evidence, or perhaps due to the lack thereof, the presence of a "shadowy" Israeli company, as described by the Zimbabwean media, had done plenty to intensify fears among Zimbabweans, who didn't really trust the electoral process to begin with.