Freeboy was given freebies to lie, says Chamisa ally

CCC spokesperson Promise Mkwananzi has exposed that Freeman Chari was given freebies to lie on Zimbabwe's 2023 Presidential election results.

Chari, a US-based software engineer and long-time opposition activist, had claimed to have collated results from 84% of the V11 forms (the official vote tallying forms) and asserted that President Emmerson Mnangagwa won the election by well over 50%.

In a statement released on Friday, August 23, 2024 - exactly one year after the polls - Chari said his team had "done the best we could to collate results" and that citizens had "amazingly" sent in V11 forms from their polling stations.

He stated that within the first two days, they had collated about 75% of the polling stations, eventually reaching 10,250 stations, representing around 84% of all polling stations used. Said Chari:

"We did the best we could to collate results. And citizens did amazingly great by sending us the V11s from their polling stations.

"Within the first 2 days, we had collated about 75% of the polling stations. We eventually were able to collate 10 250 polling stations in which we could verify their results.

"These represent about 84% of all polling stations used. We did receive a lot of results from other polling stations which we could not authenticate or verify…

"We got a lot of dubious results from Mashonaland East, Central and West. Those polling stations have been excluded."

However, in a post on X (formerly Twitter), Mkhwananzi strongly dismissed Chari's election results.

"Freeboy was given freebies to lie."


Chari admits Pachedu and other groups knew that Chamisa had lost the polls but kept this from his supporters because they were afraid of being seen as endorsing what he called "sham elections".

They withheld this information hoping to encourage the opposition to boycott council and Parliament.

"We hoped CCC (Citizens Coalition for Change) would reject the whole election in toto. Unfortunately, some decided to go to Parliament and councils," Chari wrote.

Ahead of the 2023 harmonised elections, opposition activists going by the name Team Pachedu claimed to have developed an app called Mandla, which they said was able to tabulate election results.

They also claimed the app allowed CCC supporters to check their correct polling stations, as well as the opposition party's bona fide candidates.

In an apparent dig at CCC supporters, Chari wrote on his X handle that, now that he had released their "tabulated results", he expected honest conversations and not unfounded claims of victory.