The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) on Wednesday accused a group of data analysts, Team Pachedu, of trying to hack into its system “about 100 times” and destabilise the country’s election processes.
Appearing before the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs for a post-budget consultation meeting, ZEC chief elections officer Utoile Silaigwana likened Team Pachedu’s alleged hacking attempts to attempted rape. Silaigwana said:
The Pachedu group has not been able to break into our system, but they have made several attempts.
They have maliciously spread a lot of disinformation, misinformation and malformation about the commission, which then in the public eye looks like ZEC is highly, highly vulnerable and they have broken into, but they have not.
I think it is some kind of silly manoeuvres to try to destabilise ZEC. The purpose of the commission reporting them is that this is an attempt.
If someone attempts to rape, it is an offence, right? So they are attempting to rape ZEC and this is why we reported them.
There have been about 100 attempts to hack into our server, which hosts the voters’ roll, but they have never broken into it.
Our website system is separate from the system that hosts the voters’ roll.
Team Pachedu says it has unearthed gross irregularities on the Voters’ Roll and has accused ZEC of attempting to rig the 2023 general elections.
Meanwhile, Silaigwana said the 2023 budget allocation for ZEC was 33% lower than the $151.2 billion it requested from Treasury. | NewsDay