Shylet Maposa

Midlands State University’s Students Representative Council (SRC) elections have fallen victim of cyber-crime, forcing the university to stop the poll amid voting process and the election was postponed.

SRC elections which were scheduled for Friday, 9 November 2018 and Thursday, 15 November 2018 have been postponed until further notice.

Registrar of the University, Erasmus Mupfiga informed students on the university’s website saying, “The postponement is as a result of a serious and massive security breach which has been detected by our Information and Technology experts”

Mupfiga in the announcement, elaborated that the University has a duty to ensure that SRC elections are conducted in a credible, professional and transparent manner so that results thereof, truly reflect the will of all the students.

Brightman Marozva, Minister of Information and Publicity in the SRC indicated that elections have been stopped against a background of suspected rigging plot.

“The election had to be stopped because of targeted vote rigging on the electronic voting system of the university,” said Marozva.

Zimbabwe among other countries has not been spared from online related crimes and government has been drafting bills to regulate the use of computers. However, none of the bills has since been implemented. For example, the government in 2017 has enacted a Cybercrime and Cybersecurity Bill that is however a stumbling block to the enjoyment of online freedoms.