For a wad of worthless Zimbabwean banknotes President Mugabe’s militias burnt six-year-old Nyasha Mashoko to death.

The target of the Zanu (PF) thugs had been the boy’s father, Brian Mamhova. They came for him on Friday night — three truckloads of them, plus a Mercedes Benz from which alighted three armed men in suits, Mr Mamhova said. The militiamen had been promised Z$25 trillion (£12,500) to kill him, which seems a high price on the head of a district councillor but which is no problem for a Government that sees printing money as the best way out of a crisis.

Mr Mamhova was elected a councillor for the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) in elections on March 29 for the Harare South district council, an area of farms and rundown houses on the outskirts of the capital, close to Harare airport.

At 8pm on Friday Mr Mamhova was asleep. His wife, Pamela Pasvani, 21, his son, Nyasha, his younger brother and a nephew were in an adjoining room.

“They [the militiamen] got in the room where I was and they were searching me against the wall,” he said. He managed to break free from the men holding them and slipped past the others in the darkness. He stopped running when he was 100 metres away, and hid behind a bush. “They were running past me,” he said, and he heard them muttering that they were about to lose their bounty.

“They locked the door where my wife was. They smashed the windows and threw petrol inside. Then they lit it,” he said. “Inside the house, my young brother broke the door. I thank God, otherwise they would be burnt, all of them. He took my nephew out of the room. Then he went back into the room and he took my wife, but it was late. She got 80 per cent burnt. My son was burnt to pieces.”

“Then they beat everybody there, my neighbours, everyone. Many of them are in Chitungwiza hospital [the nearest state hospital] now.” His brother and his nephew escaped with minor burns. “I am in a hidden place now. They are hunting me. They are saying they want to kill me. It is terrible.” The perpetrators of such crimes act with impunity, he said.

“When they did this, they were led by their local Zanu (PF) chairman. He lives close to our place. All of them are still there, now.” Mr Mamhova was left with only the shorts he was wearing. “Everything was burnt. There is nothing left. The clothes, the blankets, the food, all burnt. Somebody gave me some clothes.” His wife died on Saturday in ward C6 of the burns unit of Harare hospital. “No one survives more than 50 per cent burns,” a doctor there said. She was 18 weeks pregnant.

The terror tactic of burning people alive has been little used by Zanu (PF) in recent years but seems to be being revived. Last Wednesday, in the village of Jerera in Zaka district in the southeast of the country, a group of gunmen described as being in riot police uniform broke into an MDC office and fired on six people. Then they poured petrol over them and set them ablaze. Two died in the fire.

A photograph of one of them, published in a local independent newspaper, was remarkably like the picture of one of the charred victims of the xenophobic violence in Johannesburg two weeks ago. Two others are in Harare hospital with 30 and 40 per cent burns respectively. The remaining two have disappeared.

In 1963, when the black nationalist movement fighting against the white minority Rhodesian Government split, youths on either side of the divide locked people in their houses in urban townships and threw petrol bombs inside. The leader of the youth wing of one faction — the newly formed Zimbabwe African National Union (Zanu), forerunner to Zanu (PF) — was a young school teacher named Robert Mugabe.

“If you look back at the methods of Zanu (PF) since it was formed, the only one who was there from that time is the President,” Willas Madzimure, a Harare MP, said. “Which means he knows exactly how to do it.”

A history of violence

1963 During the rebellion against white colonial rule Mr Mugabe forms the Zimbabwe African National Union (Zanu) as a breakaway from the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (Zapu) led by Mr Nkomo. The Government declares a state of emergency after firebombing and violence in the poor, black townships

1975 Mr Mugabe returns from exile and restarts guerrilla war, which claimed 36,000 lives and displaced 1.5 million people. Mr Mugabe’s forces used mutilation and burning in their brutal campaign

1979 A peace deal is brokered by the British and the first elections are agreed. Mr Mugabe’s campaign is so violent that he is threatened repeatedly with disqualification

1980 Mr Mugabe wins the election and forms a coalition with Zapu

1982 Mr Mugabe sacks Mr Nkomo and cracks down on his supporters. He is accused of killing 20,000 Zapu supporters

Source: International Crisis Group, Times archives

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