Even as Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change, was making his announcement that would turn Zimbabwe’s bloody elections into a one-man race, hordes of President Mugabe’s youth militia were hard at work in Epworth, a crowded, chaotic township on Harare’s southern outskirts.

“They were forcing people out of their houses, beating them to go to the rally,” said Kennedy Dzuwa, a black-market fuel dealer. “They wanted to get every person in Epworth there. Mugabe was coming. It has never been so bad.”

And it has been very bad in Epworth every day for the past five weeks. Zanu (PF) has been working methodically through each house, area by area, subjecting every person they suspect of supporting the MDC - which is about 80 per cent of Epworth’s adult population - to a humiliating beating.

“Every morning from nine until five,” said the thin, reserved woman of 34 who called herself Tambudzwa.

“Monday to Sunday. Since the start of the run-off campaign [in mid-May]. Man, woman, boy.

“Even old man. Even pregnant woman.”

It is punishment for having voted for the MDC in the March elections, and to ensure that they “vote correctly” for Mr Mugabe in the run-off vote, which the ruling party insists will go ahead as planned on Friday. The systematic, ritual brutality is reminiscent of Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution. Tambudzwa and her lodger were dragged out of her house last Wednesday morning, with her daughter, Sipiwe, aged 15 months, strapped to her back.

Her husband, Victor, had fled the week before, believing the women would be unharmed.

They were marched with a raucous crowd of Zanu (PF) youths armed with sticks, to near the dam in Epworth, where the militia base is situated. They were ordered to sit down, and a man in a Zanu (PF) T-shirt and neckerchief in the Zanu (PF) colours of red, green, yellow and black read out numbers of houses in the area.

“When they read out your house number, it is because you are MDC. You have to go and sit in front, separate from everyone else.”

Zanu (PF)’s knowledge of how anyone voted in a genuinely secret ballot in March, is simple. So few people voted for Zanu (PF) that their identities are well known to the authorities. It is assumed that everybody else voted for the MDC and Morgan Tsvangirai.

“Then one man reads out the names of the MDC people,” said Tambudzwa. “One by one, they come to the front and they have to lie on the ground on their stomachs. Then they are beaten, for about five minutes, on their backs. The women cry. The men grunt.

“They use a heavy stick they have broken from a tree. They use all their force, with two hands. And after they have been beaten, they have to stand up and give the Zanu (PF) fist salute. Then they have to say, ‘Pamberi ne-Mugabe. Ndadzoka ku Zanu (PF) [Forward with Mugabe. I am back with Zanu (PF)]’.”

Then they go and sit down again and the next one’s name is called.” The affair was punctuated with slogan chanting and singing, including one song with the words, “Tsvangirai is HIV positive”, she said.

In spite of the calculated terror, when people returned to their seats after the beating, she said, “they were whispering secretly to each other . . . They will never vote for Zanu (PF)”.

There is no way of avoiding a beating. Women with babies had to hand them over to other women. “The babies were crying. We had to sit there all day, not allowed to get up, no water, no food, no toilet, in the sun. No feeding babies, no changing nappies.

“Sipiwe was crying, she was scared, she was saying, ‘Mummy, look, they are being beaten’,” said Tambudzwa. “She was vomiting. I asked one of the youth if I could take her away. He said, ‘I don’t care about your baby’.”

Chance intervened at about 2pm, by which time more than a hundred people had been flogged, she said. A Zanu (PF) vehicle arrived with bundles of T-shirts and the youths forgot their duties in the scramble for a free handout. Tambudzwa and scores of others scattered.

Sipiwe now cries when the radio is turned up loud, or anyone shouts. She is subdued and clings to her mother. “She is not friendly any more,” Tambudzwa said.

She abandoned her home that night, leaving the door locked with all the family’s goods inside, in the knowledge that she was told at the meeting that if she escaped, her home would be destroyed.

They are now refugees in a middle-class suburb.

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