There was a tremendous hammering on the door of her home. Realising that
President Robert Mugabe’s thugs were hunting for her, Agnes Mabhena, the
wife of an opposition councillor, quickly hid under the bed. It was too late
for her to grab Blessing, her 11-month-old baby, who was crying on top of
it.
“She’s gone out. Let’s kill the baby,” she heard a member of the gang say. The
next thing she saw from under the bed was Blessing’s tiny body hitting the
concrete floor with a force that shattered his tiny legs.
“It is just a baby – leave it alone,” another said, and the thugs left. All
day Mabhena stayed at home with her screaming son, too terrified to move.
Her neighbours, knowing that the family were regarded as opponents of
Mugabe, were too frightened to help.
When all was quiet, she slipped out of the house with the baby to seek help in
Harare. The 12-mile walk to Harvest House, the headquarters of the
opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), took most of the night.
The building was awash with fleeing victims of the terror. But in the chaos
there was nobody to get her to hospital. With a relative’s help, she
eventually reached the Parirenyatwa hospital, where Blessing, so named
because she and her husband thought he was a gift from God, was x-rayed.
Now, encased in plaster, his little legs stick out at an odd angle below his
blue romper suit. Unless he has orthopaedic help soon, he may never walk.
Agnes and Blessing squatted for two weeks in a park during the day and hid at
Harvest House at night to escape the police and Zanu-PF youths. Her blanket
stolen, she survived in a pitiful condition on one meal a day. Her milk
dried up. Blessing had only water for three days. “When there is no hope of
food, your hunger dies,” she said.
Last Tuesday her husband found her in the park. He told her their house had
been burnt down and they were destitute. He tried to send election observers
from the Southern African Development Council (SADC) to see it but they were
turned back at a Zanu-PF roadblock.
Last night Agnes and Blessing were sheltering in a draughty church with 20
other women and 15 babies. The only furniture was three plastic chairs. The
children had a little porridge to eat.
There was no guarantee they would be safe as the vicious crackdown on MDC
supporters continued across Zimbabwe this weekend and victims were warned
that if they sought treatment they would be killed.
These were no idle threats. Yesterday, as early counting of votes cast in
Friday’s one-sided presidential election indicated a landslide win for
Mugabe, 84, reports were reaching Harare of shallow graves in the
countryside where unknown and unidentified victims of the violent campaign
to keep him in power had been buried.
The Zimbabwe Herald reported that “peace and tranquillity” had reigned during
the election and contrasted Mugabe’s victory – inevitable after his rival,
Morgan Tsvangirai, withdrew – with Gordon Brown’s “humiliating defeat” in
the Henley by-election.
However, in Mudzi, a former Zanu-PF stronghold 100 miles north of Harare that
backed the MDC in the first round of the election in March, secret burials
had taken place.
It was there that Temba Muronde, an MDC supporter, was beaten with an iron bar
in April. As his wife tried to carry him on a cart to a clinic, he was
abducted and taken to a Zanu-PF torture base, where he was forced to eat rat
poison. He did not die, so his tormentors gave him a pesticide. When he was
still alive and in agony a week later, they killed him with an axe.
Although the reported death toll in the election stood at 87 at the end of
last week, an MDC official said this was an “overly conservative figure”
based on information from doctors who had certified the deaths. There were
believed to be several other graves in Mudzi alone.
Government sources said last night they expected Mugabe to be sworn in today
before flying to an African Union summit in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el
Sheikh in the hope of being greeted as Zimbabwe’s rightful president.
Leaders of Kenya, Botswana, Tanzania, Zambia and Nigeria have all condemned
Mugabe’s use of violence. Officials from Tanzania and Botswana have said
they would be prepared to send in troops.
But with 30 of its 53 member states ruled by dictators, the African Union
seemed unlikely to join in refusing to recognise Mugabe and calling for a
government of national unity.
Mugabe, who declared during the campaign that only God could remove him, has
already made it clear he will challenge anyone at the summit who dares to
question his methods.
“Some African countries have done worse things,” he told the Herald. “I would
like some African leaders who are making these statements to point at me and
we would see if those fingers would be cleaner than mine.”
Any hopes that the violence might abate after the voting gave way this weekend
to fears that it would intensify into an attempt to extirpate the MDC until
the opposition party ceased to be a threat. Nelson Chamisa, an MDC
spokesman, said: “They stole this election – now they are going to spill
more blood.”
He said security forces planned to launch Operation Red Finger to track down
people who had stayed away from the polling stations. Voters had their
little finger dyed with ink.
In the farmlands around Chegutu, southwest of Harare, voting for the MDC was
virtually eliminated, with 100% support for Mugabe reported at some polling
stations.
This followed a drive to force local labourers on the dwindling number of
white-owned farms – down from 300 eight years ago to 30 today – to attend a
series of indoctrination sessions at which they were “taught” to vote for
Mugabe.
The staff of one farm were ordered to go to a pungwe, or “reeducation”
vigil, at 1pm last Monday. They did not return to their homes until
Thursday. “All the way through the night they were not allowed to sit down
once as they sang Zanu-PF songs and chanted slogans. Anyone who got it wrong
was beaten,” one reluctant participant said.
They were then ordered to attend a second session immediately, in preparation
for Friday’s vote. By the time they got to the polling station before 7am on
Friday they were exhausted from sleep deprivation and in no doubt as to
where on the ballot paper they should put their cross.
Just to be certain, they were assembled in groups of 10 outside the polling
station. They were told the ballot papers were numbered and this would be
matched with their identity details so that Zanu-PF would know exactly how
they voted. One threat was that they would have their heads cut off if they
did not support Mugabe.
The pungweswere held at militia terror bases on land seized from white
farmers since 2000 and turned into resettlement areas. They were an ugly
throw-back to the struggle to end white minority rule, when guerrilla
fighters secretly gathered villagers together in the forest to indoctrinate
them against colonial rule in the 1970s.
At least one man was reported to have been killed at one of these pungwes in
the Chegutu area. According to an eyewitness, he knew he would be targeted
because last Wednesday morning a militant banged on his mother’s door and
told her that this was the last day she would see her son alive.
He had no choice but to attend the meeting to save his mother from punishment.
When he tried to slip away, his escape was noticed and 50 youths were sent
in pursuit.
After a chase through the fields they caught him. A witness said: “He fell to
the ground screaming, ‘Please don’t kill me.’ They lifted him up and hit him
back down again and then beat him again and again. At the end his body was
covered in ghastly wounds. I think it was a slow death.”
At Chegutu, as elsewhere, the army was running Mugabe’s violent election
campaign on the orders of the generals in the joint operations command. The
local man in command was a Major Tauye, who wore civilian clothes but
carried a sidearm and fired shots in the air.
A second key figure in the local terror structure was Gilbert Moyo, a
55-year-old war veteran wanted for stock theft, a crime carrying a nine-year
mandatory sentence, who had recently evicted six white farmers from their
land.
Last week he forcibly evicted Richard Etheridge, 71, perhaps Zimbabwe’s most
successful citrus fruit farmer, with a multi-million-pound export business
to the Middle East.
The intimidation by war veterans was by no means confined to the countryside.
One terror base where offenders were beaten last week was a single-storey
building on waste ground a few hundreds yards from the residence of the
Dutch ambassador in Chisipite, one of Harare’s most upmarket residential
districts.
Another was a shopping centre in the crowded suburb of Sunningdale, where
vicious interrogations were taking place and a 65-year-old woman who was
denounced by her lodger, a Zanu-PF supporter, for possession of MDC T-shirts
was beaten. She feared she would be killed if she went to hospital. Instead,
she suffered at home.
A well-known Aids activist and MDC supporter, Gertrude Ukomba, was evicted
from her home and went into hiding with her 10-year-old grandson, who was
being sought by local Zanu-PF militants to force his mother to return from
America.
In the end, the campaign of intimidation was pressed so hard that instead of
breaking Tsvangirai at the polls, as intended, it left him no choice but to
withdraw.
When he toured Harare last weekend to gauge the popular mood, he was dismayed
to find that nobody waved at him. Even though the city was an MDC
stronghold, people were too afraid to show their allegiance.
“He did not want that translated into a national vote. He really sensed there
had been a change,” a colleague said. “In addition, his national executive
council told him they could not put polling agents into 75% of the polling
stations, which would leave the vote wide open to rigging. All the blood and
pain and violence made him decide it was best to cut his losses and pull
out.”
Tsvangirai’s decision to seek sanctuary in the Dutch embassy wrong-footed the
government, forcing it to give diplomatic assurances about his safety.
Yet despite the international condemnation – this week Britain and America are
expected to call for sanctions at the UN Security Council, including an arms
embargo – Mugabe remained defiant. Few expect him to bow to pressure from
fellow African leaders for a power-sharing deal with the MDC. Tsvangirai
himself said it was a “dream” to expect his MDC to join Zanu-PF.
Whatever is planned, the next few months are bound to be grim for Zimbabweans
already faced with deepening economic hardship, hunger and unemployment.
Thousands are expected to flee abroad.
If Agnes Mabhena could flee, she would go too. “I hate Zimbabwe. I want to
leave,” she said. It is a bitter refrain one hears more and more.
Tyrant considers successor
DISCUSSIONS are under way for Robert Mugabe to appoint a prime minister who
would in effect run the country once the ruling Zanu-PF’s hold on power was
assured, writes Christina Lamb.
The names most talked about are Gideon Gono, the governor of the reserve bank,
and Emmerson Mnangagwa, a former spy chief who headed Mugabe’s reelection
campaign.
Both men sit on the joint operations command currently running the
administration and unleashing terror.
Mnangagwa has worked with Mugabe since the liberation war, when he was known
as the “Crocodile”, and served in his cabinet for more than 20 years.
Long thought of as Mugabe’s chosen successor, he was sidelined after a rally
in 2004 at which he discussed ousting Mugabe.
Mugabe has turned back to his old hatchet man since failing to secure a
first-round election victory.
Mnangagwa’s main rival is Gono, the man in charge of printing the money that
is barely keeping the country going. Mugabe’s files on who has stolen what
are kept in the reserve bank.
“Gono knows where the bodies are buried,” one adviser said.
Video links on Zimbabwe
Official Election Website
MDC Website
Zimbabwe: Morgan
Tsvangirai quits Friday's polls
Tsvangirai
under protection of the Dutch Embassy
Zimbabwe run-off election
still on, declares Mugabe
