Africa, Headlines, Human Rights

RIGHTS-ZIMBABWE: Ruling Party Terrorises Voters

Grace Kwinjeh*

JOHANNESBURG, May 22 2008 (IPS) - "It’s a very traumatized community. Their crime on the 29th March election, at that polling station called Chaona, there were about 80 votes for the MDC and 15 votes for ZANU-PF. So that is the offence they committed. This is the price they are paying. And that is what Retired Major Mhandu was saying. ‘You will have to learn’. Not only were the victims killed, their parents were also beaten, their wives were also beaten, their children were also beaten, so it was a very frightening operation. The community is still traumatized. It’s very sad."

This testimony comes from an eyewitness account of the massacre of six people on May 5 at Chaona, a village in northern Zimbabwe; the attack was directed by Mhandu, a member of Parliament from the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF). The account is part of a report on post-election violence by the Solidarity Peace Trust (SPT), a church-based organisation focused on human rights abuses in Zimbabwe, released in Johannesburg on May 21. It describes a climate of brutal intimidation in Zimbabwe following March 29 elections, and recommends fresh mediation led by the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) in order to form a transitional government.

The report, titled "Punishing Dissent, Silencing Citizens: the Zimbabwe Elections 2008," is based on information gathered from 681 interviews carried out across Zimbabwe between Jan. 1 and Apr. 30, supplemented by consultations with Zimbabwean civil society and health professionals. The SPT interviewed approximately 50 more people at the beginning of May.

The authors describe a campaign of beatings, torture and destruction of homes since the elections, in which at least 22 people have been killed. They say the attacks have been carried out by ZANU-PF supporters – including war veterans and the party's youth wing – but planned by a Joint Operations Command that includes senior members of Zimbabwe's army, police, prisons service and Central Intelligence Organisation. Army, police or intelligence officers have been directly involved in 56% of the attacks covered by the report. ZANU-PF members of Parliament are also accused of directly participating in assaults.

The authors say none of their interviewees reported attacks by the MDC, but the authors visited a business centre where opposition supporters had retaliated to the destruction of shops owned by MDC-aligned traders by burning and looting stores owned by ZANU supporters. They also acknowledge a number of other unsubstantiated claims of violence attributed to MDC supporters.

The violence is nationwide, but particularly intense in rural areas of the northern province of Mashonaland, a traditional ZANU-PF stronghold, where many voters for the first time gave their support to the opposition. The authors believe the violence is meant to intimidate people in these areas ahead of run-off presidential elections now scheduled for June 27.

The Zimbabwe Election Commission delayed the release of results of Zimbabwe's March 29 election for several weeks, ostensibly for a recount, but giving rise to suspicion of manipulation to avoid an outright defeat for the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) by its main challenger, the Movement for Democratic Change. When results were eventually released on May 2, no candidate had the 50 percent required for outright victory under Zimbabwe's electoral rules, necessitating a run-off.

Speaking in Johannesburg at the launch of the report, Brian Raftopoulos, a leading Zimbabwean academic said, "SADC has to bring the parties together, demobilize structures of violence, create a Transitional Government that will oversee the writing of a new constitution, and set conditions necessary for free and fair elections."

Raftopoulos insisted that in the present environment of state violence, the June run-off election is neither practical nor desirable. "We have to bring the two centres of power together. That is the only way forward. We have to accept that ZANU PF is a force on the ground that is why it is able to do the things it is doing."

The SPT report's recommendations were immediately questioned by analysts and some civic leaders at the press conference who felt the proposal could give fresh legitimacy to Mugabe’s regime while disregarding the electoral process in which Zimbabwe's people have elected leaders of their choice.

Nicole Fritz, the Director of the Southern Africa Litigation Centre (SALC), an organization that promotes human rights and the rule of law, was present at the launch of the report; she warned against facilitating agreements between elites for the sake of peace. "Issues of international justice are no longer issues subject to political negotiation. Amnesties cannot be granted for crimes against humanity and crimes to the scale of genocide," she said.

Doubts were also cast over South Africa's role in mediation. Elinor Sisulu, spokesperson for the Johannesburg-based Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition, a coalition of civic organizations, accused South African president Thabo Mbeki – who led SADC-sponsored mediation efforts in 2007 – of failing to acknowledge the gravity of Zimbabwe’s political crisis. Sisulu cited Mbeki’s earlier attempts to block United Nations Security Council efforts on Zimbabwe, "Mbeki has opposed the UN, suggesting Africans can do it themselves."

Political analyst Deprose Muchena suggested that any mediation team should include other Africans with experience in political mediation and that President Mbeki should not work alone. "We need to reinforce the mediation route first by ensuring a sitting president not be allowed to work alone, because it is quite evident he will not deliver a solution on his own."

For the moment, the MDC has begun campaigning for the run-off election. MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai announced today that he would re-enter Zimbabwe this weekend; he delayed his return from South Africa to begin campaigning for the June run-off when his security staff said there was evidence of a plot to assassinate him. His party has decided to defy the violence in a bid to remove Robert Mugabe through the ballot.

The SPT report quotes an unidentified MDC activist saying, "What has clearly emerged in Zimbabwe is that an election is not an election, since ZANU PF purports to know for the people of Zimbabwe rather than the people of Zimbabwe to know for themselves…. We can’t be forced to do what we don’t want to do. We can’t be forced to vote for hunger. We can’t be forced to vote for poverty. We can’t be forced to vote for terrorists like this…"

*Kwinjeh is a member of the MDC National Executive and Deputy Secretary for International Affairs