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Zanu PF strategy for Bikita West
Zimbabwe Youth Forum
June 21, 2008

Zanu PF has embarked on a massive voter re-registration campaign for people in this constituency ahead of the presidential election run-off scheduled to take place on the 27th of June. All the people who voted in the March 29 harmonized elections have been ordered to re-register to vote and have their names recorded in a separate voter's roll which is in the custody of kraal heads (sabhuku). Voters are being urged to say they can not read or write on the polling day and to seek the assistance of their respective kraal heads to vote for them. This strategy is meant to ensure that every vote is cast in Zanu PF's name.

In ward 32, the losing council candidate, a Mr. Mvuto from Zanu PF has set up a base at his home from where he is masterminding the assaults, threats and abductions of MDC supporters in his area. Mvuto is a businessman who owns shops in Makotore village. Also in the fray of harassing people are two Zanu PF losing candidates for Bikita West, Pastor Elias Musakwa and Rtd. Colonel Claudius Makova. Musakwa lost the Bikita West seat to Heya Shoko of the MDC while Makova is the former Bikita West MP who was defeated in the Zanu PF primaries by Musakwa. Mvuto, Makova and Musakwa have been leading a violent retributive campaign against the people of Bikita West for having voted for the MDC on March 29. They have imposed a 6pm curfew in Bikita West upon which time everyone is expected to be in their homes. People are being forced to attend rallies, some in excess of 15km away where a register for every homestead is marked. On Wednesday (18 June) night, they led an attack on the homestead of Chemvume, an MDC activist, whom they assaulted for allegedly refusing to attend a Zanu PF rally. Chemvume is a known MDC activist who was once left for dead by the late self-styled war veterans' leader, Chenjerai Hunzvi after being assaulted in the Bikita West by-election of 2001.

Meanwhile, the Youth Forum coordinator Wellington Zindove was chased by six men driving a single-cab vehicle in Bulawayo on Thursday (19 June) night. The six men who were driving a Chinese assembled C.A.M vehicle only dropped the chase after Zindove had sought refuge at a safe house in Bulawayo. Zindove was in the company of ZINASU treasurer Themba Maphenduka and two other Youth Forum members. It is not yet clear why Zindove and Maphenduka were being sought by the men, believed to be agents of the dreaded Central Intelligence Organization. One of the Youth Forum members managed to identify the driver of the vehicle as one Gwadu who is resident in Bulawayo .

The Youth Forum views these recent acts as a barbaric show of power by Zanu PF on defenseless citizens whose only wish is to see a democratic and prosperous Zimbabwe . Zanu PF is desperate to force people vote for them on June 27 and is resorting to a scorched earth policy to ensure that they win the presidential election run-off. They are also trying by all means to silence the remaining voices of dissent among civic society, which has condemned their use of violence to coerce people to vote for them. Zanu PF has literally made the political environment in Zimbabwe not conducive for a free and fair election and this clearly shows that they are prepared to cling on to power by any means possible to them.

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