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Who should be sanctioned?
A P Reeler
Former Director, Amani Trust
Executive Committee Member, The International Rehabilitation Council for
Torture Victims
January 31, 2003
Increasing pressure
on those responsible: targeting the "middle managers"
Robert Mugabe
has an uncanny ability, seen recurringly over the past 20 years, to hold
together an unruly party. He may well be able to retain sufficient control
over the internal politics of Zimbabwe to head off the pressure to expedite
the election petition, and to quash all moves to support an independent
judiciary. If this is the case, then there is only one other route to
change, and that is to make it clear to his own party that there will
be costs to continuing to support Robert Mugabe. It is clear that we know
who these supporters are, and many of the more senior supporters are already
on the lists of the United States and the EU for personal sanctions. However,
there are many others equally deserving of sanctions who are not so senior
in the ZanuPF hierarchy, but are crucial to maintaining ZanuPF in its
state of illegitimacy.
This latter group
is not invisible. Indeed, they are known through the many reports of the
human rights groups in Zimbabwe; they are known to the communities in
which they operate; and they are protected by the impunity offered by
the state, both formal and informal. It is no secret who are these "middle
managers"; they are names in a number of reports produced by the
Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum, and these reports have been in the public
domain for some time now. Three reports, in particular, are important
for understanding the "middle managers":
What follows is an
analysis of these reports, supported by a large number of additional reports.
Using this publicly available information, the data has been examined
to see who are the most frequent offenders mentioned in the reports, and
who might be the most culpable of these offenders. It also attempts to
look at patterns, and the implications of those patterns.
Table 5 shows the
20 worst constituencies for the Parliamentary and Presidential elections
combined. The total picture is shown in Appendix 3, but the "top
twenty" are shown for illustrative purposes.
As can be seen from
Table 5, some constituencies show consistent patterns for both elections;
for example, Gokwe, Harare, and Murehwa North had relatively consistent
patterns for both elections. Hurungwe, Mberengwa East Mudzi, and Zvishavane
show higher violence for the Parliamentary elections, whilst Bindura,
Buhera, Guruve, and UMP show much higher violence for the Presidential
Elections.
There is obviously
an association between the worst constituencies and the worst Provinces,
and also between both of these and the officials involved. For example,
most of the MPs mentioned are those from constituencies in Mashonaland
Central, East and West, whilst the remainder come from constituencies
where the reported violence and torture was high. In Mashonaland Central,
Border Gezi, Mark Madiro, Elliot Manyika, and Saviour Kasukawere were
all frequently mentioned: it takes no rocket science to discern the pattern,
nor to conclude that this was not random but organized, and organized
with the connivance of the government.
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