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Zanu-PF resorts to all-night beatings
Sunday Times (SA)
May 04, 2008

http://www.thetimes.co.za/News/Article.aspx?id=759757

Mabhawuwa Tinashe was sitting outside a shopping centre early last month when a group of men, some of whom he recognised, forced him to attend a "night vigil".

On instruction, he returned for a second "vigil", but fled his home when ordered to come back a third time.

Tinashe, 19, could take no more.

Whipped all night long at the vigil in a bid, he was told, to teach him how to vote "correctly", Tinashe is just one of thousands of rural dwellers terrorised by Zimbabwe's feared war veterans and youth militia, following the March 29 elections in which President Robert Mugabe and his ruling Zanu-PF were voted out of power.

The war veterans' weapon of choice, it appears, is the night vigil (pungwe), a creation of the liberation war where Zimbabweans were taken into the forests and forced, under threat of violence, to join the freedom struggle.

Several villages in Zimbabwe's Mashonaland and Manicaland provinces are said to have been virtually sealed off by the war veterans and Zanu- PF youth militia in the weeks after the elections, so they could be punished for their "act of betrayal" in voting for opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai over Mugabe.

The crackdown is also intended to re-educate villagers so they support Mugabe against Tsvangirai in a runoff for the presidency, expected to be held on May 24.

For Tinashe and his fellow villagers, relief came only after some victims managed to flee to Harare, about 60km away, and alert human rights groups to their plight.

But the "lesson" had already been handed down.

Tinashe said the war veterans had targeted men of voting age — regardless of who they voted for. Those rounded up were whipped all night, with some younger men forced to beat their elders.

"We had to whip our parents, old and frail as they are, simply because they expressed their will.

"We had no choice but to do it because if the war veterans said that you were not being brutal enough, they would demonstrate on you how it should be done," Tinashe said.

To add insult to injury, each homestead was "fined" Z10- million and 5kg of maize meal, which was used to feed the war veterans while they conducted their "operation".

Tinashe said the "operation" lasted about two weeks before police briefly detained the war veterans after some of the people who had been tortured managed to raise the alarm.

"We were beaten and at the same time told we should not dare go to the clinic because they would be there waiting for us," Tinashe said.

But the terrorising of the population may yet turn around to bite Mugabe and his ruling Zanu-PF. Another villager in Mabhawuwa said the torture had merely strengthened Zimbabweans' resolve.

Come the presidential run- off, expected to take place on May 24, they will again vote for Tsvangirai as they had had enough of Zanu-PF, he said.

"We were Zanu-PF through and through, but now the time for change has come. How can Zanu-PF say it can resolve the country's crisis when it has failed to do so all along?

"We believed them in 2000 when they said the MDC represented the whites' interests because of the number of white people who used to turn up at MDC rallies, but now we have seen that we were being hoodwinked all along.

"We want change and we will achieve it even if they continue to brutalise us. Even some people who voted for Zanu-PF out of fear will now vote for Tsvangirai because they were not sure that Mugabe could lose an election," said the villager.

They said the MDC did not need to campaign ahead of the runoff; Zanu-PF's violence was enough to drive people into the opposition's arms.

The violence has also spread to farms, where 34 evictions have been reported since the elections, according to the Justice for Agriculture Trust, which helps evicted farmers.

John Woorsley-Woorswick, the trust's chief executive, said farmers were being punished for Zanu-PF's failures.

But he said farm workers, not farmers, were being most affected by the evictions.

"About 200 people are employed on one farm and once a farmer is evicted, the settlers either chase the workers away or retain them and pay them a slave wage.

"All they are doing is sealing off the rural areas so that they can brutalise people into voting for Zanu-PF. It has nothing to do with redressing imbalances," said Woorsley-Woorswick.

Meanwhile, the tension in the rural areas is said to be on such a knife edge that even Grace Mugabe, the first lady, referred to it this week.

Visiting victims of political violence in Rusununguko village near the town of Mutare, eastern Zimbabwe, on Thursday, she condemned the "thugs" who burnt down the huts of villagers for exercising their democratic right.

As many as 20 people have reportedly been killed and many injured in the crackdown following the election.Some villagers in Mabhawuwa in the Seke constituency about 60km east of Harare, told the Sunday Times that war veterans brutalised them after the poll results were announced saying they betrayed the revolution by voting for the MDC.

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