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Legal
Monitor Issue 92
Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR)
May 09, 2011
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Violence
blights election talks
As Zimbabwe
power-sharing negotiators met with President Jacob Zuma's
facilitation team in Cape Town, a 70-year-old was one of several
villagers smarting from fresh violence in Chimanimani.
The meeting
in Cape Town, which was supposed to end at the weekend, is key because
negotiators there are discussing an election roadmap whose outcome
should be an end to the violence that affected the 2008 elections.
But even as
the Cape Town roundtable was underway, the Zimbabwe
Peace Project (ZPP) was reporting how suspected ZANU PF supporters
burnt down
houses in Nyambeya Village in Cashel Valley, which is in Chimanimani
District.
The 70-year-old
Mbuya Chizikani lost two huts, while her son Admire's two
family huts were reduced to ashes in an early morning attack May
3, according to the ZPP, a respect local peace group with ground
monitors across the country.
According to
ZPP, about seven houses belonging to three families aligned to Prime
Minister Morgan Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change
(MDC-T) party were set on fire during the assault.
Another family
lost three huts as a result of the attack, the ZPP reported.
The victims,
according to a ZPP monitor based in the community, strongly believed
that Zanu PF supporters only identified as "Musere"
and "Majoka" led the attacks.
This, the victims
said, was a follow up attack as they were previously targeted in
March this year by the same perpetrators after they had attended
an MDC-T district meeting.
After the alleged
attacks in March, the victims fled their homes and sought refuge
in Mutare where they spent three weeks in hiding. They only returned
to their homes early last month after the direct intervention of
Joint Monitoring and Implementation Committee officials.
According to
one of the victims identified by ZPP as "Moses Chemwanyisa",
the perpetrators came at around 3am Sunday last week and woke up
his wife and demanded to see him.
"Unfortunately
I was not at home after I had gone to Mutare on personal business
the previous day. The perpetrators who numbered about 10 then dragged
my wife out and tied her with a rope. They proceeded to set the
houses on fire and left for Admire Chizikani's homestead where
they set two huts on fire after no one had responded," Chemwanyisa
is quoted by the ZPP as saying.
He said Chizikani
was in Bulawayo attending the MDC-T congress while his family was
visiting relatives. "They then proceeded to Mbuya Chizikani's
homestead (Admire's mother) set her two huts alight as punishment
for allowing her son to join and participate in MDC-T activities,"
he said. The ZPP said the families lost everything in the attack
and were now appealing for assistance especially for shelter.
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