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ZPP Monthly Monitor - April
Zimbabwe Peace Project (ZPP)
June 01, 2012

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Executive Summary

Politically motivated human rights violations continued on the upward trend as the talk of holding elections this year gathered momentum. Since the beginning of the year ZPP has been witnessing a steady increase in politically motivated human rights violations across the country. The elections mantra was also laced up with controversies around the constitution making process with Zanu PF officials trashing the first draft produced by COPAC.

The month also saw some government officials suggesting that by-elections, which have been stalled because of the GPA agreements, should be held this year. ZPP also reported a murder case of an MDC-T activist in the Midlands Province by suspected two Zanu supporters in Gokwe Gumunyu. One of the perpetrators allegedly struck the victim to death with an axe and tried to conceal the evidence by burning the corpse in a burning hut. The two suspects were arrested and detained for two nights at Mutora Police Base in Gokwe. However the suspects were released without being charged.

There was a steady rise in the number of violations recorded since the beginning of the year. There were 524 incidents during the month under review up from the 475 recorded the month of March.

However, compared to the same period as illustrated in figure 1; the levels seen so far are still low compared to the previous years. The increase could be attributed to the magnified talk of elections and the chaotic Zanu PF restructuring exercise.

An analysis of the violations trends during the month of April over the past five years reveals that the month has always had more incidents compared to the other months. The highest number of violations during the month of March was witnessed in 2008 with 4 380 cases. This was the period when the Zimbabwe Election Commission ZEC had concealed the presidential results from the March 31 harmonized elections and the period leading to the sham June 27 Presidential election run-off. Politically motivated human rights violations in March 2009 eased a bit to 1490 cases and continued on a downward trend in April 2010 to 959 as the Zanu PF anti-sanction petition campaign gathered momentum.

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