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Post-election violence 2008 - Index of articles & images
President
Mugabe's mobs target opposition families
Jan Raath,
The Times (UK)
June 19, 2008
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/africa/article4167820.ece
The families of Zimbabwe's
opposition leaders are being targeted for brutal execution in the
latest twist to the brutal electoral violence gripping the country.
With Robert Mugabe seeking to stifle the challenge to his power
before a presidential run-off vote on June 27 the most recent victim
of the his supporters was the wife of the unofficial mayor of Harare.
Abigail Chitoro was so badly beaten by the mob that dragged her
and her four-year-old son from their home that even her brother-in-law
struggled to identify the body. The clothes she was wearing, her
distinctive haircut and the blindfold that Zanu PF supporters forced
her to wear as they firebombed her home gave the only clue to her
identity. In the past week the wives of at least three opposition
Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) officials have been murdered.
The tactic, as President Mugabe and his generals try to avert electoral
defeat, has had the desired effect: the husbands have been rendered
useless with terror and grief. The latest case came a day after
Emmanuel Chitoro, 46, was chosen by colleagues from the MDC as the
new Mayor of Harare. The party, which won 45 out of 46 of seats
on the Harare city council in elections on March 29, was banned
from taking office but decided to form its own council on Sunday.
On Tuesday the body of
his 27-year-old wife was finally identified in the mortuary of the
Parirenyatwa hospital, Harare's largest state health institution,
with her head battered beyond recognition. Two pick-up trucks drove
up to the Chitoro home in Hatcliffe Extension, a squatter camp on
Harare's eastern outskirts on Monday night, and took away Abigail
and Ashley, her son. Mr Chitoro rushed back when neighbours called
him to find the house in flames. Neighbours said that they heard
three explosions, thought to be petrol bombs. Mr Chitoro had brought
with him Thanke Mothae, the director of the observer mission of
the Southern African Development Community, to witness the attack.
He found Ashley at a police station on Tuesday. Later that day he
was told that the body of a woman had been found on a farm adjoining
Hatcliffe. "I knew then that she had been murdered," he
said. He sent his brother, Kumbulani, to collect her but he could
not identify it. "He had difficulty identifying her. He wanted
to know what clothes she was putting on, and what hairstyle she
had," Mr Chitoro said. "The body was butchered. They had
used heavy objects to crush the head. She still had the blindfold
that my kid said they put on her head when they took them away."
Mr Chitoro described what she had been wearing, and Kumbulani positively
identified her. "I cannot go and see her. I cannot come out
in the open. As we speak, Hatcliffe is covered in smoke. They are
burning houses of people perceived to be MDC supporters. I don't
know who will protect us."
In the last week there
have been three reports of local MDC officials who fled their homes
from marauding Zanu PF mobs and who had their homes burnt down.
In each case their wives were put to death, two burnt alive, the
other battered to death. In Epworth, a squatter area east of Harare,
rampaging Zanu PF mobs burnt down the home of a third MDC councillor
in as many nights. It was the same in Chitungwiza, the sprawling
township south of the capital. Zanu PF struck again in Jerera, a
small administrative town in southeastern Zimbabwe, not two weeks
after it opened fire on six MDC supporters in the local party office,
poured petrol on to them and set fire to them, killing two instantly.
On Tuesday night, said a Catholic nun who asked not to be named,
they burnt down the home of the Catholic priest at St Anthony's
mission there. At another Catholic mission farther north, she said,
nuns had been ordered to purchase T-shirts bearing Mr Mugabe's face,
and wear them over their habits. They were forced to buy Zanu PF
party cards for Z$20 billion each, worth about 50p in Zimbabwe's
worthless currency. In Harare in the past three days mobs of hundreds
of Zanu PF supporters have been raiding township markets, smashing
vendors' stalls, stealing their goods and forcing them to buy Zanu
PF party cards as licences. Police have occasionally ventured out
to restore order, but arrested none of the perpetrators, said residents.
In the well-off suburb of Chisipite, Zanu PF youths abducted the
private security guard of the home of a senior British diplomat
and assaulted him because he "works for the British",
officials said.
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